On August 2, France, Britain and Germany announced that they might cut off negotiations with Iran and pursue punitive sanctions if the country followed through on its threats to resume its uranium enrichment program. The announcement came a day after the Washington Post reported that American intelligence agencies believe the country is a decade away from producing a nuclear weapon-an assessment… return to article
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Reader Comments (255)Scorp-Hmmm… I think maybe you tell people your opinions in a way that has the similar abrasive qualities of 20 grit sandpaper. Calling it truth and the only truth, like you own the patent or something on it, is bit of a stretch. My opinion is that a lot of US policy has been machiavellian in nature. (Machiavelli is not considered to be much of an advocate for democracy.) Or maybe another term that someone else profered, realpolitik. Trading expediency for values isn’t necessarily a good bargain in the long run. One of the recurring themes with our role in regime change and nation building is that a popular leader gets elected, challenges some of the finer details over a strategic national resource or geography. We stand firm. So does the new guy. Tensions escalate. The new guy doesn’t back down. Neither do we. Finally, we sponsor a coup, have the guy thrown out and voila! New pro-US government. Reverts to status quo with everyone happy. We’ve got someone we can do business with (someone willing to exploit and opress his own people) The only real losers in this repeated drama would be the people of the country we’ve just regime changed. The resource that belongs to them is sold at a fraction of what they need to build up a robust economy while whatever income they do receive is squandered by our new friend building palaces and armies. Everybody lives happily ever after. Or do they? I posit that if scorp was handed a deal like that by some super power, his talk of the rule of law would suddenly change to revolution. Possibly a violent kind? Or would he in the name of respecting the “rule of law” allow his friends and family to be starved, tortured or disappeared ad infinitum? I doubt it.
I’m all for protecting America. Where scorp and I disagree is in the methodology. He’s okay with making shady deals with dictators. Whatever gets the job done, because the results are what matter. But to me, the methodology is just as important as the reults because the methodology is what seperates us from history’s great mass murderers. Do we become the monster that we’re fighting? Is the overall price worth it? I find it humorous that in the 50’s we spent a lot of money essentially destroying the communist party of Iran. Fine. (I don’t like communism. It doesn’t adequately address human realities. I’m also an opponent of laize faire capitalism, because it has equally reprehensible vices) But we did it without even contemplating any unintended side effects. Like nature abhoring a vacuum. Once the commies were safely disposed of, we moved on. The hardline fundamentalists moved into the void. They spread their tentacles through out the country until the revolution in ‘79, when they struck. There was no alternative party of any significance to oppose them. So, this is our bed. We made it. We have to lie in it. Have a nice day!
Posted by volvillain on Aug 19, 2005 at 4:55 PM Vol-
You might have more information than I on that poor guys’ plight. If there was police incompetence involved, I can’t say I am surprised. If there is more to it than that, such as a conspiracy to kill him or out and out malice towards an innocent person, I say that is just as wrong as what we are fighting against. I will follow your link. However, the BBC is NOT to be taken at face value. Truth IS vital to the welfare of a Democracy…agreed.
The BBC is not known for its unbiased coverage.
Posted by IsThisThingOn? on Aug 19, 2005 at 5:01 PM What media outlet these days has unbiased coverage? If you find one, let me know. *lol*
My personal opinion is that the officers involved were SO focused on finding a terrorist their expectation got the better of them. I don’t think they honestly believed they were about to gun down an innocent man. If they did indeed succumb to their expectations and then attempt to alter their events to evade responsibility, then that is certainly a crime of greater magnitude and a criminal idictment levied against them.
(I’ve been following this case a lot because I think it represents the very real pitfalls in prosecuting a war against terror.)
Posted by volvillain on Aug 19, 2005 at 5:11 PM ITTO- hear is what hapened to the Brazilian man brutally gunned down in a London subway station: Scotland Yard had been monitoring this guy’s apartment building because a suspect in the attacks lived there. When the Brazilian left that building, the police mistook him for the suspect, so they had no business following this man in the first place. The blood of this man is on their hands. While they were killing this guy, the real suspect could have been off planting another bomb. Appearances CAN be deceiving. The way to fight terrorism is not arbitrary search and seizure but through intelligence gathering that respects civil libertires. Such tactics uncovered two of the 9/11 hijackers before they attcked, but policymakers were not interested in them. THe system worked fine before 9/11 so let’s not go apesh*t and prejudge anyone who is from a region that stretches from Mauritania to Indonesia. Terrorists can adapt. In NYC, every 12th bag is searched. All the terrorist has to do is be the 11th person in line. Or, these people will just change tactics. The U.S. has been focusing on airline hijackings, meanwhile Al-Qaeda has switched to bombing trains and buses. These guys WILL find another way to attack us. So let’s not throw away our hard won freedoms out of paranoia.
Finally, the BBC is not biased, it just does not take the statements of politicians at face value, nothing wrong with that. In fact, their pre-war reporting was some of the finest in the world in terms of shedding doubt on coalition assertions that guess what, turned out to be false!!!!
Posted by Liberal on Aug 19, 2005 at 9:05 PM Liberal’s post reminds of something… How come not one single person has been reprimanded or fired as a result of 9/11? What’s up with that?
Another BBC article references a picture leaked to them of the deceased electrician and he is wearing a snug jean jacket and jeans. So much for the big jacket story…
Posted by volvillain on Aug 19, 2005 at 9:50 PM Mitilda- Actually I don’t think that speech by Hitler settles the debate at all. Hitler also made some specifically anti-Christian statements later in his career (read Alan Bullock’s book “Hitler, A Study in Tryanny”). Also, the historian Paul Johnson considers Hitler to have been anti-Christian. Probably like many politicians Hitler spoke out of both sides of his mouth depending upon who he was trying to win over. In 1922, when he made that speech, Hitler was leading a small party whose prospects were not at all promising in a nation that was at least nominally Christian. The idea that that speech mirrored Hitler’s true sentiments is highly dubious at best.
Posted by chopper on Aug 20, 2005 at 12:51 AM Matilda- First, apologies for mis-spelling your name in the last post. Actually, I think I did get your posts, I just disagree with them. Perhaps the Iraq war “didn’t need to happen” as you write, but that still doesn’t put George Bush on the same moral plane as Nazis who executed civilians at random, not when our military takes pains to avoid civilian casualties. I agree that in practice Stalin and Hitler had many similarities (people forget that Nazi stood for the National Socialist party), I just don’t think they really have much similarity to conservatism (which is by no means monolithic, there are several different political philosophies under that name) as it exists today in the United States. In fact many liberals, with their quasi-socialistic programs, are closer in spirit to facism than most conservatives.
In practice the left uses facism to smear anyone they disagree with. It is time to give the word a decent burial.
Posted by chopper on Aug 20, 2005 at 1:06 AM Lefty- with the left’s program of state control over the economy, I’d say they fit the definition of facism pretty well.
Posted by chopper on Aug 20, 2005 at 1:07 AM IsThisThingOn,
Nice of you to lend your insight into justifying profiling.
Now let’s look at some other questions.Since I hate grading multiple-choice tests,they are not indicative of real world knowledge which you either have or don’t,and a tritely smarmy way of sounding smarter than one’s actual capacity, let’s take another quiz.Ready?In the case of each,describe the age group,ethnicity,and political prty of each of the following terrorists.By strict definition of the term,those who use fear and violence to further a political agenda.
Paul Hill:murderer of doctors who perform abortions?
Timothy McVeigh:Oklahomea City bomber.
Eric Rudolph:Bomber of abortion clinics and gay bars,oh,he also bombed the 1996 Olympics.Most provincial right-wingers forget that one.
If,in each case,you answered White male,Christian,Republican,between 18 and 50 years old,guess what?You’re right!
Profiling,another way for a negligenty government to obfuscate domestic issue and misdirect the public into a useless paranoia venue.
Shame on the right and raspberries to those stupid enough to believe their trickery.
Posted by wwoods on Aug 20, 2005 at 3:55 AM ww
Cute. But irrelevant.
So, why are we patting down little old ladies?
Your three examples are one-off idiots, working alone or in small groups.
The Jihadists number in the thousands, have millions of dollars in backing, and have a very large support and propaganda base behind them.
Posted by scorp on Aug 20, 2005 at 4:30 AM IsThisThingOn, so it was highly dubious that Adolph Hitler was a real Christian, dya fink? Of course Hitler was not a real Christian, the fact that he claimed to be one again and again however is a matter of public record.
My point was that George W. Bush is not a real Christian either, he only claims to be one again and again. Real Christians prevent the killing of innocent people at all costs, and definitely don’t lead invasions on other people’s countries for no other reasons than greed, fear and pride.
Okay, for all the Bush apologists out there (and there are many), you are right, at the moment George W. Bush is not as bad as Adolph Hitler. I thought that went without saying, but you conservatives tend to take everything literally, and also habitually think in terms of polarized opposites. Bush is not as bad as Hitler, but he is bad. Bush has not killed anywhere near as many people as Hitler (yet), but he has an unacceptable amount of blood on his hands nonetheless. In the eyes of international law, the invasion of Iraq is no different to Germany’s invasion of Poland sixty years ago. That is just a fact
Gee, you guys are ignorant (and that is not just an insult), the Nazis called themselves National Socialists for a reason, and I wonder if you can guest what that reason was? Come on, I know you can do it.
The Nazis called themselves National Socialists for the same reason that Adolph Hitler claimed to be a Christian, to try and fool the general population into supporting their policies. The Nazis were no more Socialists than they were Christians. In fact along with Jews, homosexuals, and other political opponents, communists were imprisoned by the Nazis, persecuted and killed. If you were a socialist, why would you kill socialists?
No, the Nazis were Fascists fair and square and were funded a group of rich industrialists headed by a guy called Fritz Thyssen. In the years between the first and second world wars big business in Germany funded Hitler and the Nazi party to the tune of millions every year because they were basically terrified that the people would vote the communists into power.
It must be a struggle when your only source of historical information is Fox News.
Conservatism is basically watered down fascism. Conservatism is Fascism without the balls, one is just the extreme embodiment of the other, and they share very similar basic values. From this point on I shall be referring to those basic values as ‘conservative values’.
At this point I think we need a dictionary definition:
“Fascism - A system of government that exercises a dictatorship of the extreme right, typically through the merging of state and business leadership, together with belligerent nationalism.”
The American Heritage Dictionary, 1983
Any further comments on this subject can be sent directly to the publishers of The American Heritage Dictionary.
Posted by Matilda Gatsby on Aug 20, 2005 at 9:50 AM Here are some quotes that you all might find interesting. I already suspect that our country has started heading towards a form of fascism with the invasion of Iraq. The fact that we are even talking about a possible attack on Iran begins to confirm my worst fears.
Consider these food for thought…
“They that can give up essential liberty to obtain a little temporary safety deserve neither liberty nor safety.”Benjamin Franklin, 1759
“To initiate a war of aggression ... is not only an international crime, it is the supreme international crime, differing only from other war crimes in that it contains within itself the accumulated evil of the whole.”International Military Tribunal at Nuremberg, Germany - 1946
“Why of course the people don’t want war. Why should some poor slob on a farm want to risk his life in a war when the best he can get out of it is to come back to his farm in one piece? Naturally, the common people don’t want war: neither in Russia, nor in England, nor for that matter in Germany. That is understood. But after all it is the leaders of the country who determine the policy, and it is always a simple matter to drag the people along, whether it is a democracy, or a fascist dictatorship, or a parliament, or a communist dictatorship ...Voice or no voice, the people can always be brought to the bidding of the leaders. That is easy. All you have to do is to tell them they are being attacked, and denounce the pacifists for lack of patriotism and exposing the country to danger.”Hermann Goering, Nazi leader, at the Nuremberg Trials after World War II
“The point of public relations slogans like “Support our troops” is that they don’t mean anything… That’s the whole point of good propaganda. You want to create a slogan that nobody’s going to be against, and everybody’s going to be for. Nobody knows what it means, because it doesn’t mean anything. Its crucial value is that it diverts your attention from a question that does mean something: Do you support our policy? That’s the one you’re not allowed to talk about.”Noam Chomsky
“Once the war against Saddam begins, we expect every American to support our military, and if they can’t do that, to shut Up.”Bill O’Reilly, Fox News
“If you tell a lie big enough and keep repeating it, people will eventually come to believe it. The lie can be maintained only for such time as the State can shield the people from the political, economic and/or military consequences of the lie. It thus becomes vitally important for the State to use all of its powers to repress dissent, for the truth is the mortal enemy of the lie, and thus by extension, the truth is the greatest enemy of the State.”Joseph Goebbels, German Minister of Propaganda, 1933-1945
“This [the U.S. Constitution] is likely to be administered for a course of years and then end in despotism… when the people shall become so corrupted as to need despotic government, being incapable of any other.”Benjamin Franklin
Posted by Matilda Gatsby on Aug 20, 2005 at 9:58 AM “Fascism is on the march today in America. Millionaires are marching to the tune. It will come in this country unless a strong defense is set up by all liberal and progressive forces… A clique of U.S. industrialists is hell-bent to bring a fascist state to supplant our democratic government, and is working closely with the fascist regime in Germany and Italy. Aboard ship a prominent executive of one of America’s largest financial corporations told me point blank that if the progressive trend of the Roosevelt administration continued, he would be ready to take definite action to bring fascism to America.”
former ambassador to Germany William Dodd, 1938
“This so-called ill treatment and torture in detention centers, stories of which were spread everywhere among the people, and later by the prisoners who were freed … were not, as some assumed, inflicted methodically, but were excesses committed by individual prison guards…”Rudolf Hoess, SS Commandant at Auschwitz, Executed 1946
” If an American is concerned only about his nation, he will not be concerned about the peoples of Asia, Africa, or South America. Is this not why nations engage in the madness of war without the slightest sense of penitence? Is this not why the murder of a citizen of your own nation is a crime, but the murder of citizens of another nation in war is an act of heroic virtue? “Martin Luther King, Jr
“What happened was the gradual habituation of the people, little by little, to be governed by surprise, to receiving decisions deliberated in secret; to believing that the situation was so complicated that the government had to act on information which the people could not understand, or so dangerous that, even if people could understand it, it could not be released because of national security ...To live in the process is absolutely not to notice it—please try to believe me—unless one has a much greater degree of political awareness, acuity, than most of us ever had occasion to develop. Each step was so small, so inconsequential, so well explained or, on occasion, regretted.
Believe me this is true. Each act, each occasion is worse than the last, but only a little worse. You wait for the next and the next. You wait for one shocking occasion, thinking that others, when such a shock comes, will join you in resisting somehow.
