Iraq: Ten years later
POSTED BY: Niki2
UPDATED: Saturday, March 23, 2013 00:10
VIEWED: 10954
PAGE 4 of 9
Quote:
Originally posted by canttakesky:Quote:
Originally posted by MAL4PREZ:
And this is where I say FU. Please show me where I, or anyone here, said this was OK?
You said it with your vote.Quote:And yet, you voted him into office. Again.
FU again. I do not turn a blind eye, and I criticize freely.Quote:I'm an anarchist. Not what I want either.
that is NOT what I want.Quote:
...or that in any way we fawn over him. You're being like Rappy along these lines. Just stop with the assumptions.
You fawn over him enough to vote for him. Or did I assume wrongly that you did?
You keep equating voting for the lesser of two evils with "fawning".
Im with Mal. FU. You really think Romney would have been better?
Excuse me while I soak in all these sweet, sweet conservative tears.
"We will never have the elite, smart people on our side." -- Rick "Frothy" Santorum
"Goram it kid, let's frak this thing and go home! Engage!"
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Quote:
Originally posted by canttakesky:Quote:
Originally posted by MAL4PREZ:
And this is where I say FU. Please show me where I, or anyone here, said this was OK?
You said it with your vote.
Yep, this is what I mean by RWA. 100% for or against, and incapable of seeing shades of grey.
Quote:
So slightly higher moral ground, yes. But only slightly.
So clearly it makes you feel good to remove yourself from the system, to not try to do anything that will have an actual effect so that you don't have to take any responsibility for outcomes. You have righteousness on your side - brava!
You're welcome to your approach, and your biased RWA superiority complex, if it makes you happy. Of course, this approach will never change anything. Basically, you've chosen your superiority and peace of mind over the chance to actually fix anything.
Not that I blame you. I've made similar choices for a lot of my life. But don't even start putting me down as the one to blame for EVERYTHING, when all you did was check a box that changed NOTHING.
ETA: CTS, I'd like you to address the issue of USA dictatorship. If Obama has the power to begin/end wars etc, how do you think this will go down when other parties (I say parties because who knows what the GOP will become) take power?
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Quote:
Originally posted by MAL4PREZ:
However, if all the good people leave the game, it is guaranteed to not change.
Well said. Those who just take their ball and go home to pout have chose irrelevence, after which their opinions, no matter how angry, are nothing but pissing in the wind.
Excuse me while I soak in all these sweet, sweet conservative tears.
"We will never have the elite, smart people on our side." -- Rick "Frothy" Santorum
"Goram it kid, let's frak this thing and go home! Engage!"
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Oh, that's laughable. We voted, so we're condemned. So by not voting, by letting the worse of two evils be elected--not by working toward getting better people into power, by voting to avoid what we believe will be even worse disaster, by voting to keep the worst at bay, one is condemned as evil, whatever one might do or however one might try to influence those who DO get in power to do a better job.
Boy, you got it whipped. Just don't vote, and you're the good guy! Vote for some symbolic perfect candidate who'll never get power, never change a damned thing, you get to condemn everyone else, to the point of saying they fawn over the person because they checked a box!
I worked for, and voted for, a Congressional candidate when our (MOST excellent) Congresswoman retired this past election. I did so because he had a CHANCE...the guy who was more likely to win, by the way, wasn't bad at all, but I thought Solomon would do a better job, and he had a CHANCE. It ended up a very, very close race, with a recount, and the other guy won. In a case such as that, hell, yeah, I'll bust my ASS to try and get the guy I believe in to win; but if you're saying we should vote for someone who hasn't a chance in hell, just 'cuz the two who will obviously duke it out in the end aren't good enough, then you're part of the problem. If you're saying we shouldn't vote at ALL, then jezus, there's no hope for you, you are WORSE than part of the problem, in my opinion.
Wow. Talk about impossibility of communication; you don't WANT to communicate or make thing better, you just want to sit on your high horse and judge everyone else self-righteously, while taking no responsibility for yourself. Gotcha.
Meanwhile, back in the REAL world...
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Quote:
It's a little RWA I think, to have to be either 100% for or 100% against a political system or political person. There are very few 100% out there for me. I like some things about O and dislike others.
No, in my case it's black and white thinking hallmark of a mental disorder - and the only way I can be.
You want to believe that the system is still fair, that it can be changed from within, and I empathize and sympathize with you.
And I envy you. Because you still have that hope. I don't.
It's not a very nice place to be living in. The sheer horror of knowing what would happen to most people if the system collapsed far overshadows the triumphant sense of satisfaction I would get in seeing something so rotten and irredeemable and vicious and EVIL fall.
