Thomas Friedman recently that touched upon the issue of disposable chopsticks: "... China itself uses 45 billion pairs of disposable chopsticks a year, or 1.66 million cubic meters of timber, or 25 million full-grown trees." Not corporate waste in this case, but people throwing little things away every day. It starts and ends with the individual. The real enemy of progress here is the guy who was brought up to embrace the disposable world. I like WTH's idea about making producers responsible for their products after they break down. Perhaps we should also be able to send back empty cartons and …
All 69 comments by...
GrayArea
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You don't know if it is coming from China? Well the content of your local land fill probably came from China, but you can, no doubt, look a lot closer to home for the cause of your shortness of breath. Most people don't have to look much further than their garage. The blind opposition to effective and comprehensive mass transit systems in most areas boggles the mind. Your city may have an excellent system, but most communities have to fight tooth and nail for a mediocre one. Everything is simply built around the essential notion of a car (and a big …
Posted to When Red Goes Green
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Tina is fascinating. She'll support the US in any random war apparently - sort of like wanting your daddy to escape the police regardless of what he has done. There is a difference beween wanting America to win that war and wanting America to be great. The unwillingness to recognize this is a prominent difference between the so-called 'dims' and the likes of tina1 (apparently a tad dimmer)
Posted to Country's Jingoistic Jingles
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Sorry Wiley. Her point about liberals wanting America to lose the war sort of typified the disengaged brain attitude we have to endure from the right. That broken record goes like this: "Well, now that we are in Iraq, do you want us to lose?" The follow-up goes like this: "You liberals have no ideas." Lather, rinse, repeat...
Posted to Country's Jingoistic Jingles
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rightwingnews.com huh? I'll bet that site is a real time-saver. "Tell em what they already know. We are good. they are bad." Tina, wake up. Iraq is essentially a random war. It was the perfect, half-trillion dollar war Osama wanted for Christmas. If you are backing your administration's completely foolhardy adventure into a country that did not attack us and p o s e d u s n o t h r e a t, well, then I can't think of an American war you wouldn't support. How many innocent Iraqis did 9-11 give us the license to kill? Considering, that …
Posted to Country's Jingoistic Jingles
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Minerva, that is a great song, and it is in the country style, but Buffett is kinda 'island' don't you think? - I don't believe he's in the fold. Thanks for posting it =)
Posted to Country's Jingoistic Jingles
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Tina - Not sure I follow. Are you disappointed that we are cutting back the troop levels this spring or are you happy? It will certainly surprise you to learn that liberals are not all of one mind. Now, see that as a weakness if you must, but don't you ever miss having original thoughts? There are times when it would be comforting to lsing along as someone unquestioning and loyal tells me how great our leaders are, but I choose not to live in North Korea. I choose reality, for all its warts. Facts are not so poetic as songs …
Posted to Country's Jingoistic Jingles
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WW: I think wolf was making a similar point from a different perspective. He seemed to be asking whether *how* we killed people was really important since bullets are, in fact, pretty painful if you get hit by one. I happen to think that the weapons we choose do make a difference. Here are a couple of examples. Cluster bombs. These are a prominent reason we are not signatories to any anti-land mine treaties. We know that kids pick up the colorful, unexploded canisters, but these tragedies are *inadvertent* and therefore irrelevant. Depleted Uranium. There was a time when cigarettes were …
Posted to White Phosphorous Lies
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Following the advice of the hawks above, it is clear that we must simply kill everyone who may choose to do us harm before they get the chance. How many folks do you suppose that is and what sort of regime does that make us? Does a government like that ever really run out of enemies? If you are still a supporter of this Iraq war today, it is pretty clear that there is no expense, no amount of carnage, and no shame that will change your mind. In the mean time, why does making things worse always look like such …
Posted to Democrats: It's the War
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So Wolf (and Jay), what is the real problem with the article? 1) That it calls out bias that you deny exists. 2) That the hypothesis about why there is apparent bias is out of line. Big difference. It seems a little like you are asserting that there was no bias or that it was insignificant in terms of how the situation was reported. What do you mean?