Suddenly it all comes down, all at once. You see what you are, what you have done, or, more accurately, what you haven’t done (for that was all that was required of most of us: that we did nothing) ... You remember everything now, and your heart breaks. Too late. You are compromised beyond repair. “
German professor after World War II describing the rise of Nazism to a journalist
“To oppose the policies of a government does not mean you are against the country or the people that the government supposedly represents. Such opposition should be called what it really is: democracy, or democratic dissent, or having a critical perspective about what your leaders are doing. Either we have the right to democratic dissent and criticism of these policies or we all lie down and let the leader, the Fuhrer, do what is best, while we follow uncritically, and obey whatever he commands. That’s just what the Germans did with Hitler, and look where it got them.”Michael Parenti, political scientist and author
“During times of universal deceit, telling the truth is revolutionary.”George Orwell
Posted by Matilda Gatsby on Aug 20, 2005 at 9:59 AM Matilda, in your post you stated “you guys” (from the context I take it you mean IsThisThingOn, Scorp, & myself) are ignorant, but your post itself betrays at best a superficial understanding of what facism and Nazi Germany were about, and what “conservatism” in the US today is about. To write that the invasion of Iraq is as bad as the invasion of Poland by Nazi Germany in 1939 is absurd, and I write this as one who was not in favor of our invasion of Iraq. It is not at all clear that Bush “lied” about WMD in Iraq, since most of the rest of the world, including many on the left, believed that Saddam possessed WMD’s. Also, Saddam’s regime was a brutal dictatorship that killed people in the hundred’s of thousands, unlike Poland in 1939.
Another of your points, that conservatism is “facsim without the balls” is also off base. The word facism itself comes from Mussolini’s Facist party in Italy. Most people are unaware that Mussolini actually came from the trade-union movement, and that he advocated a form of socialism known as syndicalism. The main difference between facism and socialism economically is that in facism industry remains nominally in private hands but is heavily regulated and controlled by the state while under socialism industry is owned outright by the state (aka “The People”). Neither system really practices free enterprise. Most people considered “conservative” today (at least in the United States) promote free enterprise, with business left largely unfettered by the government. The Nazi’s economic policies were, in fact, remarkably similar to the New Deal. Considering the desire for heavy-handed regulation of business that most “liberals” today advocate I’d say they are closer in spirit to facism than those of us on the right.
Posted by chopper on Aug 20, 2005 at 1:00 PM Matilda- As you rightly point out in one of your earlier posts, Hitler was financed by some German industrialists who thought they could control him once he got into power. This illustrates a common phenomenon with big business, which often actually welcomes or encourages state regulation and protectionism, which gives them (big business) a compartive advantage against foreign and smaller competitors. This leads to muddled thinking by liberals/leftists, whose solution is even more control over business (facism, if you will) or outright state takeover of business (socialism). The real solution is to reduce econmic decision making by the government, and get it out of the business of controlling our economy.
Posted by chopper on Aug 20, 2005 at 1:15 PM Matilda- I noticed you posted a statement from Michael Parenti above, he calls himself a “libertarian-socialist” which is in fact a left-anarchist, such as Noam Chomsky. The “libertarian-socialists” or leftwing anarchists advocate socialism without a state. There are also “anarcho-capitalists” who advocate capitalism without a state, such as Murry Rothbard and Milton Friedman’s son. Neither position makes much sense to me.
Posted by chopper on Aug 20, 2005 at 1:23 PM Matilda, 5:50 -
Muddled thinking.
“Bush is not as bad as Hitler, but he is bad. Bush has not killed anywhere near as many people as Hitler (yet), but he has an unacceptable amount of blood on his hands.”
Pacifists and socialists are the same thing, and both of them will end up getting you killed, or, in the case of Jihadist terror, getting you converted to radical Islam. No thanks, to either of the outcomes you have planned for us.
“In the eyes of international law, ... “.
There is no such thing as “international law”. There are treaties between countries that have the force of law. Then there are socialists that pretend there are “international laws”. The so-called “international laws” that the socialists are pushing are just elements of the socialist agenda: pacifism, supranational government, feel-good policies, stuff like that.
If the United States government passes a law, then that law applies within the United States. The socialists “international laws” have zero validity in the real world, and are dangerous to your health and well-being.
Sex and religion are popular topics. You have questioned President Bush’s manhood and Christian beliefs. But you are the one with no balls and no religion. Perhaps you should confine your remarks to things that you understand.
Posted by scorp on Aug 20, 2005 at 4:38 PM Volvillian- I read the article in Counterpunch that you referenced, the author brings up some interesting points but I definitely remain somewhat skeptical about it. He basically presents a picture of Israeli intransigence vs. Palestinian victimhood. But Palestinian leaders when talking to their own people still call for the destruction of Israel and, in a disquieting development, Israel is getting no credit for pulling out of the Gaza strip in Palestine. Instead this is being touted as a victory by Hamas terrorism (“Martyrdom operations” as they call them), so instead of leading to greater peace this may merely lead to more terrorism.
Posted by chopper on Aug 20, 2005 at 4:40 PM Scorp- Good point about “international law”, there is no Supra-national body to enforce anything such as “international law”. Sorry Matilda, but a statement such as “in the eyes of international law…” is a pretty vaporious statement.
Posted by chopper on Aug 20, 2005 at 4:48 PM Scorp,
Your response also applies equally to the Muslim extremists who attacked this country.Yet,don’t be so naive as to,for a second,believe that there isn’t big money behind the christian yahoos who commit their acts of terrorism.We,as “Christian-Americans” are just as capable of terrorism and just as capable of white-washing our consciences.Curiously,during the nineties,I saw very little effort by the right to curtail domestic terrorist activity in the U.S.In fact,the G.O.P.criticized any of Clinton’s efforts as obstructing freedom of speech.This is to say nothing of Bush ignoring Al-Qaeda from January to September 11th,when,after attacking the USS Cole,they deserved reprisal.Unfortunately,Bush was too busy guuting OSHA regulations to satisfy his business cronies.Good judgement there.Now,if the muslim community were to give a dump truck full of money to the Republicans,we might see them back off from prosecuting a real war against Islamic terrorism.Oh,wait,they already did that with the Saudis who supplied nearly all of the hijackers during the 9/11 attacks. Bush and his cronies may talk the talk,but they will dance to whatever tune keeps their pockets full.
Q;What’s missing from the BUSH administration?
A: LLIT !
Spare us the obfuscation,ther is no centrifuge lartge enough to spin a turd into a diamond,no matter what Republicans might wish to have us fall for.
Posted by wwoods on Aug 21, 2005 at 7:15 AM Someone said, paraphrasing, ‘Let us know when you’re ready to run with the big dogs.’
Listen. If someone trips over your closely held conviction, examine it, learn from it; don’t go off half-cocked, passing your ‘feelings’ off on someone else.
M’kay?
Now, woods has a good point. Tell me it ain’t ‘bout money, honey!!!
Posted by lbyland on Aug 21, 2005 at 9:54 AM Ibyland, what exactly is woods point? Some of it is improbably conspiratorial, some is incoherent, and some of is pretty vague. To what acts of terrorism that he is accusing “Christian-Americans” of is he referring? What does he mean by a lack of effort by the right to curb domestic terrorism? Is he referring to criticism of Clinton (that was justified) of Clinton’s lame attempt to link Timothy McVeigh’s actions to talk radio?
Posted by chopper on Aug 21, 2005 at 12:53 PM Chopper says Clinton’s criticism was “justified” but provides no evidence. Will he give a similar pass to liberals who criticize our current president?
Anyway, scorp and chopper have yet to refute any of the reasons I asserted as to why an attack against Iran would be incredibly foolish and dangerous. Their last posts reek of emotional invective and typical baseless characterizations of what liberals stand for.
Posted by Liberal on Aug 21, 2005 at 6:54 PM What CLinton said was that the hate speech in right-wing talk radio was the kind of hatred that leads to violence, and please do not tell me that it doesn’t. Limbaugh, O’Reilly, and Liddy intentionally rile people up, make them angry and feel threatened so they will never let an alternative position enter their minds because their entire political philosophies are based on emotion and emotion alone. Clinton said we must combat hate speech not by suppressing it, but by confronting it with a different message. Nothing wrong with that.
Posted by Liberal on Aug 21, 2005 at 6:57 PM chopper,
An examination of a business deal does not imply that I think there is a conspiracy.Conspiracies are for terrorists like McVeigh who think the rather large bicillin injection you get in basic training is a tracking chip.Did somebody watch one too many Bond movies?
All one needs to do is examine the relatioship between the U.S. and the Middle-East to make a few connections.
Bin Laden was a Saudi as well as fifteen of the 9/11 hi-jackers.Where is the outcry that Saudi Arabia contributed indirectly in a large way to that event?Why hasn’t the U.S.taken tough measures against the Saudis?Why?They’ve got what we want—oil.They get rich selling it to American oil companies who get even richer selling to us.Big business and their right-wing mouthpieces are getting rich and don’t care who it hurts.Really,if we wanted to,we could have invaded Saudi Arabia,go for the jugular, and had all the oil we wanted.Furthermore it would have sent a chilling message to the entire Middle-East:these were lifelong friends who helped others hurt.Take a good long look before you decide to screw with us again!
This,of course,would never happen because there’s too much money for anyone,even an ignorant trigger-happy cowboy,to kick over the table.instead we went after the wrong guy and the war onb terro will be with us for another century.
BTW:who trained and equipped Osama Bin Laden?our CIA.Under what presidents did this happen?Reagan and Bush.
Terrorist:one who uses fear,intimidation,or violence to promote a political or social goal.
Regarding domestic terrorism,we ignore groups usually on the way right.How much investigation has the right ever launched against groups like the KKK,separatists who have advocated governmental overthrow,or pro-life groups who use and advocate violence against doctors who perform abortions?The least that the right can get away with and the most the left can do without being called tyrants can get away with.Why?Nut-bars usually vote Republican.
My point,chopper,the right-wing in this country care only about those who make them rich and let them keep power,not caring who it hurts.
Posted by wwoods on Aug 22, 2005 at 12:27 AM Well Liberal, your not posting any evidence for your statements. Trying to make a connection between O’Reilly, Limbaugh, or Liddy and Timothy McVeigh’s action’s is more than a bit of a stretch. None of them has ever advocated violence, at least not when I’ve heard them (If you can point out an instance when they did so, please share). And where have they advocated hating any group?
As for riling people up or making them “feel angry” that is at least as prevalent on the left as it is on the right. A good deal of the left’s agenda runs on emotionalism (bushitler, corporate facism, etc) and is based on envy and hatred.BTW, it isn’t “the right’s” or “the left’s” for that matter, job to launch an investigation against terrorist groups, it is the government’s job. Are you saying that the government during Republican administrations gave groups like the KKK (which is practically moribound, check out The Southern Poverty Law Center if you don’t believe me, hardly a right-wing organization) a free pass when they had control of the White house? I’ve also heard charges that the Clinton White House didn’t do anything to stop leftwing terror groups such as the Earth Liberation Front, so maybe it is just a charge made for partisan political reasons, much as yours seems to be.
As for McVeigh, he was pretty much an individual nut-job with perhaps a few nut-job supporters. Following your logic every enviromentalist who uses overblown rhetoric is responsible for the Unabomber.
Posted by chopper on Aug 22, 2005 at 2:29 AM Hello again scorp,
Sorry for the delayed replies all the time, exceedingly busy as usual, little time to check in.I’d be curious to know your characterization of the Iraq War insofar as the importance of its beginnings and also the outcomes you predict as stemming from it.
I hasten to add, there’s no sarcastic tone in my question. I add this because posters here very often respond as though they’ve been spoken to in a snide manner. One hazard of internet postings is, there are no facial expressions or tones of voice (plus, there’s plenty of snide attitude to be found among posters here at ITT and all over the web).
I have quite a number of family members and acquaintances who disagree vehemently with me about the war in Iraq. And of course it’s routinely in debate within this forum. I’m curious to have the view that conflicts with my own related to me from additional quarters, in hopes of understanding that viewpoint better. I can’t say I’ve been convinced by what I’ve heard so far, and it may be impossible for that to occur anyway (I have very strong opinions on the subject). Still, there have been occasions when an insight has been brought to me that ends up being educative.
So much for the intro…
Is it fair to say that you consider the Iraq War to be a difficult job that the US needs to do and that can’t be done another way? Would it be accurate to believe you see the likely outcomes of our presence in Iraq as being more beneficial to the US/ the advance of democracy/ the cause of peaceful advance of civilization?
Not to phrase it out for you, of course. I’d be interested to read your take on Iraq, its beginnings, and its predictable outcomes. It’s no secret that I think its beginnings were misleading and false, and that I believe future events linked to our war there will be overall much more detrimental than beneficial. I think it will feed the cause of our enemies far more than it will feed causes that are linked to ideals of democracy, lasting just peace, etc. Please respond by telling me your assessment.
The predominant thought I have when considering the war is, “It should never have begun.” I think Saddam could have been contained and even neutralized in less disruptive ways. I’ll detail that later if you like, of course it would be speculative in some part… can’t really unspill the milk at this point.
I’m tempted to say it’s all a moot point, because we’re there now and a sudden pullout would likely precipitate more interfactional violence and possibly a civil war, from which only Iran would be likely to benefit (although the refugee problem might be a sticky one for them). Still, as I said, my predominant thoughts about it are quite foreboding.
It’s true I often take a high tone when I write, nevertheless I hope it’s apparent that I’m trying to use a quite moderate tone in this case.
Also, if anyone other than scorp would respond, go for it.
Posted by Kuya on Aug 22, 2005 at 6:05 AM I would like to bring everyone’s attention to something very interesting Scorp wrote in an earlier post.
Scorp said:
“Pacifists and socialists are the same thing, and both of them will end up getting you killed, or, in the case of Jihadist terror, getting you converted to radical Islam. No thanks, to either of the outcomes you have planned for us.”
Hermann Goering said:
“the people can always be brought to the bidding of the leaders. That is easy. All you have to do is to tell them they are being attacked, and denounce the pacifists for lack of patriotism and exposing the country to danger.”
I would like to thank Scorp for so completely illustrating my point.
Posted by Matilda Gatsby on Aug 22, 2005 at 10:13 AM As for converting people to Islam, wasn’t it Ann Coulter who said in response to the 9/11 attacks:
“We should invade their countries, kill their leaders and convert them to Christianity”
It might be good to remind people once again that fifteen of the eighteen 9/11 hijackers were from Saudi Arabia. It would be interesting to know who exactly Coulter is referring to when she talks about ‘their’ countries and ‘their’ leaders. Something tells me it is not us who are in danger of being killed at the moment, or converted to a foreign religion, quite the opposite. For instance does anyone remember that Bush originally wanted to call the ‘war on terror’ the ‘crusade on terror’, but quickly came under fire for potentially rubbing salt into a very old wound? The crusades, incidentally, and stop me if I am mistaken, were a series of military expeditions to kill or convert as many Muslims to Christianity as possible. That’s one hell of a Freudian slip!I am not suggesting that American forces are literally trying to convert the Muslims to Christianity in Iraq. I just think it betrays a very depraved mindset, that Bush and Coulter and others would even think in these terms, projecting there own expansionist attitudes on to a people and a region that we as a country have just illegally invaded.
Also, Scorp, you seem to have some very peculiar values indeed.
God forbid that people should have laws that make them feel good, and oh those nasty pacifists, always attempting to find peaceful solutions to problems, damn their bones.
