WAR! What is it good for?

Badger · Post by **Badger** » Fri Sep 19, 2003 9:04 am

BTW Chimp What's Next: "Grey Water Dumping as a Political Metaphor for North American Capitalist Hegemony in Central America?"

Chimp · Post by **Chimp** » Fri Sep 19, 2003 9:08 am

Er...No?

Badger · Post by **Badger** » Fri Sep 19, 2003 9:08 am

"Scooter Bans: The Failure of the Kyoto Accords and America's Arrogant Energy Policy?"

Chimp · Post by **Chimp** » Fri Sep 19, 2003 9:12 am

Never mind the scooters Badger

I like the second bit more...

how about?

'Kyoto, America's blind stupidity in the face of ensuing ecological diaster?'

TestesInSac · Post by **TestesInSac** » Fri Sep 19, 2003 10:09 am

Chimp wrote:Never mind the scooters Badger

I like the second bit more...

how about?

'Kyoto, America's blind stupidity in the face of ensuing ecological diaster?'

It seems to me the height of arrogance to presume to know so much about the future and its causes in the present. Foolish it is to push the boundaries of an envelope you know little about. It's why I try to minimize my garbage creation, recycle what I can and drive less that 2000 miles per year. But Earth's geology and biosphere have carbon sinking mechanisms that probably can deal with far more than we've loaded it with. After all, the Earth's atmosphere started out with far more CO2 than today.

Seems to me that those who most emotionally use this topic to beat the US over the head with tend to know the least about it.

TestesInSac · Post by **TestesInSac** » Fri Sep 19, 2003 10:12 am

Chimp wrote:Cas

Get over it, your continued animosity and nit picking is excruciatingly boring - no doubt I will have more of it to read when I wake up tommorrow

happy happy, joy, joy...

zzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzz

You never did address the question of heterogeneity in nature and in points of view, old bean.

Jordan 10-E · Post by **Jordan 10-E** » Fri Sep 19, 2003 12:41 pm

humm..this thread has what to do with Burning Man? I can see some connections (maybe) but I'd rather talk about Burning Man on the eplaya than general discussions of war that can find more appropriate forums outside of the eplaya.

TestesInSac · Post by **TestesInSac** » Fri Sep 19, 2003 12:58 pm

Jordan 10-E wrote:humm..this thread has what to do with Burning Man? I can see some connections (maybe) but I'd rather talk about Burning Man on the eplaya than general discussions of war that can find more appropriate forums outside of the eplaya.

Well, on the one hand, this topic has just been flogged to death, with little value in general to show for it. So, I share your sentiment about political threads here to some extent.

On the other hand, I personally have learned a few things about myself via responses to such threads, and it's a barometer of the level of emotion out there in the burner world. Maybe not a good one, though.

I think that even voluntary suppression of topics just because they're emotionally charged is tricky, at best.

chickenfish · Post by **chickenfish** » Fri Sep 19, 2003 2:29 pm

Welcome to the United States of Texass...bow down to your fearless leader King george the second. Give us your oil so we can drive our Hummers out in the desert disguised as boats...so we can make gasoline to start fires...we need your children so they can make soccerballs and sneakers for our children...we'll do it all by trading drugs for guns...

There was a good article in the sf bay guardian last week ( we do get SOME good media in the states, though it is few and far between- since everything else is owned by clearchannel....)
WAR is big business. Welcome to the crapitalism.

http://www.sfbg.com/37/50/cover_censored.html[/url]

lurker · Post by **lurker** » Fri Sep 19, 2003 6:06 pm

why does everybody act as of there's some kind of news blackout in the US?

Everybody goes around saying that the people are duped by stooges in the media, the media toes the Bush line

But we all are reading something different, aren't we? There's websites and papers and even television, from the US and from abroad that is as available to me as it is to you--and pretty much everyone else.

There's so much alternative media that if you can't find it you're deliberately ignoring it.

Why pretend otherwise?