Posted to The Subject Supposed to Loot and Rape
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A white woman is reported "scavenging for emergency supplies" in one story. In another story, a black looter is reported. If the stores they are taking goods from are, um... not open, then they are both actually looters. So I suppose the story of the black looter is more truthful than the other, but only superficially so. These sorts of side-by-side comparisons can be observed from the body of news reporting on Katrina. What leads the reporters to conclude different things about the same basic action committed by two different people? . I don't think it is unreasonable to explore the …
Posted to The Subject Supposed to Loot and Rape
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Of course they are different all together... who in your mind was taking the i-pod?
Posted to The Subject Supposed to Loot and Rape
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achman: ..oon second thought, if I take something I can trade for food, am I looting? We are pretty deep into a hypothetical situation at this point. I've never seen very much context presented in any of the headline stories. I think it is potentially dangerous to give reporters the benefit of the doubt on assessing the semantic difference between looting and scavenging for emergency supplies. However, I do believe it is important for researchers to follow up stories like this and look objectively at why the news is reported the way it is reported. Reporters are merely human. It would …
Posted to The Subject Supposed to Loot and Rape
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At the risk of sounding stupid, um... who do you think created the situation Jay? I mean it is pretty clear that whites in this country have a lot more to do with maintaining and fostering the status quo than blacks do, wouldn't you agree? By the way, has anyone given thought to what *poverty* does to the stability of a family? Surely families that function well do better, but is there no point where doing badly enough causes families to fall apart? I think we can safely say that the solution to poverty is not as simple as getting married. …
Posted to The Subject Supposed to Loot and Rape
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my point about marriage is that the statistics pointing to unmarried parents are, by and large, poorer than married ones does no good if we don't consider which is the symptom and which is the cause. (ie: does being impoverished make it more difficult to stay married?) If this is the case, then getting married is not a first step. Dealing with the conditions that lead to poverty would be a more effective first step. Does the welfare state really lead to poverty? I mean it is such an age-old argument, why is the matter not settled by now? Don't you …
Posted to The Subject Supposed to Loot and Rape
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Where do you get your data on the strength of African American Families over 60 years in the past? I'm not saying you are making this stuff up, but what measurements are you using? Divorce rates per capita? I would love to see some in-depth analysis that outlines the qualitative differences in families of the descendants of slaves in this country. I'm sure some anthropologists were curious about the subject before and after the new deal. Why didn't everyone rise out of the great depression equally? Great stuff.
Posted to The Subject Supposed to Loot and Rape
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Jay: I don't have to disprove your experience. But since you lay down the gauntlet, I can dispute your line of reasoning. You can surely tell the difference between declaring that African American families were stronger 30, 40, 50 or 60 years ago and saying that *your* first-hand, anecdotal experience tells you that they were. Yet this is all you are offering. This sounds like "from the gut" anti-intellectualism at work here. It leads to bad policy. You reason that a breakdown in the family causes poverty because there is such a high rate of single-parent families among the poor. One …
Posted to The Subject Supposed to Loot and Rape
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Jay: That is great census data there. Clearly by your previous reasoning, there must have been less poverty among blacks in the 50's as a result of their marital status. Any data on that?