Don’t they know how much fun war is (especially when you don’t actually have to fight in one and can watch it all on Fox news), and that a lot of money can be made with the right investments.
Posted by Matilda Gatsby on Aug 22, 2005 at 10:15 AM Chopper, fascism isn’t state control and regulation of private business, it is the take over of the state by private business, nothing like socialism. Did you bother to read the quote I posted above made by William Dodd in 1938? He seemed to think that a lot of big business was fanatically opposed to FDR’s social policies and would have happily instigated German style fascism in this country if it had gone any further. But I thought fascism and socialism were supposed to have so much in common, that’s what you are trying to make us all believe isn’t it? If that is true then how was it that large sectors of American business in 1938 despised FDR’s reforms so much that they would have helped introduce Nazi style fascism to America?
Fascism is a right wing philosophy, and social democracy is its true opposite. Of course this issue is complicated by the fact that the conservatives in this country insist on repeating the lie that social democracy is actually socialism, and socialism is actually communism. Oh, and somewhere along the way socialism is also supposed to be basically the same as fascism. What utter nonsense.
The New Deal was the best thing that ever happened to this country, America taking its first true steps into a bigger, more civilized reality. Only conservative Americans think the New Deal was socialism. Everywhere else in the world the kind of measures embodied by the New Deal are called social democracy, or just good social policy. Only political fanatics and extremists dream of rolling back the progress made by the New Deal, and heading America goodness knows in what direction.
If we are to assume that William Dodd wasn’t lying, then it might be reasonable to assume that the same anti-social democracy, pro-fascism sentiments still lurk today in the hearts of all true money orientated conservatives. Or would that be assuming too much?
You tell me, because among certain sections of the super rich in 1938, fascism was definitely preferable to the social democracy we had in place.
Posted by Matilda Gatsby on Aug 22, 2005 at 10:16 AM Here are some excerpts from a very detailed article I found on the net detailing the exact nature of international law.
“December 31, 2004-In September, U.N. Secretary General Kofi Annan told the BBC that the U.S./British invasion of Iraq was illegal under international law [1]. The following week, he dedicated his entire annual address to the U.N. General Assembly to the subject of international law, saying, “We must start from the principle that no one is above the law, and no one should be denied its protection.” So, how was the invasion of Iraq illegal? How does that affect the situation there today? And what are the practical implications of this for U.S. policy going forward, in Iraq and elsewhere?The Secretary General presumed what the world generally accepts, that international law is legally binding upon all countries. In the United States however, international law is spoken of differently, as a tool that our government can use selectively to enforce its will on other nations, or else circumvent when it conflicts with sufficiently important U.S. interests. For the benefit of readers in the U.S., I therefore feel obliged to preface a review of war crime in Iraq with a look at the actual legal status of international law, both in international terms and in terms of our own national framework of constitutional law.
When the president of the United States signs a treaty and it is ratified by the U.S. Senate, our country is making a solemn undertaking. The seriousness of such commitments is exemplified by the Nuremberg War Crimes Trials and subsequent international trials, in which individual national leaders have been held criminally responsible for treaty violations and, when convicted, have been sentenced to long terms of imprisonment or even death by hanging. In our own constitutional system, Article VI Clause 2 of the United States Constitution, known as the “Supremacy Clause,” grants international treaties the same “supreme” status as federal law and the Constitution itself”
Posted by Matilda Gatsby on Aug 22, 2005 at 10:18 AM It goes on to say…
“The treaty which outlawed the waging of aggressive war was the General Treaty for the Renunciation of War, otherwise known as the Kellogg-Briand Pact or the Pact of Paris. It was named for U.S. Secretary of State Frank B. Kellogg and the French statesman Aristide Briand, and it was signed by President Coolidge in 1928 and duly ratified by the U.S. Senate. It was the result of a decade of negotiations and lesser diplomatic achievements to prevent war that were motivated by the horror and tragedy of the First World War. In 1932, the new Secretary of State, Henry L. Stimson, made the following statement regarding its significance:
“War between nations was renounced by the signatories of the Kellogg-Briand Treaty. This means that it has become throughout practically the entire world . . . an illegal thing. Hereafter, when engaged in armed conflict, either one or both of them must be termed violators of this general treaty law . . . We denounce them as law breakers.”The convictions of German leaders at Nuremberg for the crime of waging aggressive war were based entirely upon the Kellogg-Briand Pact and the history of lesser treaties that led up to its signing. Once again, I quote from the Nuremberg Judgment:
“The question is, what was the legal effect of this pact? The nations who signed the pact or adhered to it unconditionally condemned recourse to war for the future as an instrument of policy, and expressly renounced it. After the signing of the pact, any nation resorting to war as an instrument of national policy breaks the pact. In the opinion of the Tribunal, the solemn renunciation of war as an instrument of national policy necessarily involves the proposition that such a war is illegal in international law; and that those who plan and wage such a war, with its inevitable and terrible consequences, are committing a crime in so doing.”
In 1945, the United Nations Charter, Article 2 Clause 4, reiterated the principles of the Kellogg-Briand Pact, stating simply, “All members shall refrain in their international relations from the threat or use of force against the territorial integrity or political independence of any state.” Article 39 established the authority of the Security Council to “determine the existence of any threat to the peace, breach of the peace, or act of aggression” and to “decide what measures shall be taken.”
The U.S. Supreme Court was asked in Mora v. McNamara (1967) to rule on the case of a conscientious objector who claimed that the U.S. war against Vietnam was an illegal war of aggression. In this case, the court cited only the Kellogg-Briand Pact, Article 39 of the U.N. Charter and the London Treaty (which established the Nuremberg War Crimes Tribunal) as the relevant body of international law regarding cases of aggressive war, so it is reasonable to examine the legitimacy of the war in Iraq based on those same treaties.
George W. Bush has avoided citing legal principles in defense of the war, but he has given three quasi-legal justifications at different times in political speeches, and so these would seem to be his arguments:
1.Preemptive self-defense;
2.Enforcement of Security Council 1441, which threatened “serious consequences” for Iraq’s alleged failure to disarm;
3.Enforcement of past Security Council resolutions, going back to 1990.
A mutable combination of all three has worked well for him with U.S. public opinion as a political justification for war, but does any one of them actually justify the war under international law?For those interested in reading more, here is the address:
http://www.onlinejournal.com/Special_Reports/123104Davies/123104davies.html
Posted by Matilda Gatsby on Aug 22, 2005 at 10:19 AM Kuya - continued
The UN maintained a united front (on paper at least) in demanding Saddam’s adherence to the terms of the 1991 armistice. The USA, for its part, passed the Iraq Liberation Act of 1998, making it a matter of US law that Saddam be removed from power for, among other things, terrorizing the Iraqi people, supporting terrorism outside Iraq, and not disclosing his WMD. The events of 09/11 added new urgency to dealing with terrorism, and Iraq was the big focus of the Axis of Evil identified by President Bush, because of its long history of WMD activities and support for terrorists.
The UN maintained its cohesive support for sanctions against Iraq for thirteen years and through seventeen UN Resolutions. In November 2002, four months before the start of hostilities, a final UN Resolution 1441 was passed unanimously, and “warned Iraq that it will face serious consequences as a result of its continued violations of its obligations”. Well and good.
By this time, preparations for war were well advanced, and everyone was on board. France had designated its ground and air units that would participate in the operation to free Iraq. Then a problem arose. Germany’s Schroeder was in a difficult election campaign, and decided that he would benefit by appealing to the strong anti-war elements in Germany. He convinced France to support him, and the UN Coalition that had lasted for thirteen years fell apart based on German politics and French perversity.
It is a big thing to round up tens of thousands of troops and equipment and send them half way around the world. Gulf War did not end Saddam’s terrorism, and the UN was determined to end that terrorism up until the very last minute. Now what?
If this had been WWII, we would have carpet-bombed the Jihadists, and their propaganda arms, and their financiers, and any innocent bystanders, and the war would have been over before the dust had settled at WTC. But this is not WWII.
This war is primarily a war of psychology. WWI ended in an Armistice; Germany was not defeated and it retained dreams of empire and glory, leading to a much bigger and much deadlier war twenty years later. At the beginning of WWII, the Allies realized that an Armistice cease-fire did not solve anything, and resolved that the Axis would unconditionally surrender. It was a bloody mess, but the German and Japanese terror states were soundly defeated, and were rebuilt as democracies, and peace ensued.
Now bin Laden claims that the USA and all kuffar are weak and irresolute, and that the Jihadists can establish a Caliphate over the entire world. The short, brisk action in Afghanistan undoubtedly affected bin Laden’s plans, if not his determination. To re-establish his creds, bin Laden must beat the Americans in Iraq. But President Bush understands history, and will not allow America to be beaten in Iraq; no more cease-fires, no more Armistices, no more Vietnams, no more worrying about what the Soviets might do or what the UN might say. If the terrorists are to be defeated, now is the time, Iraq is the place. Otherwise we will be exposed as weak and irresolute, as bin Laden claims, and the terror war will continue. President Bush will assure that the terrorists, wherever they are, are thoroughly and irrevocably beaten, and will assure that everyone, Muslim, Christian, or other, are aware of that fact. To accomplish this, President Bush has chosen to grind out this issue on the ground, rather than employ other, less decisive means. Bin Laden does not have the wherewithal to take over the world, but he can, and will, make life miserable until he is defeated.
Posted by scorp on Aug 22, 2005 at 1:22 PM Kuya - continued
Outcome? There were about twenty democracies at the beginning of the Twentieth Century, and there are over one hundred now. The United States was instrumental in establishing most of these new democracies. In another fifty years, all countries will be democracies. People everywhere will enjoy the benefits of freedom and the rule of law that democracy brings, and the prosperity that comes from free-market capitalism.
Posted by scorp on Aug 22, 2005 at 1:23 PM This is the first of a three part transmission. This part did not transmit correctly, and I am trying again.
Kuya -
I will do my best. Every fact I relate here is well-documented.
Saddam fought an eight-year aggressive war against Iran, 1980-1988. There were about one-half million dead Iranis and one-half million dead Iraqis as a result of this war, which featured poison gas used as a weapon on both sides.
During this time, Saddam also accused the Kurds of disloyalty in the war against Iran, and killed a large number of Kurdish Iraqi civilians, including about 5000 that were gassed in Halabja. The killing of the Kurdish civilians was an operation known as the Anfal (Spoils of War, from the Koran) that lasted from 1986-1989. The Anfal operation was led by Ali Hassan al-Majid, Saddam’s cousin, popularly known as Chemical Ali because of his fondness for using chemical agents against Ba’ath Party foes, foreign and domestic. (www.gendercide. org/case_ anfal.html) When the Kurds tried to raise the issue of an estimated 182,000 Kurds who died in the Anfal, Chemical Ali indignantly insisted that it could not have been over 100,000! Chemical Ali now sits in prison in Baghdad, awaiting trial, along with Saddam and other Ba’ath Party leaders.
The Gulf War began in 1990, when Saddam invaded Kuwait. The Saudi oil regions were immediately south of Kuwait, and another war in the region was upsetting to many, including the Saudis. The UN approved combat action against Saddam to remove him from Kuwait; the Saudis approved the use of Saudi territory as a staging area to free Kuwait. The details of the Gulf War are well known, and need not be repeated here. Saddam went from having the fourth largest army in the world, to having the second largest army in Iraq in 96 hours. The UN sponsored Gulf War, as such, did not end until after the fall of Baghdad in 2003.
Gulf War active combat ended in an Armistice. The conditions of the Armistice required Saddam to cease aggressive behavior against neighboring countries and his own people, and to surrender and account for all WMD. The UN was surprised by the extent of Saddam’s WMD efforts discovered in 1991, and the UN established a WMD monitoring effort. Saddam immediately violated the terms of the Armistice, by killing many Shia Arabs and draining the Southern Marshes, destroying the homes and livelihoods of the Marsh Arabs. The UN then established the Northern and Southern No-fly Zones to protect the Kurds in the north and the Shia in the south. Regardless, 400,000 dead civilians have been discovered in mass graves, many in the south dating after the halt of combat in 1991.
Saddam was no more forthcoming with the program to end WMD. He deliberately restricted the UN Weapons Inspectors, and to this day there are hundreds of tons of WMD that are not accounted for.
Between 1991 and 2003, the UN passed seventeen Resolutions, each as a result of Saddam’s failure to abide by the terms of the Armistice.
In 1991, the UN offered to let Iraq sell limited amounts of oil to supply the Iraqi people with food and medicine; Saddam refused this offer on the grounds it violated his “sovereignty”. In 1995-1996, Saddam finally agreed to the terms of the UN Oil for Food Program, which, under the supervision of the UN, became the biggest financial scandal in all history, involving bribery, kickbacks, and extortion. High-ranking UN officials and government officials in France, Russia, most Middle East countries, Indonesia, and many other countries profited from Saddam’s oil bribes. Saddam used the proceeds of the Oil for Food program to buy illegal weapons and golden palaces, and some of the remainder actually went to the Iraqi people.
Posted by scorp on Aug 22, 2005 at 1:32 PM chopper,
Nice of you to call ELF a terrorist group.Let me know when they lynch people or kill dozens of people with a truck bomb.Someone must like to watch Fox News.It is the government’s job to investigate terror groups.The problem is the right doesn’t investigate any one who philosophy is near their’s.The militia groups which became prevalent during the nineties developed during the eighties.Republicans did nothing about them.The FBI had very little info about the militia groups,about a tenth of the comparable data they had on Greenpeace.
When they really became active during the nineties,what did republicans do?They used it as ammo to further attack Clinton;the logic being"see how bad of a job he’s doing?ordinary citizens are calling for revolt in this country”.The Klan is not moribund,unfortunately.They simply morphed a bit,switched from leaflets to the internet,and are lying dormant until a Democrat gets back into the White House before the start making noise again.they may ber ignorant,but they are not fools.They know this administration will stomp them if they make a peep.Not to mention that they’re also pleased that it’s o.k. to hate non-christian brown people.Let’s see what kind of noise they make when Hillary gets into the White House,and see what the right’s new view of terrorism becomes.
One last thing.Since we’ve gotten on the subject of domestic terrorism,I wanted to mention the little fact that’s been bothering me for a while.Remember Randy Weaver,the guy who holed up in an Idaho cabin and said “you’ll never take me alive"over a crime punishable by a fine?The one whose wife was shot holding her baby?The one used by the right as a poster child to deem left-wing gun control as tantamount to tyranny?Does anyone else remember that it was Bush41 who was in charge at the time?I know,I know.still,it just struck me as another good example of how the right obfuscates matters to avoid or lay blame as it suits them.Matilda,
Please don’t think I’m agreeing with Ann Coulter.I’m saying that Republicans are oil puppets,more particularly money puppets.We will always have problems in the Middle-East as long as we suck up to the oill producers.
Posted by wwoods on Aug 22, 2005 at 4:18 PM Jeez!Too many typos in my last post.Sorry this thing I’m using,issued,lacks spellcheck.Cheapskates.