TestesInSac · Post by **TestesInSac** » Fri Sep 19, 2003 6:11 pm

lurker wrote:There's so much alternative media that if you can't find it you're deliberately ignoring it.

Why pretend otherwise?

Careful, deliberately ignoring facts that get in the way of your beliefs is a sacred tradition, the questioning of which will get you flamed around here.

But then, so will lurking.

PJ · Post by PJ » Fri Sep 19, 2003 8:31 pm

I feel a bit responsible for rebuilding Afghanistan, although to a certain extent that might be because Afghanistan can be rebuilt for about $500 and I'm really cheap.

I'd feel more of a desire to hand-hold the Iraqis through their instability if their first instinct after being liberated from servitude to a monster wasn't to put on an LA riot revival show.

Can't blame the rest of the world for their hesitancy to get involved in these things. Britain lost, what was it, four Afghan wars? It's no small thing to do these things even a little bit right. I feel pretty strongly that it'll take thoughtful people about twenty years to judge if, on balance, overthrowing the Saddam regime was right or wrong. But in any case I don't think I'm the only one wishing that they hadn't fixated on the WMD issue. So what if France, Russia, and leftists around the glove believed that Iraq did indeed still have WMDs--the real issue in my mind was: is it right or wrong to overthrow completely evil totalitarian governments? There's only a handful left in the world. I've not made up my mind.

nymphgonebad · Post by **nymphgonebad** » Fri Sep 19, 2003 8:44 pm

TestesInSac wrote: I think that even voluntary suppression of topics just because they're emotionally charged is tricky, at best.

criminal, really.

TestesInSac · Post by **TestesInSac** » Fri Sep 19, 2003 9:01 pm

PJ wrote:I feel a bit responsible for rebuilding Afghanistan, although to a certain extent that might be because Afghanistan can be rebuilt for about $500 and I'm really cheap.

You and me both. But then, you knew that.

PJ wrote:I'd feel more of a desire to hand-hold the Iraqis through their instability if their first instinct after being liberated from servitude to a monster wasn't to put on an LA riot revival show.

That, to all the noobs here, is a principal reason I opposed intervention in Iraq. In a nutshell, they simply have some maturing to do before they're ready for representative gov't and rule by law (as opposed to monsters, which appear to reside latently in a multitude of them).

PJ wrote:Can't blame the rest of the world for their hesitancy to get involved in these things. Britain lost, what was it, four Afghan wars? It's no small thing to do these things even a little bit right. I feel pretty strongly that it'll take thoughtful people about twenty years to judge if, on balance, overthrowing the Saddam regime was right or wrong. But in any case I don't think I'm the only one wishing that they hadn't fixated on the WMD issue. So what if France, Russia, and leftists around the glove believed that Iraq did indeed still have WMDs--the real issue in my mind was: is it right or wrong to overthrow completely evil totalitarian governments? There's only a handful left in the world. I've not made up my mind.

Nor have I. Mugabe (Zimbabwe) fairly leaps to mind as someone deserving of a corncob enema, but is it worth it? Iraq appears now to be bereft of WMD resources pre- and post-intervention, but is that a condemnation of intervention? Tricky, tricky questions, little to be answered with emotional diatribe.

lurker · Post by **lurker** » Sat Sep 20, 2003 6:08 am

Oh, I know.

it's just that it gets annoying having people who actually have state owned press telling people in the US that we get some kind of censored news.

We get our news, we get their news, we get alternative press from so many different sides that we're drowning in information. We have news sources whose sole purpose is refuting the mainstream media. We've got so many watchdog groups that reporters had better be accurate on what color underwear they're wearing--or face the wrath of the little 'm' media.

And we get crap from people whose news has to pass through a state bureacracy?

TestesInSac · Post by **TestesInSac** » Sat Sep 20, 2003 9:05 am

lurker wrote:And we get crap from people whose news has to pass through a state bureacracy?

Moreover, it seems certain state bureaucracy's agenda is one of incitement, IMO.