Posted to The Subject Supposed to Loot and Rape
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Jay: The figures I found from 2003 show 47% of African American families are married-couple families. 34% of families were two-member families - An easy mistake to make. Another paper also points to more nuanced data including the observation that before the 1960's many divorvces among rural blacks were informal arrangements and likely went unreported: http://www-hoover.stanford.edu/publications/books/fulltext/colorline/95.pdf I thought it was a thought-provoking paper on the subject. No silver bullets here I am afraid. Still no thoughts on whether or not poverty contributes to the problem of 'marriage breakdown'
Posted to The Subject Supposed to Loot and Rape
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Sorry - Glitch http://www-hoover.stanford.edu/publications/books/fulltext/colorline/95.pdf
Posted to The Subject Supposed to Loot and Rape
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Jay: I do read my own references. It was hardly necessary to post all that crap. Anyone who cared could paste in the link for themselves (which would be far better than your spoon-feeding). The reason I even put it up here is to point out the incredible complexity behind what we are talking about. Meanwhile, you cavalierly spout overly simplistic solutions to every problem I have ever seen you address. You appear to be uninterested in any finding that does not support your preconceived ideas about how things ought to work. It does no justice to the issue at all. …
Posted to The Subject Supposed to Loot and Rape
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Rabbit, please drop it. It is rather distracting. I would humbly suggest that page after page of block quoted text is merely annoying and not worth getting so worked up over. ITT could stop the practice by decoding the text before it is stored. Since they choose not to do that, you are throwing yourself on the mercy of people who may not be all that interested in your opinions. BTW, ITT may be more clever than this, but if you want to mess up the whole thread, it is usually as easy as forgetting to close a tag. I thought …
Posted to The Subject Supposed to Loot and Rape
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Tilt! Posted to The Subject Supposed to Loot and Rape
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Don't know who originated this thought, but it wasn't me: [By and large] Gray is a color. Grey is a colour.
Posted to The Subject Supposed to Loot and Rape
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Jay, I think the term "cash welfare" was used to describe the practice of sending welfare checks directly to the poor (TANF). A student of the welfare system such as yourself certainly has a much clearer picture of the different programs available and how benefits are delivered... ...or is it possible that you are calling for the reform of a system you really don't know a flippin' thing about. That would really shock me. Maybe you shouldn't try to dumb it down any further. I think plankton might be able to understand what you wrote, unfortunately they wouldn't actually learn anything …
Posted to The Subject Supposed to Loot and Rape
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I still remember when Marcia Clark of OJ fame taught us all that "hysterical" was a sexist term. Now, I'm sure that she had the perception that the defense attourney was trying to demean her because she was a woman. However, it is interesting that most of us native speakers of English would have absolutely no clue that the etymology of the word might have something to do with a uterus. The reason I find the terms Redskin, Chief, Brave, Squaw offensive really doesn't have anything to do with their origins. They all basically mean "not like me" and I guess …
Posted to Accepting the Slurs
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Jay: They do know it, but there is a limit to what can be accomplished by an exodus of students from low performing schools. The migration reduces funding for schools that need to make improvements. Improvements tend to require investment so what we have is a deterministic system where better schools have the ability to improve, while lower performing schools do not. Suppose, for a moment that all of the non-native speakers of English from all of your neighboring schools took advantage of the school choice policy and went to your child's school. Imagine what that might do to your school's …
Posted to All for One, None for All
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Wouldn't it be nice if there was enough room in the honors classes for everyone who wanted to take them? It is interesting that the hardest thing to move, the people, has been tried in the past. The results, of course you can see for yourself. Now with NCLB, we are dealing with bussing as a sort of do-it-yourself solution. Meanwhile, the easiest thing to move, little green pieces of paper are ever-anchored to the well-to-do communities so that everyone else has to move around to where they are. It is shameful. There are, quite simply, not enough resources to go …
Posted to All for One, None for All
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Jay: The implementation of school choice is part and parcel of the program. You make it voluntary and you make it dependent on the ability of people to get their own children to different neighborhoods to a better school. By design, what you leave in the low-performing school are those with less flexibility to ferry their kids out of town. Kids who live in poor families and kids who's parents don't speak English, etc. These folks are not going to be in as good a position to take advantage of the program. What you *take* from the low performing schools, is …
Posted to All for One, None for All
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Hmmm, for-profit public education... what a concept. How much of a profit would you like your neighborhood high school to be raking in? If you believe the margins are so wide, and there are that many corners to be cut, you are fooling yourself. I'm just sure that Wallmart High School is in the final planning stages as we speak. Re-organization is essential, but I find it interesting that Mr. Cline uses the military (a strictly not-for-profit organization) as his example of entrenched attitudes and what to do about them. General Creech's transformation of aircraft maintenance program when he was in …
Posted to All for One, None for All
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No, it is not about finding effective models, it is about employing them for all children nationwide. In my dealings with education professionals, I have not seen widespread resistance to change. This assumes that the changes are based on research in the field instead of political games aimed at chanelling public money to parochial schools. Many private schools are wonderful if you can afford them. However, cheaper isn't one of the adjectives that comes to mind. If you can only afford McDonalds, you are going to get what you pay for. In the private model, this has to be dealt with …
Posted to All for One, None for All
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You have only one solution. This is the only thing that qualifies as change for you. Was privatization the solution to General Creech's problem? Definitely not.