Posted by wwoods on Aug 22, 2005 at 4:24 PM Scorp- first off, the U.S. has subverted democracy as many times if not more than it has “promoted” it. Recall U.S. support for Suharto’s regime in Indonesia for over thirty years? Recall the U.S.‘s support for Indonesian suppression of the East Timorese drive for self-determination? Recall how the U.S. instructed Diem in South Vietnam on how to ensure he won the election in 1956? Recall the U.S. backed overthrow of the democratically elected Allende government of Chile in 1971 in favor of Hitler-wannabe Augosto Pinochet? I could go on….
Second, Iraq, Iran, and North Korea are not an axis in any sense of the word. Iraq and Iran are enemies stemming from the brutal war they fought with one another from 1980-1988. North Korea has no friendships with those two countries either. It was intellectually dishonest of Bush to throw those countries together.
Third, Iraq was never found to be in breach of U.N. Security Council Resolution 1441! The inpsectors could not find any WMD in Iraq when they re-entered in late 2002! Furthermore, it is illegal to engage in offensive military acts without the explicit authorization of the U.N. Security Council. 1441 did not grant the U.S. that power. Iraq MAY have donated money to charities that compensated the families of Palestinian suicide bombers, but so did Saudi Arabia in much greater quantities! Iraq never allied itself with any terrorist group that threatened U.S. national security. That tidbit you mention began to surface only after the invasion when it became clear there was no Iraq-Al Qaeda nexus.
Your description of post 9/11 foreign policy looks like it came right out of the propoganda chambers of the RNC. Your whitewashing of history neglects the fact that Bush took assets out of Afghanistan to invade Iraq, thus leaving the former country in a state of chaos in which it remains to this very day.
Posted by Liberal on Aug 22, 2005 at 6:56 PM Leaders of repressive systems supported by America at different times over the last 60 years.
Augusto Pinochet - Chile, “Papa Doc” Duvalier - Haiti, Efrain Rios Montt - Guatemala, Park Chung-hee - South Korea,
P W Botha - South Africa, Sani Abacha - Nigeria, Rafael Trujillos - Dominican Republic, General Suharto - Indonesia, Fulgencio Batista - Cuba,
Mobuto Sese Seko - Zaire, Ferdinand Marcos - Philippines, Anastasio Somoza - Nicaragua, King Hassan II - Morocco, Pol Pot - Cambodia, Saddam Hussain - Iraq.So much for spreading peace and democracy.
Posted by Matilda Gatsby on Aug 22, 2005 at 7:39 PM Scorp- there were not as many countries at he beginning of the 20th century as there were at its conclusion. The main reason for that is because many of these nascent nations were colonies of the “great” western powers of Europe and North America who had to face death and intimidation to gain independence. Remember the French massacre at Algiers? Remember all of the British atrocities committed against the peaceful independence movement in India? Contrary to your assertions, the west tried to prevent democracy in all of its colonies that eventually (some as late as the 60s and 70s) gained independence.
I mentioned Europe, but the U.S. is not guilt free. Remember the Phillipines? It was a U.S. territory until 1946.
Posted by Liberal on Aug 22, 2005 at 8:01 PM Matilda, yes I did read the quote by William Dodd, by itself the quote doesn’t prove much. Did you read where I pointed out that the word Facism comes from Mussolini’s Facist party? Mussolini started his political career as a socialist, and he never renounced his socialist ideals. In spite of what you would like to believe facism and socialism share many similarities. What we are arguing about is partly semantics, when the state and business become closely entertwined the results are usually not good, not for business, the state, nor the people. A select few will prosper but it is detremental to most. Most businesses, especially smaller and medium size businesses, just want the state to leave them alone. As I pointed out previously some big businesses actually welcomes regulations because it gives them a competitive advantage. Also, as the state increases regulation of business this usually encourages businesses to develop ties with the government in self defense, which accounts for the phenomenon that you see as “take over of the state by business”.
Once I was watching a commentator on C-Span (I can’t remember his name, but his viewpoint on this subject seemed to be left-of-center) discussing this problem during an interview. He stated that when the state started to regulate a business that the more the regulators knew about an industry the more likely they would have ties to that industry an thus tend to be partial to it. The problem was the less they knew about the industry the more likely the regulations they came up with would be nonsensical or counter-productive. The trick, as he saw it, was to get someone who knew enough to be effective but not so much they would be “captured” by that industry. He didn’t seem to understand that the attempt to regulate was the problem in the first place. Or perhaps he did and he was slyly demonstrating that industry should not be regulated to any large degree.
And yes, your assumption about “money-orientated conservatives” being secret facists is assuming too much. Conservatives are as fractured as liberals, and most of them don’t focus on making more money as their primary goal, especially the ones concerned about social issues. Frankly, you seem to be operating off of leftwing caricatures of anyone who leans right rather than actually finding out what they say. And contrary to what you seem to hold as an article of faith, most of us who lean right are not uncritical admirers of Bush. In fact I considered him only marginally better than Kerry.
Posted by chopper on Aug 23, 2005 at 2:15 AM Yes, wwoods, I realize that ELF (so far) has managed not to actually kill anyone. But they have caused ten’s of millions of dollars in property damage through large-scale vandalism. What would you call them, “activists”. They continue to make threats, so yes, they are terrorists. So, where is your evidence that when we had a Republican administration that the federal government did nothing to investigate illegal activity by militias? Was there any evidence that federal laws were being broken during this time period? Or were they breaking state laws and the state authorities weren’t investigating?
Posted by chopper on Aug 23, 2005 at 2:34 AM Matilda, we supported Joseph Stalin during WWII, his regime was worse than any of the one’s you mentioned (with the possible exception of Pol Pot on a per-capita basis). Why didn’t you mention him?
Posted by chopper on Aug 23, 2005 at 3:05 AM Liberal - I
Democracies are highly admired and respected, both for the political freedom and the economic opportunity they offer. That is one reason why millions of refugees and escapees have moved to democracies from totalitarian states, with the USA the destination-of-choice.
That is also why there are so many fake democracies around. Totalitarian governments pretend to be democracies, and use democratic forms such as elections, but only Liberals are foolish enough to accept a totalitarian state as a democracy. The dozens of countries that made up the Soviet Union all held meaningless elections, in which only communists or simpatico stooges were allowed to run for office. The last election held in Iraq under Saddam witnessed 100% voter turnout, with 100% of the votes cast going to Saddam. The Democratic People’s Republic of Korea is NOT a democracy.
Now I am certainly not saying that the USA is perfect, but look at the status and direction of the democracies as compared to the status and direction of totalitarian states. The Soviet Union killed thirty or forty million of its own innocent civilians, before collapsing from inefficiency and corruption. China killed thirty million of its citizens, before achieving partial salvation by embracing free market economics. Now China is attempting to operate a free market with the governing apparatus of a totalitarian state; interesting, but undoable. Close to one hundred million victims of communism died around the world before the Soviet Union unraveled, with ongoing deaths in North Korea and Central Asia.
Fake democracies are fairly easy to spot, and you should practice on this:
·Fake democracies hold elections where the government routinely receives 90+% of the vote. Iraq, North Korea, and the Soviet States fell in this category.
·If the old KGB was active in a state, it was a fake democracy or, at the least, the KGB was trying to establish a fake democracy. Chile, Grenada, several Central American States, and several African States were in this group.
·If Jimmy Carter certified an election, it is a fake democracy. Example: Venezuela.
“ … the U.S. has subverted democracy as many times if not more than it has “promoted” it.”
This may be true of fake democracies, but it is probably not true of democratic states. At any rate, the USA is subject to error, and sometimes is forced between two unattractive choices. The Iran-Iraq War 1980-1988 is a case in point. The dominant consideration was holding the oil supply lines open; closure of the shipping routes would have resulted in war, with the possibility that the Soviet Union might get involved. It was better to let the two totalitarian states stomp on each other, rather than to risk a strategic catastrophe. Only after the Soviet Union collapsed were we free to actively promote democratic freedoms in unfree areas. Democratic freedoms swept Eastern Europe and Chile, and are now growing in Southeast Europe, areas in Central Asia, and in the Middle East, of course. We can’t do everything at once, but we sure could use a little help; help that is often not forthcoming from Old Europe and Liberals.
Posted by scorp on Aug 23, 2005 at 3:50 AM Liberal -II
“Iraq was never found to be in breach of U.N. Security Council Resolution 1441!”
Nonsense! The very first UN Resolutions on Iraq required Iraq to “account” for all WMD, and forbade Iraq from moving or destroying WMD except under UN supervision! UNR 1441 cited sixteen previous UNRs in which Iraq was in violation, and required Iraq to come in compliance with all of them! Since there are still documented WMD that are missing, Iraq is in violation of UNR 1441! So there!
“Furthermore, it is illegal to engage in offensive military acts without the explicit authorization of the U.N. Security Council.”
That statement is much broader than what the United States has bound itself to do under any treaty. And how about defensive acts? When Saddam agreed to the Armistice in 1991, he bound himself to follow the UN rules. Any breach of those rules was grounds for military force to bring Iraq into compliance with the terms of the Armistice. Saddam was smart enough to delay his illegal acts until the Coalition troops departed the Middle East, but he then systematically violated all of the conditions to which he was bound. Saddam routinely fired rockets at US, British, and French warplanes patrolling the No-fly Zones, and the Coalition routinely fired back. The only difference between the aircraft incidents and the 2003 invasion of Iraq was a matter of degree; the justification for both was long established. Besides, the attempted assassination of Bush 41 was an act of war.
“Iraq MAY have donated money to charities that compensated the families of Palestinian suicide bombers, but so did Saudi Arabia in much greater quantities!”
But Saudi Arabia was not under UN sanctions forbidding it to practice terrorist acts! Iraq was!
“ … when it became clear there was no Iraq-Al Qaeda nexus.”
President Clinton bombed the Al-Shifa pharmaceutical plant in Sudan because bin Laden was providing the money and Saddam was providing the expertise for a joint venture in chemical warfare. During that time frame, several newspapers tracked the progress of the Saddam – bin Laden relationship in a routine fashion, and this relationship was described in a 1999 book, Yossef Bodansky’s, Bin Laden, The Man Who Declared War on America.
So, after the Democrats voted for the Iraq Liberation Act of 1998 and the Iraq War Resolution in 2003, then, and only then, did the Democrats decide that the WMD did not exist and that there was absolutely no connection between Saddam and bin Laden. When the Liberal story line did not fit the facts, the Liberals changed the facts.
I once found the lack of Liberal logic confusing, until I learned to understand Liberal code, which is so much like communist code. When the communists proclaimed that they wanted “peace”, you had to understand that, for communists, peace was defined as the condition of the world after all non-communists were eliminated. The Jihadist peace is explicitly similar to communist peace; after the caliphate is established everyone will be either Muslim or dead. Then there are the Liberals, who are more confused than either Jihadists or communists, but who are less bloodthirsty in intent and more bloodthirsty in result. That is why one hundred million people died under communism.
Posted by scorp on Aug 23, 2005 at 4:04 AM I read your several posts, scorp, gracias. If any evidence ever arises that Iraq had a WMD program that was in any state of potency much before the war, I will have a lot to take back. That was the primary stated threat to the public, Iraq’s mission-capable WMDs. It was at the least a hasty and ill-supported justification for pushing on to war. Some say a lie. Even granting the benefit of the doubt, this was represented as a direct threat. There must be some evidence to back the claims that were made about the immediacy of that threat. That’s what the American people and the legislators who voted to invade had been hearing. Tough as it is to get some kinds of information (where Saddam slept? oh, for a mortar), surely Iraq was one of the most surveilled places on the globe. Is there nothing at all?
As for going to Iraq when we did, we were in a war already, against an identified enemy, we all could have benefitted from them having been run finally to ground. The forces are now too short-handed to just finish it in Afghanistan.
And for evil types like Saddam, actually, if the world’s rich governments (led by the richest) are going to truly gang up on abusive regimes and end the ever-repeated tactic of playing them off one another by feeding one side of a conflict with death-dealing power and cash, it would be good to see it. If as the G7 say they want to undermine tyranny and terror, they can declare a moratorium on weapons and weapons-related parts sales to tyrants and rebels, worldwide. They can buy off Russia to get their cooperation, and link trade agreements with China, Pakistan, etc to the moratorium. The US should take the lead, that would be a resounding first step in the demise of brutal heads of state and rebel factions. Terror networks won’t be long behind. Not a granade, rifle, bullet, or bandolier. Embargo, private and public.
If the strongest country that has ever existed would shift that paradigm, it would change history.
But really, scorp, please. The liberal/communist line?
Posted by Kuya on Aug 23, 2005 at 2:54 PM chopper,
Perhaps I shouldn’t have said"nothing”.However,the number of FBI documents pertaining to seperatist movements in the U.S.circa 1993:roughly 200.The number of documents pertaining to Greenpeace circa 1993:over 5,000.combine that with proactive actions toward the left,reactive toward the right.Kind of shows our perspective as to whom our government felt was the bigger threat.If you’ve also noticed when right-wing organizations are infiltrated,they don’t use agent provocateurs like they do with the left.Probably because right-wing extremists are just crazy enough to folow through.Federal laws were broken,illegal arms transportation and sales,and counterfeiting come to mind.
The Republicans dragged their feet when pro-lifers were blowing up abortion clinics and shooting doctors throughout the eighties and nineties. There was little infiltration of their organizations like what has recently been done to certain peace groups.Yeah,yeah,magnitude,I know.Still,I’m curious,how do you think Fundamentalist Christians would react if they were categorized with the same broadness that has been applied to Islamists.Certain christians commit acts of terrorism,therefore all christians are terrorists.Can you hear the outcry?
ELF hasn’t killed anyone yet.True.Killing people is not their intention.The movement has developed out of a frustration stemming from our politicians letting big business do anything they please—especially Republican politicians.The right loves that word terrorist,though—evocative and can be used to describe a variety of activities,especially political dissidence.
Posted by wwoods on Aug 23, 2005 at 6:55 PM Scorp- if the war was waged on legal international grounds, why then did Kofi Annan later admit that the war was illegal? Don’t give that “he was involved in the Oil for Food Scandal” crap. The Voelcker Commission exonerated Annan of any wrongdoing. Besides, it is clear to anyone with the brain that the U.S./U.K. axis runs the security council, and when they encounter opposition, they merely bypass it, as with Iraq 2003. So, the U.S./U.K. knew about and vetted all those contracts that had kickbacks to Saddam in them.Not to mention that the CPA misplaced far more money than did the Oil-for-Food program. Anyways, the Security Council refused to authorize the use of force against Iraq because it did not find that country in violation of 1441. You mention that Iraq shot at U.S. planes patrolling the no-fly-zones but fail to state that those zones were never authorized by the U.N.! THe U.S./U.K. relied on a perverted interpretation of SCR 688 to create these zones. So Saddam was doing nothing wrong by shooting at planes that were conducting illegal air raids against Iraq’s domestic infrastructure.