Chimp · Post by **Chimp** » Sat Sep 20, 2003 12:00 pm

Americans draw a veil of secrecy as casualties grow
By Robert Fisk in Baghdad
20 September 2003

A culture of secrecy has descended upon the occupation authorities in Iraq. They will give no tally of the Iraqi civilian lives lost each day. They will not comment on the killing by an American soldier of one of their own Iraqi interpreters yesterday - he was shot dead in front of the Italian diplomat who was the official adviser to the new Iraqi Ministry of Culture - and they cannot explain how General Sultan Hashim Ahmed, the former Iraqi minister of defence and a potential war criminal, should now be described by one of the most senior US officers in Iraq as "a man of honour and integrity".

On Thurrsday in an ambush outside Khaldiaya, 100 miles west of Bagdhad, a minimum of three US soldiers were reported dead and three wounded - local Iraquis claimed eight dead. yet within hours, the occupation authourities were saying exactly the same number were killed and wounded in an ambush in Tikrit. This incident was partly captured on video. Only two soldiers were wounded in the earlier attack, they said.

And for the second day running yesterday the, the mobile telephone system operated by MC1 for the occupation forces collapsed, in effect isolating the "Coalition Provisional Authority" from it's ministries and from US Forces. An increasing number of journalists in Bagdhad now suspect that the US proconsul, Paul Bremer, and his hundreds of assistants enconsed in the heavily guarded former presidential palace, have lost touch with reality Although an inquiry was promised into the shooting of the Iraqi interpreter, details of the incident suggest that US troops now have carte blanche to open fire at Iraqi civilian cars on the mere suspicion that their occupants may be hostile.

Pietro Cordone, the Italian diplomat, was travelling to Mosul with his wife, Mirella, when their car approached an American convoy. According to Mr. Cordone, a soldier managing a machine gun in the rear vehicle appeared to signal to Mr. Cordone's driver that he should not attempt to overtake. The driver did not do so but the soldier then fired a single shot at the car, which hit the interpreter who was in the front passenger seat.

The incident was only reported because Mr. Cordone happened to be in the car. Every day, Iraqi civilians are wounded or shot dead by US troops. Just five days ago, a woman and her child were killed in Bagdhad after US Forces opened fire at a wedding party that was shooting into the air. A 14 year old boy was reported killed in a similar incident two days ago. Then on Thursday, several Iraqi civilians were wounded by US troops after the Khalidya ambush.

During an arms raid near Saddam's hometown, guerillas attacked not only the American raiders, but two of their bases along the Tigris river. It was, an American spokesman said, a co-ordinated attack on soldiers of the 4th infantry division. up to 40 men of "Military age" were arrested.

In what must be one of the most extraordinary events of the day, General Sultan Ahmed handed himself over to Major General David Petraeus - in charge of the north of Iraq - after the American commander sent him a letter describing him as "a man of honour and integrity". in return for his surrender - says the Kurdish intermediary who arranged his handover - the Americans had promised to remove him from the list of 55 most wanted Iraqis.

I last saw general Ahmed in April, brandishing a gold painted kalashnikov in the Ministry of Information and vowing eternal war against the American invaders. It was Ahmed who persuaded Norman Schwarzkopf to allow the defeated Iraqi forces to use military helicopters on "official business" after the 1991 US - Iraqi ceasefire agreed at Safwan.

These helicopters were then used in the brutal repression of the Shia muslims and Kurdish rebellions against Saddam. Afterwards there was much talk of indicting Ahmed as a war criminal, but General Petraeus seems to have thrown that idae into the wastebin.

In his letter to Ahmed the US officer says that "although we find ourselves on different sides of this war we do share common traits. As military men we follow the orders of our superiors. We may not neccersarily agree with the poilicies and buraucracy, but we understand the unity of command and supporting our leaders in a common and just cause." Thus far have the Americans now gone in appeasing the men who may have influence over the Iraqi guerillas now killing US soldiers.

What is presumably supposed to be seen as a gesture of compromise is much more likely to be understood as a sign of military weakness - which it clearly is. Historians will also have to ruminate upon the implications of the meaning of "supporting our leaders in a just and common cause". Are Saddam and Mr. Bush supposed to be these "leaders."