Posted to All for One, None for All
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Well hello there Jay, nice to see your real face. I can see that what you value is a system that is designed so that a very few, well-off members of society benefit the most from public policy. Pardon my inference of your opinions, but your mindset actually seems quite entrenched. Consider this. If you can afford a 20K per child per year High School education for your family members, you don't need a voucher. It wouldn't matter if you had one either. Your children will be just fine. They are not the reason we have a public education system. …
Posted to All for One, None for All
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I'd have to say that if you have 60,000 per child to spare for 12 years of schooling, you really aren't the reason for the public system either. For those of us who can't afford a private school outright, we would do well to work together on the public system so it isn't sabotaged and starved to death. If you want to home school your kids, please do, but don't expect a cash bonus from the government.
Posted to All for One, None for All
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Actually, I's like to modify that. If ou have the 60,000, you are an important reason for the public system. however, you shouldn't be taking 120,000 out of the public system to pay for something else.
Posted to All for One, None for All
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nice typing, huh?
Posted to All for One, None for All
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There is nothing wrong with the steps really, only the assumptions of what you are going to get for your money. As David points out, there are private schools that operate on lower budgets than area public schools. It is important to compare apples to apples though. A local public school must accept every member of the community regardless of their academic achievements to date or their class rank. So far, a private school does not, hence the idea of 'private' I'll accept your conditions though and change the model so that we are talking only about school choice, not private …
Posted to All for One, None for All
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I agree David. That the deck is stacked against them is a better way of thinking of it. I'd also suggest that some entire schools have the deck stacked against them. And yes, some need complete overhauls. You are also right to note that people do emerge successful from an underprivileged start in life and I don't want to diminish the important role of personal responsibility either. But the education system is one place where it seems that we should try and unstack the deck. Listen up Jay, how about this: If your kid is specifically not meeting the standards, then …
Posted to All for One, None for All
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It is simply this. Scarce resources require rationing. We can talk about school choice *after* we can garantee a solid baseline for all. Nobody is shackling the ballerina here. If your child is gifted and you care about your child's education you are likely to take advantage of all opportunities available to you. Additionally, nobody is stopping anyone from hiring tutors or from providing private lessons if they want to challenge their children further. You could certainly do this for less than the 5k/year you were talking about. You seem to acknowledge in your post that the impact of what is …
Posted to All for One, None for All
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So let me see if I understand your point Jay. You think you should have been able to go to a better school because you had awesome SAT scores? Apart from a lousy counselor, what was wrong with your school that you should be able to leave it. Either schools performance is connected to test scores or it is not. Clearly in your case, the quality of your education was unrelated to your SAT scores. So on what basis shall we decide which schools need to be closed? Having worked in the admission office at a small, private college for a …
Posted to All for One, None for All
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Great idea! We could post military recruiters just outside the door thus solving all our problems at once.
Posted to All for One, None for All
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Wolf: We can draw the conclusion that Jay could read and write very well. We should also infer that armed with test scores like that, he should have been clever enough to take care of himself. When we talk about expanding the limits of public policy, we shouldn't be overly concerned about poor Jay.