Posted by Liberal on Aug 23, 2005 at 11:44 PM wwoods, I realize that it is popular on the left to compare Fundamental Christians to Islamists, but the few that commit acts of violence are usually individual nuts or small groups that are repudiated by the rest. Their acts of violence are relatively small scale and directed at specific targets. I want to make it clear that I in no way condone such activities, they should be hunted down and punished to the fullest extent of the law. Having said that, however, the actions of Islamist terrorists are several orders of magnitude greater, they kill much larger numbers of people, and, unlike abortion-clinic bombers, they are supported by large segments of Muslims, and they are much less selective in who they target, in fact any non-Muslim (and many Muslims, for that matter) are potential targets.
Yeap, ELF hasn’t killed anyone. Yet. But to make them out to be engaged in “political dissidence” is a huge whitewash. They have arrogently set themselves above society, and they reserve for themselves the right to determine what forms of property are legitimate. What do you call a group that engages in large scale arson and vandalism? Who are they to decide whose property should be destroyed or not? I don’t recall the ELF winning any elections, it is a wannabe totalitarian group.
As for the stats you post, I won’t dispute them, but one has to look at statistics carefully to get their full import, raw numbers don’t always tell the whole story.
Posted by chopper on Aug 23, 2005 at 11:53 PM Kuya -
Take the Lead
“The US should take the lead, that would be a resounding first step in the demise of brutal heads of state and rebel factions.”
The USA has taken the lead. We also have some co-leaders and supporters, generally known as the Coalition. But there are few nations that, enjoying the benefits of democracy, will exert themselves to bring democracy to others. Juxtapose what you just said with your previous paragraph, where you implicitly criticized going into Iraq.
“If the strongest country that has ever existed would shift that paradigm, it would change history.”
President Bush shifted the paradigm, changed history, and many people do not like it, don’t appreciate it, and don’t believe it.
Results of President Bush’s actions were manifest in Libya’s surrender of WMD, Lebanon’s Cedar Revolution, and democratic ferment in Kuwait, Saudi Arabia, and Egypt, among other places. Now if the rest of the democratic world would get aboard, the war against the terrorists would proceed more rapidly. Liberals everywhere are more interested in criticizing President Bush and thwarting his policies, than in complicated ideas like creating peace and democracy.
Cult of Death
When Howard Dean says that he “hates Republicans”, he is serous. It means that he hates Republicans; if the Democrats regained office, how would that hatred manifest itself? Democrats, in a number of instances in the last election, physically assaulted Republican election workers and damaged Republican property, in an attempt to intimidate the Republicans in their performance of their Constitutional rights. Democrats compare Bush to Hitler, but it was Democrats who were acting like Brown Shirts. I am sure you can find a record somewhere of a Republican attacking a Democrat, but all the incidents that made national news were Democrat on Republican violence.
The term “socialist” covers a broad spectrum of political thought, from hard communist to Social Democrat to Liberal. It goes without saying that today’s Liberal’s practice of politics is the polar opposite of the liberalism of the Enlightenment, which guided the formation of the United States.
By whatever name you call it, the cult of socialism is a cult of destruction and death. No socialist government has ever sustained a growth and prosperity record approaching that of modern free-market capitalism. The Soviet Union, ever in violation of its socialist ideals, collapsed of inefficiency and corruption. Old Europe has been bogged down with high unemployment and slow growth for decades. Socialists kill themselves, explicitly as in the Soviet Gulag, and implicitly by the plunging birth rates in Old Europe. Even the Blue State urban areas have negative growth due to lack of natural reproduction. Liberals specifically make up the class called “useful idiots” by their hard-line brethren. We don’t need idiots, useful or otherwise, telling us how to run a free-market democracy.
Posted by scorp on Aug 24, 2005 at 3:30 AM Liberal-
“if the war was waged on legal international grounds, why then did Kofi Annan later admit that the war was illegal?”
You will have to ask Mr. Annan why he does the things that he does.
Mr. Annan signed up for war. What happened? I can only speculate that he changed his mind. I think that both sides learned a lesson as the result of Iraq. Annan and the Liberals learned that you never authorize war under any circumstance. The Coalition learned that when it is time to kill terrorists, the UN is untrustworthy and irrelevant. This is in addition to the previous observation that the UN is irrelevant due to corruption and inefficiency.
“The Voelcker Commission exonerated Annan of any wrongdoing.” Liberal, you have a weird habit of making weird assertions. Please document this one for me. I note that the Voelcker Commission has not completed its work, and that there are several other investigative bodies hard at work on the same problem.
“You mention that Iraq shot at U.S. planes patrolling the no-fly-zones but fail to state that those zones were never authorized by the U.N.! THe U.S./U.K. relied on a perverted interpretation of SCR 688 to create these zones.”
The no-fly-zones were never authorized by the Detroit City Council Municipal Regulations Against Jay-Walking either, which has the same relevance to the current discussion! It was SCR 678 that authorized “all means necessary” to halt Saddam’s aggressive war, and SCR 678 remained in effect for thirteen years, until 2003! Specifically, SCR 678 remained in effect to enforce the Armistice agreement that Saddam undertook! SCR 688 detailed Saddam’s specific violations of that Armistice!
As for your other weird assertions, never mind, as Emily Litella used to say.
Posted by scorp on Aug 24, 2005 at 4:32 AM To clarify, I meant that the US ought to use its considerable power to block sales of weapons and parts to regimes that have a record of oppressing their citizens and threatening neighbors, rather than to choose those who are somehow less ideologically objectionable and then to sponsor them. This goes for rebel factions as well. The paradigm I want shifted is the one in which feeding our enemy’s enemies (a demonstrably short-sighted strategy) is considered a useful approach to foreign policy.
When Iran arms and endorses Hezbollah, the phrase “state sponsored terrorism” is applied. Rightfully. The US has armed dictators to foster foreign policy goals. Might this be called “state sponsored oppression” if that dictator uses his weapons against civilians? As a man who loves America (this can be believed or not as you wish), I’d be proud to say that it doesn’t permit its powerful influence to be used in that way.
An accessory benefit might be that in 20 years, we won’t have to fight the bastard we helped arm today.
Posted by Kuya on Aug 24, 2005 at 7:30 AM Chopper,
I’m not saying that everything ELF does is political dissidence.Some of it does strike me as nothing more than childish vandalism,energy that could be directed into more productive,and effective venues to promote their cause.
I also don’t believe that all Christians are terrorists,nor feel they should all be painted as such.As for supporting particular groups,well,people say one thing publicly and another thing privately.Rarely do people publicly condone murder in the name of a cause.
Magnitude?Despite magnitude terrorism is terrorism.Whether I’m hesitant to fly or go near a planned parenthood clinic,the objective by either group is met.With 9/11,the terror’s totally backfired.The next Muslim group who hijacks an plane will be killed immediately by an angry mob of passengers.Conversely,once Democrats come back into power,and the pro-lifers haven’t gotten their way,their activities will start back up.I can only hope that if we are to have this quasi-fascist Patriot Act,it can be used against right-wing dissent to give them a taste of their own medicine.
Recently,terrorist Eric Rudolph apologized for his bombing of the Olympics.He made no apology for his other attacks which killed people opposed to his view of morality.To many,he is a hero.
Posted by wwoods on Aug 24, 2005 at 5:00 PM You really are chillingly stupid Scorp, but I’ve given up trying to argue with a robot. I had to laugh out loud at your definition of socialism. So, it is a ‘cult of death’ is it? Try telling that to the 60 million people in the Britain who get free health care, and all the other civilised countries that have some form of susidised health protection. Try extolling the vitues of the free market to mothers who have lost children in this country due to not being able to afford pre-natal care. You did know that didn’t you, that America has the highest infant mortality rate of any industrialised nation.
How you expect anybody at all to keep a straight face when you say these things. I expect you think that if you just keep repeating the same nonsense then some of it will stick, like shit. Conservatism will eventually go the way of the dodo bird, and you and your kind know it, don’t you? That’s why you fight so hard, you’re actually up against the ropes.
HaHa.
Posted by Matilda Gatsby on Aug 24, 2005 at 7:11 PM You really are chillingly stupid Scorp, but I’ve given up trying to argue with a robot. I had to laugh out loud at your definition of socialism. So, it is a ‘cult of death’ is it? Try telling that to the 60 million people in the Britain who get free health care, and all the other civilised countries that have some form of susidised health protection. Try extolling the vitues of the free market to mothers who have lost children in this country due to not being able to afford pre-natal care. You did know that didn’t you, that America has the highest infant mortality rate of any industrialised nation.
How you expect anybody at all to keep a straight face when you say these things. I expect you think that if you just keep repeating the same nonsense then some of it will stick. Conservatism will eventually go the way of the dodo bird, and you and your kind know it, don’t you? That’s why you fight so hard, you’re actually up against the ropes.
HaHa.
Posted by Matilda Gatsby on Aug 24, 2005 at 7:13 PM wwoods-
With the toll of ELF vandalism and destruction reaching into at least tens of millions of dollars (and probably greater) it goes a little beyond “childish”. Those caught committing such crimes should get long prison terms. They are not just some sincere environmentalists who got a little carried away.
I didn’t take it that you were saying all Christians were terrorists. In fact, hardly any of them are, and for that matter, most Muslims aren’t terrorists. However, there is still a difference of degree that is so large that it becomes a qualitative difference. Muslim terror is much greater, more organized, and has more support with other Muslims. And the phenomenon of suicide bombing is entirely Muslim. The tactics of suicide bombing, especially brainwashing or forcing women and children to carry out such actions, is truly appalling and disgusting. I don’t know of any other religion or group, no matter how extreme, that carries out such actions.
Posted by chopper on Aug 24, 2005 at 10:06 PM Don’t get your knickers in a knot, Matilda.
“A single death is a tragedy, a million deaths is a statistic.” - Josef Stalin.
Uncle Joe should know, he was leader of the Soviet Union while thirty to forty million innocent civilian deaths occurred.
James Jones was leader of the Jonestown death cult, when about 600 people died.
Uncle Joe is a socialist hero, is James Jones your hero also?
Follow up. You said (several days ago) that, “Everyone in the world (except for conservatives in America) knew that Sadam did not in any way pose an actual nuclear threat.”
I challenged that, and requested a single verifiable quote from a Western politician or a Western intelligence agency dated before March 2003 to the effect that Saddam did not have WMD.
You have not answered me, and no such quote exists. Question: Were you mistaken, or were you lying?
Posted by scorp on Aug 25, 2005 at 3:58 AM No, I was working in Britain at the time and was one of the million that took to the streets in protest because we knew the attack on Iraq was completely bogus. We were right too, you never seem to react to that do you?
I have told you before that I, and no one else here, answers to you. Rather than be a man and admit you were wrong you persist in childishly trying to vindicate your horrific views. The French and German government and most of the citizens of Britain (look at the opinion poles) were against this war, in France’s case to the point of being demonized by our own warmongering government.
You are the kind of person who tries to nitpick details because your overall argument is non-existent.
Do you admit that for whatever reason Bush and Blair were completely wrong? Do you also admit that what little help we did have with the war would have disappeared if our government hadn’t insisted that the evidence was so irrefutable?
Come on Scorp, show some backbone and admit you were wrong, but that others got it right. Can you do that? Will you ever be able to look at yourself in a mirror without secretly knowing deep down that you are promoting a lie?
I could actually tear apart every single little thing you say piece by piece if I wanted, but I have a life and many better things to do. Besides, even when confronted with incontrovertible facts and logic, you just seem to ignore what I say and carry on regardless, endlessly spewing up the party line. I pity you, I really do. You deserve everything that’s coming, except yet again the progressives of this world are going to rise up and save the day, like they always do.
It was Liberals who defeated Hitler and the Japanese Imperialists. It was Liberals who eventually liberated South Africa. It was a Liberal leader in the form of Gandhi who won independence for the world’s largest democracy, India, from the hands of the British.
It will be Liberals who prevent Global warming, if anyone does. It is Liberals who will save the natural world, not ours to endlessly exploit, but ours to keep in a sustainable way for the next generation.
The world is too big and too important to trust to conservatives who only think about themselves here and now.
You know it and I know it, but your basic attitude is “catch us if you can”
Well we can, we are and we will.
P.S. Joseph Stalin had a lot more in common with Adolph Hitler than he did with even Karl Marx, let alone modern progressives. I think you know this, but you just keep saying it for effect in place of an actual argument. Do you know the difference between you and me, I don’t have to try as hard as you, the truth is always there for people to eventually see. A lie however has to be endlessly repeated, while the truth just waits there, ready to take hold again the minute the lie falls apart. Your kind will not win, a lie can never take hold for long.
And even before the lie falls apart people will rise up against it because that’s what humans do. Human Beings love the truth, and they love freedom, and they will not be oppressed by lies.Conservatism will eventually go the way of the Dodo bird.
AND YOU KNOW IT
You also know that Joseph Stalin couldn’t possibly be my, or any other Liberal’s, hero, but you said it anyway. Like I said, I feel sorry for you.
You want to know who my actual political heroes are? Are you really interested? Nelson Mandela, Mahatma Gandhi, Martin Luther King Jr., Clement Atlee and FDR. None of them were perfect, but all of them were streets ahead of people like Reagan or Bush, without even trying.
Posted by Matilda Gatsby on Aug 25, 2005 at 6:55 AM Chopper,
We seem to agree on a few things.I don’t know exactly how one would define a long prison term,though.Conversely,those who use intimidation,namely the new technique of posting abortion-performing doctors names and addresses on the internet need to be dealt with harshly too.Did you happen to catch any of the HBO documentaries dealing with right-wing and pro-life extremists.Scary.Beyond"true believers"and moving more toward"terminators”(robots willing to kill to meet mission goals).I know this will sound like typical"liberal"spiel,yet when we have so much of the Islam movement hating us to the point of violence,perhaps it’s time for us to examine,seriously,why they hate us.Beyond,as right-wingers would say,for our"freedom”.This isn’t a religious war,it’s a resource and territory war—as is nearly every war.
Scorp,
You’re giving us the same old John Birch Society diatribe that should have faded out with the passing of the Soviet Union.
Who REALLY hates socialists?
Fascists.What was the result of fascism being given a chance as a viable political movement?
50 million dead in Europe and,I might add,Russia establishing the Iron Curtain to create a buffer to keep their teutonic neighbors from visiting any more.
Since we didn’t get to play the game “fascist movement"during the thirties like the rest of Europe(primarily because one rich person realized that to prevent the poor from revolting it would be necessary to provide some basic human needs)we’re playing it now.Meanwhile Europe,and the rest of the world,rolls their eyes and says"Oh,hell,do we have to go through this again?”.
Meanwhile,counties like Iran are scarmbling to protct themselves with the only weapon we respect.I’m curious do think the Russians,in a fit of spitefully deviant brilliance,would start selling nukes to any countries on our short list?Just a thought,albeit chilling and feasible.
Posted by wwoods on Aug 25, 2005 at 12:10 PM wwoods- A long prison term would depend upon the circumstances, but 5-10 years wouldn’t be excessive for what a lot of them did. I didn’t watch the HBO special, as far as punishing people for posting names on the internet, I’m not sure, it seems as if freedom of speech issues would come into play. I would tend to agree that something should done to stop such activities if addresses are also being posted, it seems an obvious invitation to promote harrasment or even assassination.