PS: On the subject of arrogance - does it not seem pretty arrogant to describe a whole nation as 'immature' and unable to govern themselves?

TestesInSac · Post by **TestesInSac** » Sat Sep 20, 2003 12:08 pm

Chimp wrote:PS: On the subject of arrogance - does it not seem pretty arrogant to describe a whole nation as 'immature' and unable to govern themselves?

Why, yes, it does! But us gluttonous, over-consuming, SUV-driving rednecks are learning to ignore a lot of what comes from across the pond.

nymphgonebad · Post by **nymphgonebad** » Sat Sep 20, 2003 12:20 pm

here to injest some much needed levity in this goddamned, mordant thread ( true story):

had a teacher in high school, name of jack, who told us this story; one day in elementary school, jack almost puts out some kids eye shooting rubber bands across the classroom. the teachers busts him righteously and makes him stay after school. as a punishment, she draws an eye on the blackboard and makes him shoot rubber bands at it.

long story short, she comes back after an hour and asks him: "so have you learned your lesson?" he replies, "no, but it's improving my aim."

seaquesta · Post by **seaquesta** » Sat Sep 20, 2003 12:27 pm

I'm reserving this spot for a later comment!
I had read the all of the thread and do have something to say. I just think I'll do a bit of napping first to recharge the brain.
I will start with, our (American) views are the make up of the collection of information we have paid attention to. What we say may not always come out in the correct collection of words and the definition of them is more the subject than the issue itself. Our POM friend "Chimp" has done a good job of stirring up the mix. We however are not being listened to for the lack of interest in our story. We American's have a handicap, we are allowed to say what we want about what we care to. It then becomes the work of the "powers that be" to sort out the situation and come to some conclusion as to what actual position we stand on. Be it correct, ours or otherwise!
I think the POM is more a placement for the C.I.A. in an attempt to gather information on the population of BRC so as to build a defense against our newly realized political movement.
Yes, we are becoming a political power!

TestesInSac · Post by **TestesInSac** » Sat Sep 20, 2003 12:33 pm

What?! Chimp's a CIA plant? Boy, don't I feel silly.

nymphgonebad · Post by **nymphgonebad** » Sat Sep 20, 2003 12:46 pm

another true story:

dated a guy named steve, who went to u.v.a. and was a sharp shooter on the gun squad. it had been his dream since high school to join the cia and went to see a campus recruiter.

the spook looks over his record and then sez to him, let me give you some advice, son. if you join the cia now, you'll be put to work as a government assasin. my suggestion to you is, go to law school. if you still want to join the cia after that, get in touch.

Chimp · Post by **Chimp** » Sat Sep 20, 2003 12:49 pm

On the subject of Iraqi self goverment a London University lecturer wrote this letter to the editor of an international newspaper regarding a recent article -

Both he and the journalist in question are Iraqi and they hold very different opinions

Sir:

Johann Hari ("The homecoming" 18th Sept) is still doing his best to justify his support for the war on Iraq.

I too returned to Iraq to see for myself after 34 years in exile. But I arrived at conclusions contrary to those of Mr. Hari and his Iraqi informants. He is happy to quote his informants' nonsense that "even after liberation they couldn't understand that they were free; they didn't understand what it meant". This I presume is his answer to the plain fact that the Iraqi people refused to shower the invaders with flowers.

I talked with scores of people in Bagdhad and, with only two exceptions, they opposed the US occupation and regarded it as the US "master" (ussta) replacing the apprentice (sani). For it is almost universally believed in Iraq, even among some supporters of the invasion, that the US was the power that not only backed Saddams tyranny and armed him with WMD, but worked for decades to keep him in power.

Saddam's old right wing friends, Rumsfield and co, are recruiting Saddam's security men and are prepared to drench Iraq in new bloodbaths precisely to stop it's people from achieving democracy and true liberation.