Posted to All for One, None for All
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It might be a bit incendiary to imply that all US soldiers in this conflict are war criminals. I served for 5 years in the US Army. I went in with both eyes open and can't say I was lied to either, but things aren't as clear for them now. One complaint I had about my military service was that nobody could explain what an unlawful order was. The examples they always used were rather simplistic and impractical. They never said what to do when ordered to board a plane for a war against a practically defenseless country thousands of miles …
Posted to Witnesses to War
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Actually, wolf, shooting unarmed civilians in the head was *the* worthless example given. Tragic that even these events go unpunished. The catch is that so long as someone says "lookout, he's coming right for us!" Well, in that case all that 'training' goes out the window. If the company commander says "That house is where the terrorists are." Who am I to ask if they are quite sure? If the government assures me that this DU ammo is safe to use, shall I risk the lives of my tank crew with my disobedience? One thing that is specifically not explained, is …
Posted to Witnesses to War
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Nice... Rabbit and David Tag-team Wolf. The new and improved metaphor seems about right but add that the neighbor kids are now throwing rocks at us and we (the police?) have to shoot them to defend ourselves.
Posted to Witnesses to War
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I would not presume to speak for her, but I imagine that these 'indelible memories' you have are exactly the ones she struggles with the most. Images of arabs rejoicing over the tragedy of the American people - devoid of any context or sense of scale have a certain effect. This is probably similar to, but not exactly like the self loathing a lot of us felt when the Abu Ghraib images were released - the happy, thumbs up American smiling over the suffering of other human beings... It make you want to say "Hey guys, we aren't all that way, …
Posted to Ready for Dialogue
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Nice quote. Google says it was Alexis de Tocqueville and he applied it to democracies. Does this mean that if the Iraqis get a government that only a foreign power could love... then that's pretty much on them? Pardon the off topic remark.
Posted to Will History Repeat Itself?
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In some instances and with some groups of people, one can foster confusion about the cause of disparity in America. With blacks in America, it is not really difficult at all because we can all point to slavery as the starting point. People want to believe that ending slavery soved evertything, but that lets us off the hook a bit easy. The garanteed right to vote was hard fought and embarrassingly recent. When exactly, can we point to the fundamental change of heart that rid us of racism as a nation? It didn't happen. WTH wants to pretend it did. We …
Posted to Will History Repeat Itself?
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TFY: What? You said: (the government failed) "-So lets make government bigger!" How about "The fireman was unable to extinguish the flames with a garden hose, so why should we give him a firetruck?" You said: "-...In America, your life discisions create you economic status. Only those that are LAZY stay in poverty..." I call B.S. That is so wrong that it is nearly obscene. You think Paris Hilton created her own economic Status? Shrewed of her to be born into the Hilton family. The trouble with libertarians is that their models always leave out important variables. What you earn has …
Posted to Will History Repeat Itself?
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WTH: You clearly implied that in your view, keeping the notion of race in the social model is a large part of the problem. You offer no solution to the primary inequalities. Equal, is, in fact hard to understand. The tragedy of what teachers do to minority children has little to do with discipline (at first). One major problem is is that they perceive them to be of lower performance. When white teachers listen to recordings of speech, the recording associated with the minority child tends to be rated lower than the tape associated with the white child - even if …
Posted to Will History Repeat Itself?
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TFY: Of course nobody owes you happiness. But do you really think that you are lazier than me if you take home less than I do? That is a crock. Someone has you brainwashed. I'm trying to tell you that your chances of catching up are about the same as that lottery ticket paying off. There may be more millionaires this year than last, but it is a valid question as to how much of it stays in the family. The wealthy reap the benefits of the natural resources in this country. The laws protect their investments. They benefit more from …
Posted to Will History Repeat Itself?