As for a lot of Islamists being motivated to attack us, I’ve thought about this for a long time. Neither the leftist explaination, they hate us because of what we’ve done to them, nor the rightist explaination, they hate us because we are free (or more prosperous, etc) seemed satisfactory to me. I think what is going on has more to do with something internal to Islam (or at least the extreme variety) than it does with us. In a very real sense I think they look on this as a continuation of a very old war. Most people tend to forget that most of the Middle East and North Africa were Christian at one time, and those areas became Muslim because of conquest. In fact, a Muslim army made it into France and was defeated by a Christian army under Charles Martel at the battle of Poitiers in 732AD. If not for that defeat we could very well be Muslims now, as all of Europe would probably have been overrun by Islamic armies.
Also, and this is very easy to forget as attention is not focused on this, the greatest number of victims of Islamic violence are Muslims themselves. I think the evidence shows that Islamic terrorists, such as those who join Al-Qaeda, are driven by mostly internal demons. If we’re not available to attack, it will be their fellow Muslims who follow a different brand of Islam than they do.
Posted by chopper on Aug 26, 2005 at 12:21 AM wwoods- Re: your comments about socialists. Neither socialism nor facism has proven viable in the real world, in fact they actually share similarities (I know Matilda disputes this, she has what is really a simplistic world view, if it is good it must be liberal and if it is bad it must be conservative, with the terms being somewhat ill-defined). Both are based on increased power of the state at the expense of the individual, the family, and private and religious organizations. The hatred of Hitler and Stalin for each other was much like the hatred between two rival Mafia Dons.
Posted by chopper on Aug 26, 2005 at 12:53 AM Matilda -
I think you are Brit. Whether or no, Britain has one of the world’s oldest surviving democratic traditions. You must surely have gone to school. So how can you so be utterly detached from fundamental knowledge of your country and its democratic traditions?
The only opinion polls (not poles, as you would have it) that count in a democracy are known as elections. Tony Blair just got re-elected in Great Britain. John Howard just got re-elected in Australia. And George Bush just got re-elected in the USA. There are your poll results. There are no others. You and your hippy-dippy, unwashed, pinko, malcontent friends lost in all these elections.
I quite admit that Joseph Stalin was the worst of a bad lot of corrupt socialist incompetents, but when did any socialist economy perform adequately? Look at the German and French train-wrecks-in-progress, not to mention China (before they recently introduced free-market economics) and North Korea. You may like Clement Atlee, but Margaret Thatcher built the robust British economy you now enjoy. And Mister Blair is too smart to destroy it, even if he is Labor.
So, enjoy your next anti-war demonstration. If making unnecessary meaningless noise turns you on, go for it!
Posted by scorp on Aug 26, 2005 at 2:24 AM Scorp, it is really none of your business where I come, but I am American, and proud to be one when our country isn’t murdering people. Having worked in Britain for a number of years the contrast between there and here has been illuminating to say the least. Maybe you should get out a bit more yourself, if you haven’t done any traveling.
Blair started out as an astoundingly popular leader with a 170 seat majority in the British parliament. Just to give you some idea what that means, the largest landslide Thatcher ever achieved was 140 seats.
A typical British parliamentary majority would be around 70 or 80 seats. In this most recent election there was a 100 seat swing against Blair. That would have knocked any ordinary government out of the ballpark. Blair is still in power because, until he shacked up with the criminal know as Bush, he was one of the most popular prime ministers in British history. The British public has turned on Blair big time.
As for our own beloved leader, despite widespread and credible revelations of various forms of vote rigging (the last resort of the despot) he managed to scrape into power a second time, barely, having not even won his first election (it hasn’t stopped being true just because a few years have passed).
Either way you cut it, there are at least 52 million people in this country who wanted Bush voted out, probably a whole lot more.
Now I am not going to debate the validity of the elections with you as I could sit here for days presenting a mountain of evidence only to have you, and your neocon friends, squeal and squirm and deny everything the moment it comes up. Chopper, for instance, was still denying that Hitler had really claimed to be a Christian even after confronted with Hitler’s own words, and both of you denied that International law even existed.
You live in a weird dream world, quite separate from the one real people live in.In fact you might ask why I am even bothering with this post. My approach all along is that I am not really writing this for your benefit, or your idiot friends, I am writing these posts for the honest people who read this thread who may be feeling down about the state of our country, to show them that they do not have to take the endless bullshit dished up by conservatives. They can find real evidence about what is going on in the world, facts and arguments that by contrast make the mainstream news networks seem like pathetic conservative puppets. They can defeat the conservative ‘arguments’ again and again with simple facts and logic, even if the conservatives themselves, in a state of permanent denial (I guess, or just plain stupid) would never admit they have been beaten. You see your type of conservative would look someone in the eye and insist that black was actually white. You are the great salesmen of history, or you think you are, drunk on your own supposed ability to dish out lies while ignoring the truth, even when it is starring you in the face.
Posted by Matilda Gatsby on Aug 26, 2005 at 7:53 AM Scorp, I could take apart all of your positions, I swear that’s not an idol boast. But what would be the point, you could be striped bare and would still pretend that nothing had happened. That’s not winning, that’s simply refusing to acknowledge you’ve lost.
They say the root of virtually all mental illness starts with the denial of reality in one way or another. True conservatives, the so-called ‘diehard’ right-wingers, are mentally ill, and that is not an insult, merely a fact.
Be it the scientific validity of the theory of evolution, global warming, election irregularities, the illegality of the invasion of Iraq, or the widespread relaxation of pollution standards, all you’ll get from a true conservative is denial, denial, denial, denial.
The root of this conservative willingness to deny certain aspects of reality lies in one of their core beliefs, and that is the solid conviction that;
‘The ends justify the means’.
Meaning, lying and deception are okay as long as they are done in the name of a ‘good’ cause. This insidious little piece of thinking has caused more death and destruction than any other thought in human history, and to a conservative the ‘good’ cause tends to be the making of more money for the already rich. It’s as simple as that.
Another way of putting this would be to say that the conservative attitude to life is;
‘Reality is what I decide it is and nothing, not even facts and logic, is going to stand in the way of me getting what I want’.
Liberals do not believe the ends justify the means, and as such do not think lying is okay, not even for a liberal cause. Conservatives see this as putting liberals at a disadvantage, and it is the main reason why you will never ‘win’ an argument with a conservative. Even when they know you are correct they will simply refuse to acknowledge it if it gets in the way of something they want. It really is like talking to that crazy guy on the street corner, whom after a while you realize you’re never going to get any sense out of. He just does what he wants because he has decided what reality is going to be, and nothing you say is going to change it.
Wouldn’t you agree Scorp?
Come on, go through the motions of disagreeing with everything I have said (with a few minor agreements thrown in just to try and make it look like you’re not a robot). I dare you to admit to something real, even though that admission could potentially get in the way of you and your kind getting something you want. I dare you to admit that our country and its leaders are bound by international law, and that Bush is in violation of both the spirit and the actual substance of those laws. You can’t can you, and for one very simple reason. Conservatives put their own self-interests above the truth, at every opportunity.
Posted by Matilda Gatsby on Aug 26, 2005 at 7:54 AM P.S. Reagan and Thatcher created a boom and bust economy in American and Britain, a small minority of people got very rich very quickly. Clinton and Blair where the ones who actually created sustainable growth and surpluses, introducing real stability that benefited everyone.
Just saying that Reagan and Thatcher achieved great things, over and over again, won’t make it true.
Also, even though Reagan is revered as some sort of saint among the ultra right wing in our country, the Brits, who seem to have their heads a bit more screwed on now consider Thatcher to be a joke, even her own party distancing themselves from her memory.
Some legacy, Thatcher a joke, and Reagan considered a great man only because Fox News keeps telling us so.
Posted by Matilda Gatsby on Aug 26, 2005 at 8:30 AM “Scorp, I could take apart all of your positions, I swear that’s not an idol (sic) boast. But what would be the point, you could be striped (sic) bare and would still pretend that nothing had happened.”
Pretty sic, Matilda. Not to mention Freudian. You need to take courses in remedial spelling and Psych 101, as well as government. And economics, for gosh sakes!
You surely recall that President Carter’s economic policies, growing out of President Johnson’s Great (?) Society, brought us 20+% interest rates, high inflation, high unemployment, and negative growth. President Reagan immediately passed economic and tax reforms into law, establishing the foundations for the powerful economic growth of the last two decades.
Except for the Bubba interruption, of course. If President Clinton has an economic legacy, he must have passed some legislation. Whatever could it be? Well, he did pass one of the highest tax increases in history, leading directly to the Clinton Bubble. And he did ignore Chairman Greenspan’s warnings about “irrational exuberance”. Anything else? Anything else? Anything else? No.
You do recall the Clinton Bubble, don’t you? In the last year of the Clinton Administration, the Nasdaq Index dropped over 60%, declining from over 5000 to under 2000. The Dow also began a sharp decline while Clinton was still in office. What ALWAYS HAPPENS when the stock indexes suffer a major decline? Falling economy, rising unemployment, popularly known as a recession. Always. Happens.
Fortunately, George Bush was there to reverse Clinton’s idiotic tax increases, and the damage was minimized. The economy is now recovering nicely, with increasing growth, record employment, and declining deficits.
How is it that President Clinton has such a paltry, not to mention negative, economic legacy? Perhaps he was too busy diddling Monica (or whomever) to pay attention to the economy.
As for traveling, yes, I have traveled a bit. I have worked in Germany, France, Vietnam, Thailand, Saudi Arabia, and Korea, and I have been completely around the world on two occasions.
Look, Matty, this thread is getting pretty stale. Why don’t you have the last word, I will ignore it, and we can pick up somewhere else? Sound OK?
Posted by scorp on Aug 26, 2005 at 11:10 AM Scorp,
The only opinion polls that count are elections?NOT ANY MORE!
Thank who?
The Republican party.
Where’s the U.N.when you need to ensure an accurate count and prevent a country from falling into dictatorship.OOPS!TOO LATE!
Posted by wwoods on Aug 26, 2005 at 11:21 AM Scorp,
One more thing.I know you and the rest of your Republican robots like to bring up Monica.Did it ever occur to you that if Linda Tripp hadn’t blatantly violated the law via wire-tapping,all you would’ve had was another juvenile rumor?Who was Linda Tripp?A holdover form the previous BUSH administration.HMMMM…
Run this thought through your microscopic and myopic right wing minds.NO MATTER WHO YOU WANT TO RUN IN THE NEXT ELECTION,NO MATTER WHAT YOUR IDIOT COWBOY OIL PUPPET SAYS,NO MATTER WHAT NEW TERROR THREAT YOUR PARTY GENERATES,IF THE ELECTION WERE TOMORROW,OR EVER,AND BILL CLINTON WERE THE DEMOCRATIC CANDIDATE,YOU WOULD LOSE!Clinton would bi*th-slap Karl Rove,and show that political equivalent of a bar trick a new level of political maneuvering.
Posted by wwoods on Aug 26, 2005 at 11:33 AM Scorp- the only aspect of which this “recovery” is outperforming other historical economic recoveries is in corporate profits and revenues. Job creation is lagging behind past recoveries. You neglect to mention the aspect of wages. Wages have remained stagnant under the Bush administration resulting in a pay cut in real terms for most Americans, not to mention the spiraling health care and college costs. This recovery, like other recoveries under Republican leadership, have seen the benefits accrue to the very wealthiest members of society, of which I doubt you are a part.
In addition, Reagan did take inflation out of the economy, only by strangling it! You may have been asleep during 1981 and 1982, but America went through one of its worst economic downturns since the Great Depression during Reagan’s first two years in office. You also neglect to mention the fact that he added $3 trillion to the U.S. deficit.
On a final note, the deficits are not declining under Bush II, because he has borrowed money from the social security surpuls to help pay for his budget. In addition, Bush will ask Congress for another $80 billion+ supplemental for Iraq which will push the annual deficit to over $400 billion this year.
Posted by Liberal on Aug 26, 2005 at 2:15 PM Liberal -
If ignorance is bliss, you must be ecstatic.
And how would this economy be performing if Bubba hadn’t screwed it up so badly?
” ... like other recoveries under Republican leadership ... “
You got that part right. Every time the Democrats got in power since Johnson, the economy is wrecked and the Republicans have to clean it up. The Liberals end up complaining that the Republicans did not repair the Democrats’ mistakes correctly. Fortunately, practice makes perfect, and we can now repair the damage with not too much problem, just a few million people out of work and a growing deficit. Now if we could just get the Democrats to stop the stupid tax increases.
Reagan got elected because Carter’s economy was a disaster, and Carter blamed the American people (in the ‘malaise’ speech). The economy was already in desperate shape when Reagan took office.
“You also neglect to mention the fact that (Reagan) added $3 trillion to the U.S. deficit.”
I did not neglect to mention it, I ignored it because it is of little importance. The USA has had a deficit nearly every year for over 200 years. Deficits result from borrowed money to pay for necessary services. The deficit and the national debt in WWII were sky high, but the alternate was to surrender. Deficits are paid off by a growing economy; there was deprivation and hardship as a result of WWII, but there was no deprivation or hardship from paying off the WWII debts. If you were really concerned with deficits, you would stop Democrats from raising taxes, which inevitably wreck the economy, making deficits necessary. When the Democrats create a recession, it is necessary that the Republicans restore fiscal sanity, but the damage was not at all necessary; the damage was due to the Democrat’s incompetence.
“On a final note, the deficits are not declining under Bush II, because he has borrowed money from the social security surpuls to help pay for his budget.”
Every single dollar of the SS surplus since the inception in 1935 has gone to the general fund. This has no more to do with President Bush than with Roosevelt, Truman, Eisenhower, etc. We have been warned by both Democrats and Republicans for decades that the SS mess was unsustainable; President Clinton said as much on a number of occasion in the 1990s. The Democrats’ only solution is to raise taxes (again!), but we are near the point that this will no longer be sufficient.
Posted by scorp on Aug 26, 2005 at 4:03 PM Scorp,
It is now apparent you have no knowledge of recent history.Either you were born after 1975,or you have been completely bamboozled by Fox News and the right-wing’s retelling of history.Carter inheirited a bad economy from Ford who received it from Nixon.do you remember Ford’s campaign slogan?
WIN!
Whip
Inflation
Now!Why?Because inflation was rampant throughout the early 1970’s due to the reckless deficit spending Nixon promoted.Just like republicans try to link the oil embargo of ‘73 to Carter.Sorry!
More accurately,you should state that liberals(anyone not totally compliant with right-wing corporatism)complain that republicans “fix the economy” by dumping all over the poor,cut social programs for those who can’t take care of themselves(and I don’t mean arrested-developement slackers)and give any money they"saved"to rich people.
Republican:a man who fires everyone who works at his factory and then calls those unemployed people lazy for not working.