The reason I am dangerous is that part of me wants that outcome anyway so hard I can TASTE it. And if I saw a moment's opportunity where I could make that happen, a nudge, like dominoes, I wouldn't even hesitate.
Here's the worst part. I'm on your side. When the national guard marches on the cities and you're on the line throwing rocks, I'm on your side. We might disagree fundamentally on whether we even want there to be a city there at the end of the day, but so long as you're willing to throw rocks, I'll be willing to stand beside you. And at the end of the day, I'll be the one dead, not you. The people will speak, and they will not want what I want. The cycle will start over. Humanity's future will always be an endless cycle of violence and corruption and a boot stomping on someone's face. And I can't stop it. But I have to try.
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Only thing I have to say: "black and white thinking hallmark of a mental disorder - and the only way I can be." That's not true. It's the only way you CHOOSE to be, and that is 100% your perrogative. But there isn't a mental illness around which MAKES you think in black and white if you don't want to. Just sayin', on behalf of the mentally ill everywhere.
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Really? You think I'd choose to be like this?
I'm not sure I'm adding anything more to the conversation other than whining now so I guess it's time for me to quit this thread.
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Quote:
Originally posted by BYTEMITE:
Really? You think I'd choose to be like this?
I'm not sure I'm adding anything more to the conversation other than whining now so I guess it's time for me to quit this thread.
No, I don't think you choose. And I really do empathize, with you and even a little with CTS. I know I'm older than you, and I think I'm older than CTS, and I was a lot more like you when I was your age. (Mental issues and all!) I had some opinions, a direction I leaned, but mostly a huge disgust for politics that made me avoid it and the news as much as possible.
All that changed in the elections of 2000, when I started paying attention. Just imagine what the world would be like now if a few hundred people in Florida had voted for Gore rather than Nader. Imagine that there had been no privatization of our military, no appointments to the SC who made money=free speech the law of the land. No cowboy mentality that guns and torture solve everything. No govt energy committees made of oil execs. No dismantling of environmental protections. No dismantling of financial oversight that led to the crash.
My gawd yes - votes make a difference!
I must note that I didn't vote for Gore. I thought he was a doorknob. (Not that my vote mattered - except that in my district Nader beat Bush which I love!) Nothing would have perfect under Gore, and I'm sure other problems would have arisen. But holy cow, so much badness would have been avoided!
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Quote:
Originally posted by BYTEMITE:
You mean bombing the shit out of a place, killing hundreds of thousands of people, creating power vacuums, and subverting economic resources for our own means doesn't automatically impose order on other countries?
Gotta be proud, Iraq was horrible when Saddam Hussein ran it, nothing like discovering that good intentions mixed with greed, fanaticism, and imperialism can lead an entire region to whole new lows. Well done everyone! Cakes all around.
I don't usually speak from personal experience when dealing with politics, however my father served in both the original Gulf war and the latest 2nd Gulf War. About a year ago I finally asked him what his opinion of the war was, and whether he thought the United States should have ever invaded Iraq. After a moment of silence he responded with something to the gist of:
"I didn't fight that war to find WMD's and I didn't fight in that nation to steal it's oil either. Its a shame that the Bush administration gave the reasons it did for invading Iraq, especially when it was one of the few wars where we could have taken a moral high ground. Our Casus Belli didn't have to be an imminent threat to ourselves, but rather one towards humanity. The guy was a bad guy, he massacred his own population, the torture chambers were horrible. I don't think the way we handled popping up their government was right, there was allot on the administrative side that was downright wrong, but I can't say that the world would be as safe as it is now if we hadn't taken Sadam out."
I also think you are vastly blowing the statistics of the deaths FAR out of proportion. Less Iraqi's died as a result of US troop interactions than did of civilian violence. Sadam killed as many as 800,000 people, and that isn't even taking into consideration the Iraq-Iran war. Most estimates say that during the entire Iraq war 150,000 people died "violent" deaths which includes sectarian and war related deaths...
I'm not excusing the Administrations lies or the mishandling of the war, however I find it crazy that people don't pride America for doing the good thing for once.
"But who prays for Satan? Who, in eighteen centuries, has had the common humanity to pray for the one sinner that needed it the most?"- Mark Twain
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Funny how the "right" thing always consists of civilian casualties. Ha. Ha.
And now that Saddam Hussein is gone, Iran is coming to power, so we can go to war with Iran now! It's okay if civilians die, they're evil anyway, so it has to be done. The ends justify the means!
Or maybe the situation is far more complicated than any of us give it credit for and maybe it never had ANYTHING to do with what was "right." Maybe if we cared a jot about what was "right," we wouldn't have supported Saddam Hussein when it was convenient, and withdrawn that support when it wasn't.
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