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TFY: John Stossel wrote an article recently that is illustrative of what the inbridled free market is supposed to do for us. If you will merely forgive that he is missing a few important variables in his model and overlook the possibility that he is off his meds, you might think he has a point: http://www.creators.com/opinion_show.cfm?columnsName=jst
Posted to Will History Repeat Itself?
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Someone a few posts back was talking about median income going up and the economy improving, etc. I'm a little troubled by the rosy attitude when juxtaposed with the poverty rate since Bush took office. The problem isn't so much that it is outrageously high, but it is the trend. The rate has gone up every year that the current administration has been in power. The census table below couldn't be easier to read. Not to oversimplify things, but if everything is supposedly booming while the number of impoverished individuals and households is steadily rising, what does this say about the …
Posted to Will History Repeat Itself?
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I haven't been altogether comfortable with the race issue as a central theme of the scenario as it unfolded in New Orleans. I also don't believe that anyone ignored the flood waters *because* the majority of the inhabitants of the area were black. What I do find interesting is how the administration is so focused on perception being reality, and how little mileage they are getting on this huge PR effort. If you are a black man or woman in this country, there is a high probability that you feel race played a substantial role in the response. If I were …
Posted to Katrinas Racial Wake
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G, I'm with you on the skateboard thread. I could care less what certification my driver has. If he isn't too hammered and can get us out of town, then let's go. It was pretty much a melt-down at the local level, but it took most of us about a day to figure that out. Now, if it had beed a suspected terrorist attack that had say... taken out a major levee or dam, nobody would be making excuses for the fed's inability to cope with any local failures. If we could get a nice independent investigation, it would be very …
Posted to Katrinas Racial Wake
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I guess you could either vote your conscious or you can vote... gee, I guess you *can* vote your subconscious. This could explain why we have the neocons running the show. They require that we be in a semi-lucid dream state so we can successfully carry those two opposing beliefs. As security continues to deteriorate and attacks increase in Iraq, the administration claims that this is proof of progress... you know, last throes, etc. ZZzzzzZ "Oh, yeah, they are practically defeated." This white is black and black is white talk reminds me of a time before the war. As I watched …
Posted to Beyond the Vietnam Syndrome
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I'm not really sure I understand the implication of the statement "leftists are not known for a conscience much less good sense." By comparison, the neocons must be clearly distinguishing themselves as those with clean consciences and good sense abound. It really is a wonderful quote that scorp mentions, but rather than be upset about it, he seems to celebrate the fact that the truth was butchered so we could have this war. I would be ashamed, but since I have no conscience, I guess I'll just have to live with being angry. American corporations and the American government profited from …
Posted to Beyond the Vietnam Syndrome
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Low Cost Affair? That is acutely absurd. In Atlantic Monthly, a couple issues back there was discussion about how we would fight China if such a need ever arose. I couldn't help thinking that through privatization we have effectively made warfare so incredibly expensive for us that it costs us a billion a week or so to fight a country of only 25 million inhabitants with an utterly depleted army and no navy or airforce. The tremendous pay-off you laud seems to be limited at this time to military contractors and private security firms. I haven't noticed any relief on oil …
Posted to Beyond the Vietnam Syndrome
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The proof of the pudding is in the eating scorp. Iraq is a larger threat now than it was before we invaded - we failed in our objective and there is no sensible rationale for continuing. Meanwhile, we have every reason to expect that an incremental boost in our own brutality will only bring more failure. Some people refuse to see it, but then, some people still feel that Vietnam was a good idea and that if we had simply nuked the jungle, the world would be a better place today. The nearsighted presidential urge to oust Saddam by violent aggression …
Posted to Beyond the Vietnam Syndrome
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think4yourself must be one of the over 40% of Americans that think they are or will be in the second percentile of income earners in this country. He surely doesn't know anything about China's economic system, but he can say with confidence that those with the power make the money. He then goes on to make the outrageous claim that it doesn't work that way here. And will someone tell me why is it so hard to admit that Saddam was no threat to us? This tenacity is one of the more pathological traits from the right wing. What exactly would …
Posted to Beyond the Vietnam Syndrome
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Scorp: 1) The price of oil is effectively set by a cartel. The law of supply and demand is actually a conservative fantasy where even things that have inelastic demand such as open heart surgery and life-saving medications obey all the rules. 2) "Corrective" actions would have been refreshing. What is the antonym of corrective action? Whatever that word is, I guess that's how I would characterize what we are doing now. 3) Would *you* care to prove for all of us that *you* do not have WMD? If we don't find any, I could simply assert that because we can't …
Posted to Beyond the Vietnam Syndrome
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Even 18 bricks short in my hod.