Republican voter:a person who gripes about Mexicans coming across the border and taking jobs from Americans,but says nothing when a business fires all of its American workers and relocates the plant to Mexico.
The Minutemen(My god!How they’ve desecrated that name!)need to turn their lawn chairs the other way and keep CEO’s from taking jobs out of our country.
Posted by wwoods on Aug 26, 2005 at 5:49 PM By other Republican recoveries, I only meant Ronald Reagan. Didn’t the oil embargo of 1973 have something to do with the inflation of Carter’s administration? Furthermore, I believe you are the one blissfully ignorant when it comes to economic policy. Remember the widely underreported massive Savings-and-Loan scandal that went on unchecked during Reagan’s administration?
I think your basis for economic policy needs to proceed beyond your high-school economics textbook. Tax cuts, when directed towards the people that need them, namely middle and lower income people, can help stimulate the economy. Reagan introduced the Laffer Curve and tricke-down, supply-side economics. The Laffer curve was a total joke when implemented. And the only think that tricles down is piss.
If Republicans were truly concerned about giving poorer people a break, they would reform the Earned Income Tax Credit to make more people able to receive its benefits. The registration and approval process is incredibly onerous, and poorer people do not have the time or money to seek professional help to ensure their eligibility.
All Clinton did when he entered office was raise the top marginal income tax rate to 35%, which was still 50% lower than it was in the 1970s. Some tax crazy politician was he. Also, when Clinton did manage to raise the minimum wage, it was combined with over $120 billion in corporate tax giveaways.
The average household income in America has actually DECREASED over the last 30 years, which coincides nicely with the rise of the conservative wing of the Republican party. The only income bracket to see their incomes rise in the last three decades, the top 2% of taxpayers. So much for building a sustainable economy whose benefits accrue to ALL Americans.
Provide evidence that the Reagan and Bush tax cuts helped the majority of Americans. Job creation never has reached the levels the Bush administration claimed would follow the 2003 tax cuts. Do you not believe the taxpayer funded investments in infrastructure, research and technology, and education do not produce better economic results than pure tax cuts? The basis for America’s economic success in the late 40s, 50s, and early 60s, was the legislation of the Roosevelt Era that produced Social Security, a minimum wage, a 40-hour work week, the elimination of child labor, and the right to organize labor unions. Last but not least was the GI Bill, which sent MILLIONS to college who later formed the backbone of middle-income America. Conservatives opposed EVERY ONE of those policies that we take for granted today.
Posted by Liberal on Aug 26, 2005 at 6:00 PM Liberal -
Where to start? Rather than try to address all you silly allegations, let me confine myself to the silliest:
“The basis for America’s economic success in the late 40s, 50s, and early 60s, was the legislation of the Roosevelt Era that produced Social Security, a minimum wage, a 40-hour work week, the elimination of child labor, and the right to organize labor unions.”
This. Is. Nonsense. Roosevelt was elected in 1931, and the unemployment rate was right at 9%. The rate grew rapidly to 24% in 1933, and when Roosevelt was re-elected in 1935, the rate was still over 20%. In 1939, Roosevelt was re-elected to his third term, and unemployment still stood at 17%, 8% greater than when he was elected the first time, eight years before.
In Roosevelt’s defense, the economy was poorly understood at the time. Raising taxes and restricting trade hurt the economy and contributed to the low employment and stagnant growth that marked the first eight years of the Roosevelt Administration. The “legislation of the Roosevelt Era that produced Social Security, a minimum wage, a 40-hour work week, the elimination of child labor, and the right to organize labor unions” may (or may not) have had some good results, but the economy was substantially worse off than when Roosevelt started passing huge social programs. At best, there is little evidence that Roosevelt’s social programs had any positive economic effect at all.
The economy actually started growing as a result of massive investment from deficit spending in WWII. Unemployment then dropped to under 2% during the war, and people were making money. Wartime restrictions limited most goods, from meat to automobiles, tires, and gasoline. There was a huge pent-up demand for goods and services when the war ended, and the investments during the war years assured the supply to satisfy that demand. That is what drove the economic recovery after WWII, and this is the key to every economic recovery since then.
Kennedy was the first President to act on the belief that reducing taxes would result in higher tax receipts, and it was a controversial idea at the time. Controversial or not, it worked like a charm. The Republicans learned the lesson that Kennedy taught, and Reagan and Bush 43 applied that lesson, creating spectacular recoveries to the Carter catastrophe and the Clinton Bubble crisis.
Why do Democrats persist in policies known to damage the American economy? I think it is control. If the Democrats aren’t in control of all social and economic policies they feel deprived, and they are quite willing to deprive all of us our freedoms in order to exert the control they lust for. But state controls of the economy led to the Soviet disaster and the Old Europe ongoing economic quagmire, not to mention the Carter and Clinton fiascos. In micro- and macro- terms, people are better at spending their own money than the state is at spending the people’s money. Therefore the state should be slapped down hard every time it wants to raise taxes.
Please do not worry about the state of my economic education. I do have an MBA, though my interest is in management, not in economics. Regardless, I can detect the odor of economic BS from miles away. Like the stuff you put out.
Posted by scorp on Aug 27, 2005 at 12:18 AM Matilda- In your posts contrasting liberals and conservatives you make such general comments that they are almost meaningless. The gist of your argument is everything good is liberal and everything bad is conservative. Unfortunately in spite of what you think (conservatives lie and liberals don’t) there is ample evidence of mendacity and tendentiousness on both sides of the isle. Cynthia McKinney and Michael Moore, for instance, aren’t exactly models of truthfulness. Also, you seem to be lacking knowledge of some basic economics and facts. National health care in Britian, for instance, is far from an unqualified success.
In another post you state that I’m still denying that Hitler claimed to be Christian. Actually, if you go back and re-read my second post, I didn’t deny that in the second post. What I did was put it into context. Hitler also made some anti-Christian comments, apparently many more of them. So yes, at certain times, and apparently early in his career, Hitler did make some claims to being Christian. He also made many anti-Christian statements, especially after he gained power. Your original post seemed to imply that Hitler claimed to be Christian generally and throughout his career. And no, international law doesn’t exist in the way that you seem to believe, there is no supra-national body that has jurisdiction over sovereign states. A lot of states violate your vision of international law and it goes unpunished, so as a practical matter it doesn’t exist in any meaningful sense. However, I will admit that perhaps I’m delusional, as you say, and that the UN really is an effective supra-national body and UN peace keeping operations are generally effective, and absurdities such Cuba and Zimbabwe, to name two well known human rights champions, aren’t really members of the UN Human Rights Commission.
Posted by chopper on Aug 27, 2005 at 1:27 AM ‘Why do Democrats persist in policies known to damage the American economy? I think it is control. If the Democrats aren’t in control of all social and economic policies they feel deprived, and they are quite willing to deprive all of us our freedoms in order to exert the control they lust for. But state controls of the economy led to the Soviet disaster and the Old Europe ongoing economic quagmire, not to mention the Carter and Clinton fiascos. In micro- and macro- terms, people are better at spending their own money than the state is at spending the people’s money. Therefore the state should be slapped down hard every time it wants to raise taxes. “
Fucking Nazi
Posted by Ammonia D on Aug 28, 2005 at 10:24 AM So Ammonia D, you equate economic freedom (without which there is no other freedom) with Nazism. Hitler’s economic policies were remarkably similar to the New Deal. Does that make FDR a Nazi? Or are you just ignorant about that part of history?
Posted by chopper on Aug 28, 2005 at 11:56 AM BTW Matilda- In your first post mentioning Hitler you posted that he SAID he was a Christian. In a follow up post you stated that he “BELIEVED” he was a Christian. I think I’ve pretty well refuted your second claim. I know you like to repeat over and over that anyone who disagrees with you is a conservative, and that all conservatives are liars and out of touch with reality. It’s just that it is getting harder and harder to take anything you say seriously.
Posted by chopper on Aug 28, 2005 at 2:08 PM Chopper,
Please don’t lump all forms of socialism into one category.The socialism of European countries circa 2000 is nowhere near the dictatorial COMMUNISM or NAZISM of the 1930’s.
Without wishing to provoke several bloggers into a rage,may I point out that our military is an example of socialism.Individuals have their own personal property,as much as they can afford,health benefits provided by the government,and are given responsibility and authority(in most cases)based on ability.Put it this way:a colonel may be in charge of a division of armored vehicles,but may not leverage,through buyout or other business methods,another division of tanks.
Funny,but that system seems to work.
Even more funny,the people who are rabid capitalism supporters are generally those victimized by it.Talk about Stockholm Syndrome.
Scorp,
Quit trying to twist history into a balloon animal!Roosevelt was not elected in 1931!The election wasn’t even until 1932!Didn’t you pay any attention in school?Honestly!If you are not from this country,ask someone when we hold elections.If you are a citizen,your lack of knowledge is woeful.That or you’re simply trying to twist facts to win,which is a typically shoddy trick of the right.
Also,your figures on employment in the thirties are way off.It’s apparent that your forte is not economics.If you’re smelling economic bs,you’re smelling your own posts.
Posted by wwoods on Aug 29, 2005 at 11:48 AM wwoods- The military is a special case, even Milton Friedman would say it is a natural function of government. The system doesn’t work so well when you try to use it to produce or distribute goods. Even military equipment is produced by private enterprise, and much more effectively than a government bureaucracy could.
You are right, the extensive social welfare states of Europe today aren’t the murderous communist or Nazi governments of an earlier era (& they still have private enterprise, even though often much shackled by our standards). However, Western Europe is plagued by high unemployment (about double ours) low to no economic growth, and declining populations, which are going to play havoc with their social security systems in coming decades. In fact, if current demographic trends continue, parts of Western Europe could well be majority Muslim by the middle of the century.
Posted by chopper on Aug 30, 2005 at 12:04 AM wwoods- your statement on those supposedly “victimized” by capitalism. Without free enterprise most of us would be medieval peasants. Do you really think that would have been a superior outcome?
Posted by chopper on Aug 30, 2005 at 12:08 AM ww -
I apologize for the bad data in my previous post. It started as a typo, on which I built a bad timeline. A corrected post follows. The economic arguments are still valid.
Posted by scorp on Aug 30, 2005 at 12:28 AM Liberal (with dates corrected)—
Where to start? Rather than try to address all you silly allegations, let me confine myself to the silliest:“The basis for America’s economic success in the late 40s, 50s, and early 60s, was the legislation of the Roosevelt Era that produced Social Security, a minimum wage, a 40-hour work week, the elimination of child labor, and the right to organize labor unions.”
This. Is. Nonsense. Roosevelt was elected in 1932, and the unemployment rate was right at 23%. The rate peaked at 24% in 1933, and when Roosevelt was re-elected the second time in 1940, the rate was still 16%. After eight years in office, with all these social and economic programs, the unemployment rate was still intolerably high and the economy was stagnant.
In Roosevelt’s defense, the economy was poorly understood at the time. Raising taxes and restricting trade hurt the economy and contributed to the low employment and stagnant growth that marked the first eight years of the Roosevelt Administration. The “legislation of the Roosevelt Era that produced Social Security, a minimum wage, a 40-hour work week, the elimination of child labor, and the right to organize labor unions” may (or may not) have had some good results, but the economy was still in poor shape. At best, there is little evidence that Roosevelt’s social programs had any positive economic effect at all.
The economy actually started growing as a result of massive investment from deficit spending in WWII. Unemployment then dropped to under 2% during the war, and people were making money. Wartime restrictions limited most goods, from meat to automobiles, tires, and gasoline. There was a huge pent-up demand for goods and services when the war ended, and the investments during the war years assured the supply to satisfy that demand. That is what drove the economic recovery after WWII, and this is the key to every economic recovery since then.
Kennedy was the first President to act on the belief that reducing taxes would result in higher tax receipts, and it was a controversial idea at the time. Controversial or not, it worked like a charm. The Republicans learned the lesson that Kennedy taught, and Reagan and Bush 43 applied that lesson, creating spectacular recoveries to the Carter catastrophe and the Clinton Bubble crisis.
Why do Democrats persist in policies known to damage the American economy? I think it is control. If the Democrats aren’t in control of all social and economic policies they feel deprived, and they are quite willing to deprive all of us our freedoms in order to exert the control they lust for. But state controls of the economy led to the Soviet disaster and the Old Europe ongoing economic quagmire, not to mention the Carter and Clinton fiascos. In micro- and macro- terms, people are better at spending their own money than the state is at spending the people’s money. Therefore the state should be slapped down hard every time it wants to raise taxes.Please do not worry about the state of my economic education. I do have an MBA, though my interest is in management, not in economics. Regardless, I can detect the odor of economic BS from miles away. Like the stuff you put out.
Posted by scorp on Aug 30, 2005 at 12:33 AM Scorp,
Your timeline still asserts a bad premise:that democratic programs did not benefit the country.
May I point out that the attempts by Hoover to alleviate the stock market crash did nothing to remedy the effect.Furthermore,one thing Roosevlet’s plans DID illustrate was our country,provided the rich pay their share,is able to take care of its own.I wonder how the Rockefellers or Morgans would have fared had there been a social revolution.Guillotine,anyone?Most Americans have no problem with a flat tax,provided it’s evenly applied.However,when Jerry Brown brought up this idea in the 1992 race he was labled a KOOK.Curiously,when Forbes said we should have one with exception for businesses,he was hailed as genius—SHYEAH,RIGHT!
Look at our economy.Much of our problems stem from wealthy men who do not wish to pay taxes yet wish to enjoy the beneficial powers that wealth brings.Sorry,even a five year old can see that this is essentially unfair.
Yes,yes,war had a lot to do with our economic recovery,still one can only speculate what our economy would have been like with a Republican president.
Which reminds me.If it were not for eight years of Republican laissez-faire toward business,and the rampant deregulation,we might not have had as bad a problem as we did.Maybe.
Chopper,
The medieval peasantry didn’t know any better.We do.We’ve almost perfected the idea of democracy(yes,I meant it that way).Yet,in sheer irony,the republicans are weakening the middle class,which is its buffer between itself and the working classes.Watch a bit more.Unless the Republicans do something,anything,to re-bolster the middle-class and restore its standard of living,Republicans nay soon find themselves out of a job.Just look at how Bush and his cabinet are now faring.
Posted by wwoods on Aug 30, 2005 at 11:55 AM Chopper,
By the way,the military is not a special case.It is a program like any other.Yet it shos that,with determination to perpetuate a goal,a system can be made to work.With that in mind Bush and his gang have set out to mess it up.
If Clinton had done to our armed forces what bush is doing,we would have had a military coup.But,hey,Bush is a republican.His policies must be good for the military.Again—SHYEAH,RIGHT!
Posted by wwoods on Aug 30, 2005 at 12:00 PM ww
“Your timeline still asserts a bad premise:that democratic programs did not benefit the country.”
Well, when you misquote me, you can make an interesting and irrelevant argument. To summarize:
Liberal originally asserted that the social programs passed by FDR in the mid-1930s produced “economic success in the late 40s, 50s, and early 60s”. I objected to that; regardless of how important child labor laws (for example) are, they are not going to have zero effect for several years, and then move the unemployment rate ten, twenty, thirty years later. In fact, of the several FDR programs Liberal listed, only one has consistently been shown to affect the unemployment rate; minimum wage laws always result in loss of jobs.