SAMI RAMADANI

Well, it's an opinion

Here are some more salient points from another letter published in the same paper -

The Saddam regime was itself the result of the post - collonial mess in Iraq created by fifty years of British interference. Why should we expect the current interference to lead to a better result?

If an illegal, unprovoked invasion of a sovereign state on the false pretext of WMD is justifiable because of it's horrible regime, where do you stop? Indeed where do you start?

If people seriously think that the current imperial powers are interested in furthering democracy and freedom for their own sake - well, the politest response to that is that the evidence of history does not bear them out.

And if you think this is just leftie Brits sounding off check this out -

"I once believed that I served a cause: 'to uphold and defend the constitution of the United States'. Now I no longer believe that," Tim Predmore, a member of the 101st Airborne Division serving near Mosul, wrote in a blistering opinion piece this week for his home newspaper, the Peoria Journal Star in Illinois, "I can no longer justify my service for what I believe to half - truths and bold lies...we have all faced death in Iraq without reason or justification, how many more must die? How many more tears must be shed before Americans awake and demand the return of the men and women whose job it is to protect them rather than their leaders interest."

Chimp · Post by **Chimp** » Sat Sep 20, 2003 1:01 pm

CIA, I think not.. the names Chimp, James Chimp

MI5

TestesInSac · Post by **TestesInSac** » Sat Sep 20, 2003 1:03 pm

Chimpy, there might be 3 or 4 folks on this board who think we should be in Iraq, I say, might. But the vast majority here already hold your point of view. Don't you think you're preaching to a dead horse, or flogging the choir, or something?

BTW, you still haven't addressed the heterogeneity in points of view question.

nymphgonebad · Post by **nymphgonebad** » Sat Sep 20, 2003 1:10 pm

TestesInSac wrote: Don't you think you're preaching to a dead horse, or flogging the choir, or something?

is that what he's doing? gee, i thought he was sharing information with us.

sorry, my bad.

TestesInSac · Post by **TestesInSac** » Sat Sep 20, 2003 1:42 pm

princess strych-9 wrote: is that what he's doing? gee, i thought he was sharing information with us.

sorry, my bad.

Fine. Has anything from any of those lengthy posts changed your mind about Iraq or our involvement there?

Anyone else here freshly born-again to activism?

nymphgonebad · Post by **nymphgonebad** » Sat Sep 20, 2003 1:49 pm

TestesInSac wrote:
princess strych-9 wrote: is that what he's doing? gee, i thought he was sharing information with us.

sorry, my bad.
Fine. Has anything from any of those lengthy posts changed your mind about Iraq or our involvement there?

Anyone else here freshly born-again to activism?

nope. but as an educator, i believe in educating myself as thouroughly as possible.

sure there's plenty of liberal media in the us to keep me seething and full of rage, but hearing the perspective of someone who doesn't live here is refreshing and eye opening.

are you trying to tell me you havn't learned anything from this exchange? if you havn't, i suggest you stop posting for a while and reread all of the above.

Badger · Post by **Badger** » Sat Sep 20, 2003 1:52 pm

Fine. Has anything from any of those lengthy posts changed your mind about Iraq or our involvement there?

Not quite.

I'm more inclined to read about the port-o-toilets rather than re-rehashed, cut and paste political missives that elaborate on the obvious and require little original thought on the part of the poster to convey their point(s). My inclination is to do a thread bump rather than be reminded that lame, preach-to-the-choir evangelism is boring, annoying and ultimately futile no matter what side of the fence one's throwing their rocks from.

TestesInSac · Post by **TestesInSac** » Sat Sep 20, 2003 1:53 pm

princess strych-9 wrote:are you trying to tell me you havn't learned anything from this exchange? if you havn't, i suggest you stop posting for a while and reread all of the above.

And what if I've already read the lot of that somewhere else? Supposing I've even used some of it to argue against intervention myself? Wouldn't your admonition then be a bit presumptuous?

WAR! What is it good for?

United States of Texass

lack of media?

Re: lack of media?