Posted to Beyond the Vietnam Syndrome
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We could have easily had $5/gallon before now. The additional tax revenue might have actually paid for, among other things, more R&D. Now we get to wean ourselves the hard way - with an obscene number of SUV's in our driveways. Nobody expected Bush to *prevent* the disaster, though a closer look at policy would be nice. What we really needed him to do was to respond to it quickly and decisively. Brownie's idea of sending homeland security employees down there with two days to report and a mission to "convey a positive image of disaster relief operations to government officials" …
Posted to Beyond the Vietnam Syndrome
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Gee, Thanks for protecting my sensitive eyes. However, I have to say that this thread lost a tiny bit of continuity without half the posts, but I'd also have to say that it looks like I didn't miss too much. Ghost made a decent point about this being self inflicted. We have a huge leadership problem to be certain. There is no credibility in saying that nobody saw this coming. It is also hard to believe that we are any more prepared for a terrorist attack than we are for a Cat III hurricane. It is plain to see that the …
Posted to Unnatural Disaster
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You guys are a little far afield. I'm quite interested in what WTH had to say. He seems to be saying Casey signed up, he knew what was at stake and he paid the price. The trouble with this line of reasoning is that we now live in an environment where our government can not be trusted to honestly lay out for us what is at stake. The American people got behind a false message of national self defense. A good many of us were skeptical and were ignored. Those who answered the call (and enlisted) can surely be thanked for …
Posted to End it Already
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This is interesting. I find conservatives do this to me all the time. They are in effect asking "Well how would *you* fix the mess my beloved administration has created?" The consequenes of staying in Iraq are plain to all but the 'dead-enders' in the administration who are blind to their own failures. (ie: firing the entire Iraqi army and police force) I would, in fact, immediately implement a policy of withdrawl. As it is, our presence there is inciting escalating violence and our soldiers are largely there to provide security for our own presence. Naturally, it would be impossible to …
Posted to End it Already
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Oh, we definitely have a problem, wolf. We are under the illusion that the war on terrorism can be won by killing everyone who hates us faster than we can create new adversaries. Is Fallujah peaceful now? Is that what we have in store for the rest of Iraq? Let's assume that staying the course is the right move. How many terrorists/insurgents do you suppose we would need to kill in order to buy enough time for the government to train a security force? How many terrorists and insurgents will that new government need to kill after we are gone to …
Posted to End it Already
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Tidy analogy, but it is incredibly arrogant to always imagine us as the police rescuing everyone, wolf. I happen to love this country, but many of us refuse to accept that some major bad actors are out there on our behalf. We aren't viewed by all as the police, you know. To many, we have invaded a family home. Having ransacked the place and failing to find what we were looking for, we have declared that all we ever wanted was to get rid of our former friend the wife-beater. We insist that we are doing this only because we love …
Posted to End it Already
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I feel I was too dismissive of your analogy. I actually appreciate the care you took in showing unintended consequences. I only meant to reject that default image of the U.S. as the nice policeman. It is easy to get carried away with analogies. You should have seen the yarn I was beginning to spin about the neighbors coming over and throwing rocks - I had to cut myself off. Thanks for the thoughtful chat.
Posted to End it Already
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