I certainly did not say, “that democratic programs did not benefit the country”. What I said was that the FDR programs that Liberal listed left the economy stagnant, that economic activity only revived in WWII, and that revival was due to deficit spending that produced investment and growth.
Some of FDR’s social programs had good social effect, some of FDR’s regulatory programs had good social and economic effect (FDIC and FTC come to mind), but there is scant evidence that any of FDR’s legislative programs affected the economic activity level at all. After eight years of the New Deal, there was hardly any economic movement at all. WWII was not a New Deal Program; economic activity from the War is what brought the nation out of the Depression.
Flat tax, OK.
You have a problem with “wealthy men”? To what deficiency in yourself do you attribute this sad lack of appreciation? Bill Gates is a wealthy man. When he founded Microsoft in 1975, the GDP was $4.4 trillion; now it is over $11 trillion. Much of the increase is all Gates’ fault, and you are much better off for it. Most “wealthy men (and women)” got that way by making your life better, and offering you more choices in life. Complain if you want to. There are actually very few criminal types among you “wealthy men”, and we are pretty good at catching them.
Posted by scorp on Aug 30, 2005 at 4:11 PM Actually wwoods, it is a special case. Militaries aren’t known for operating economically, which a business must do to survive if it is in a competitive market. When you eliminate private ownership and/or competition several bad things start to happen. People start caring less about breakage and waste, because, after all, it isn’t “theirs”. Without price inputs what to produce or how much becomes difficult or impossible to determine. Since there is no competition quality, both in goods and service, becomes unimportant.
Militaries themselves illustrate this to an extent. During long periods of peace, with no obvious enemy, they tend to decline not just in size but in effectiveness. During periods of war or when there is an obvious external threat they become more effective, not just in size but in unit effectiveness, because then it becomes a matter of survival. Not that I wouldn’t like to see a long period of peace in which all militaries decline, I’m just not optimistic that we are any where near (and we may never be) that point.
Posted by chopper on Aug 30, 2005 at 10:58 PM Btw wwoods, what do you mean by “We’ve almost perfected the idea of democracy”? Do you equate democracy with socialism? I don’t consider democracy and liberty to be synonomous, and in practice I would prefer liberty to democracy.
Posted by chopper on Aug 30, 2005 at 11:03 PM Chopper,
That’s what I said,almost.Rule of the people by the people will never be perfected until our politicians can’t be bought.Because of a bunch of slimy lobbyists in the hotel industry,my stsate’s education system has been wrecked for the next few years.Guess who’ll take the blame?
The teachers will,though they had no say in the scheduling matter at all due to a lack of voice.No unions or NEA lobbyists in my state.Some democracy.Yeah,yeah,the army is always a special case,the excepton to the rule for those who want to bad mouth and stereotype socialism.
Scorp,
Now we see your true colors:someone who sides with the wealthy,and Republicans because of a belief that they will benefit you.O.K. Sort of like a cattle siding with the rancher because he takes care of them.Also,you are again trying to put data with little support or connection.Is Bill Gates really the cause for our increase in the GDP,the sole cause?No other factors than wealthy men?What does GDP have to do with standard of living for the average American?We are constantly told how well our econmy is doing.Yet,most Americans find themselves having less.Go ahead,make the two car and three TV argument and sound like every other right-wing sycophant who supports wealthy men who could care less about the people so long as the people give them money.By the way,I don’t have a problem with wealthy men.I do have a problem with people who abuse their power and refuse to contribute their share of taxes.Yeah we do catch the ones who act like criminals,but only after they really damage the system.Remember Michael Milliken?How many billions did the S&L scandal,in which NEIL BUSH was involved in cost the taxpayers?What we need is a decent preventive system.Unfortunately,the systems are put in place by the people who wreck it later.
Gotta leave.This thread’s played out and I’m sure I know what the next premises you pose will be.Right-wingers are as predictable as gravity.
Posted by wwoods on Sep 1, 2005 at 11:33 AM Okay wwoods- where does socialism actually work? I mean, as a system for an entire nation? And the army is a special case. It doesn’t even produce its own weapons, they are produced (much more effectively than the state could) by private industry.
Posted by chopper on Sep 1, 2005 at 10:30 PM Chopper,
Socialism works in England,France,Germany,and Switzerland.Does it work with 100% effectiveness?No,but,then again what does?Well,maybe the right-wing knee-jerk response.
Keep in mind that those trying to sell the idea of 100% ANYTHING are usually trying to sell something else with it too,something that is usually found in a cow pasture.Republican politicians should be thankful our populace is so gullible,otherwise most of them would be encyclopedia salesmen.The state has not been allowed to produce items in quantity for the military,so we don’t really know how effective they might be.However,it’s well known that tens of billions of dollars,taxpayer dollars,are wasted in"cost overruns"and other scams by private contractors.Also,most products are built by the lowest bidder.
Hi!I’m Earl Scheib,and I can armor plate that humvee for $129.95!
Again,big business wants to keep their hold on something and will lie to do it.Some free market.
Posted by wwoods on Sep 2, 2005 at 11:25 AM wwoods- What is your definition of socialism? All of those countries still have large private sectors. It is true that they have more extensive social-welfare benefits than we do, and most of them (I’m not sure about Switzerland) have, in effect, socialized medicine. Generally, in Western Europe one can live of off the state if that is one’s choice. However, Europe is also plagued with low to no economic growth and twice the unemployment rate that we have. As for their social security systems, they are headed for train wrecks (as are we) due to declining birth rates and increasing longevity.
As for military contractors, we do have an example of a state in which the government did produce the military’s weapons, the Soviet Union. As you say, nothing works perfectly. The AK47 was an excellent small arms design and weapon. But as you move up the ladder in weapon size and effectiveness, most of what they produced was clearly inferior to arms produced by the west.
You are right, there is often corruption and wastefulness when private companies sell military equipment to the government. In fact, military units are now given some funds to buy equipment directly to a limited extent, some of the units in Iraq use camping and outdoor gear produced for the civilian market because it is both better and cheaper than gear produced specifically for the military.
Also, the more a government regulates an economy, the more compartive advantage it gives to big businesses vs. smaller and medium size businesses. Leftists are sometimes right in their complaints about big business, but they mis-diagnose the cure, wanting more of what caused the problem in the first place.
Posted by chopper on Sep 2, 2005 at 12:15 PM ww -
You socialists are obsessed with the idea that somebody, somewhere might have less than someone else, and that it might be you. But all wealth is created. Socialists neglect, nay, are oblivious to, the idea that wealth is created by hard work and good ideas. If someone works hard and builds something for himself, you treat him as an object of suspicion, if not downright criminal.
Meanwhile, the GDP increased by four-tenths of a trillion dollars in 2004. This represents $400 billion of hard work by good people. Criminal activity does not produce wealth, but only rearranges it; the amount of criminal activity is small compared to the wealth created by the USA. And we are pretty good at catching those criminals.
“What does GDP have to do with standard of living for the average American?” Non compos mentis. If you think that GDP does not affect the average American, try living like the average German or Frenchman or Zimbabwean. Old Europe is suffering high unemployment, economic stagnation, and declining population.
“Yet,most Americans find themselves having less.”
This is nonsense. Young people start out with less, but they don’t stay young forever.
“ … wealthy men who could care less about the people so long as the people give them money.”
Giving away money is charity. Why are your “poor” people giving away money to wealthy men? Or perhaps they are really buying something that they find worthwhile? If its not worthwhile, can’t poor people save their money and accumulate a measure of wealth?
You have an utterly confused view of the way the world works. You want to live in a socialist world and enjoy capitalist benefits. But the socialists are very poor at producing wealth, and the socialist bureaucracy eats up most of the wealth that is created. That is why hard socialist systems collapse (Soviet Union) and soft socialist systems stagnate for decades (Old Europe). Go live there if you think you will like it.
Posted by scorp on Sep 3, 2005 at 3:02 AM This is a dead thread.Apparently your prejudices toward socialism run deeper than reason and,really,neither of you knows what socialism is.It would seem both of you have been fed the big lie by the right and liked the taste.Thus,socialism is evil.Always has been and always will be.I pray neither of you lose your health benefits or get downsized.Then again,that would let you see the real nature of the people you adore.
As well,your examples to support your arguments are weak at best.To say nothing of the “define your terms"trick,which,when used with fallacy of accident, allows one to argue by constantly forcing the other person to provide burden of proof.
You can keep supporting the corporatism that masquerades as free enterprise,and they will give you as fair a shake as they feel you deserve.
Also,wasn’t this thread supposed to be about Iranian nukes?My my,how we’ve digressed.Then again,when one argues with losers who’ll do anything to win something for once,this is what happens.Used to see this all the time in bars.That’s why I quit going to them.
Posted by wwoods on Sep 3, 2005 at 7:45 PM wwoods- Yes, this is becoming a dead thread. That is the only thing in your post about which you are right. You never did give a clear indication of what you mean by socialism. Contrary to what you seem to believe, there are not some relatively minor problems the Europeans need to live with, but major structural defects that are going to cause them serious problems in the coming decades. Growth and wealth is produced primarily by the private sector, not by the state. This is true even in Europe. It is just that much of their industry is heavily shackled by their governments, thus the low to zero (which you cannot deny, look up the stats) economic growth and double digit unemployment.
Also, contrary to what you believe, there is no way the state can guarentee you a risk free existence in the long run. Life is dangerous, get used to it.
The private sector that you like to disparge is the source of wealth that keeps society going. Once the state strangles it, then upon what will you rely?
Posted by chopper on Sep 4, 2005 at 4:02 AM wwoods- As far as getting off topic, you are right. I don’t think you can blame scorp or myself for that entirely. You were a willing participant in the debate moving in this direction.
Posted by chopper on Sep 4, 2005 at 4:04 AM wwoods- In your one post, in which you state that nothing works with a 100% effectiveness, I see a glimmer of hope. Whether you realize it or not this is a profoundly conservative statement. Most leftists believe in a utopian future, in which all societal problems will be solved once their vision becomes reality. A more conservative view is that nothing is perfect, and life is a series of trade-offs, and an attempt to make a heaven on earth could very well end up making a hell on earth (such as pretty much all communist societies became).
Posted by chopper on Sep 4, 2005 at 5:47 PM Chopper,
I’m a realist.I don’t believe in utopias.however I do fear dystopias such as the one this administration has created.
To be honest,I’m really not even a liberal,more like a libertarian with conservative leanings.Actualy I think my philosophy might be more complex than that. I like to things case by case,which might explain afew supposed inconsistencies right-wingers say I have,unlike their one view on everything.Anyone who does no move in lockstep with the far-right is their enemy.This term"liberal"has had it’s meaning so distorted by people like Rush,Hannity and Coulter—three people who many would now like to see smoking turds in hell—that what liberalism is,its’magnaminity,its’generosity,has been lost.
If this administration had been in power in 1934 and right-wing mouthpieces like Rush had been around,we’d be communist or fascist.That’s how destructive the neo-cons are to democracy.
Still,the main premise of socialism is that the government is in control of big things:utilities,transportation,energy production,heath care and so on,while smaller enterprises are controlled by private citizens.really this post limits me too much,or anyone else in explaining socialism as well as it should be.
But doesn’t it strike you as funny that the people who are charging you too much for certain services are the ones who are saying"it’ll never work”?Come on,it’s big money trying keep out any challenge to insure they can continue to squeeze the people.
As far as the old saying “liberals like to throw money at problems"don’t conservatives do the same.Just look at SDI.Twenty
years and enough money billions that we could have bought off the ir army,and no more progress than in 1985.Not to mention,the enemy it was designed to protect us against bit the big one!Russia was no longer a player after chernobyl.Jeez!They nuked themselves!All that wasted money after that on SDI could have gone somewhere,anywhere,else.How about a prize for the CEO who has the best working conditions for ALL of its workers?What an incentive!
Something to keep in mind,if you don’t already know:the left is concerned with people,the right is concerned with power.The right wishes to force,whereas the left wishes to induce.Also,if you think the right share with you when they win,re-examine the slogan"trickle down.I got my tax cuts in ‘01 and ‘02 totalling four hundred dollars,money given back in higher fuel prices.To say nothing of my wages decreasing in cost of living increases.Is socialism a good idea?At this point any thing is better than republican corporatism.
Posted by wwoods on Sep 5, 2005 at 5:05 PM wwoods- Interestingly, that is how I see myself, as a libertarian with conservative leanings. Your idea of socialism seems to be along the British/Clement Atlee model, which I don’t think is viable over the long run. Agreed, many things about this administration I don’t like, they are spending too much money, their new prescription drug benefits is going to be a train wreck in a few decades. Incrediably, however, the Democrats problem with it was they weren’t spending enough!
When you write libertarian, do you mean as commonly understood, such as typified by the Cato Institute, or more along lines of of Noam Chomsky, who calls himself a “libertarian socialist”, but which is really a new name for the anarchists? And yes, I realize there are also anarcho-capitalists, such as Lew Rockwell. I don’t think either form of anarchism makes any sense, they are basically floating abstractions that aren’t doable in the real world, just as every attempt to put Marxism into practice results in something like the Soviet Union or Red China.
Posted by chopper on Sep 5, 2005 at 8:57 PM wwoods- On Right vs. Left. In my experience the left really isn’t any more concerned with people than the right. In my view government should be strictly limited. Most leftist programs in practice are based on a elitist view of society, that certain wise people (Harvard and Yale grads presumbly) should be taking care of us and running society, as the average person (Joe sixpack) is too uneducated, racist, or ignorant to run his own affairs. My view is none of knows as much as we think we do, we know our own affairs best but when we try to run others’ affairs we probably won’t do it well, and tradition represents the distilled wisdom of the ages (but shouldn’t be blindly followed either).
Posted by chopper on Sep 5, 2005 at 9:07 PM The best antidote for “republican corporatism” is reducing government control over the economy.
Posted by chopper on Sep 5, 2005 at 9:11 PM Late but relevant.
http://www.globalresearch.ca/index.php?context=viewArticle&code=CLA200509 927&articleId=199
Posted by GhostRabbit on Oct 12, 2005 at 5:55 AM Slavoj Žižek must be mad. Giving Iranian nukes a chance is simply giving Iran a chance to implement its foreign policy, chanted at every available opportunity “Death to Israel! Death to America!”.
There is no comparison to Pakistan and North Korea. Pakistan is fortunately for the rest of us obsessed with India. North Koreans are atheists so have no wish to expedite their demise.
Iranians have no such constraints. Their entire foreign policy since the revolution has been the annihalation of Israelis and Americans. Countenancing a nuclear Iran is to invite a nuclear holocaust.
Absent a domestic revolution or a change in the current regime’s policies, Iran will probably be our next military target, hopefully with the help of the international community this time.
Posted by tnugent on Oct 31, 2005 at 7:57 PM -
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