Republicans & Conservatives: Archives

I’m sorry Matel but I have to disagree with you. About most everything you said.

We are not the defenders of peace… we are the oppressors of the world. We are the task masters telling the rest of the world what to do. There is nothing peaceful about going to war for a fabricated reason.

You said that latin America is in relative peace?
That is the farthest thing from the truth. Ever since we began supporting the Contras in overthrowing the Nicarauguan government, in defiance of both the U.N. as well as the world court.

We, along with Pakistan, Israel, and sometimes the U.K. are the only participant in the U.N. that has routinely voted against, and in some cases vetoed resolutions aimed at everything from simply not creating NEW nukes, to outlawing the militarization of space.

No, I’m sorry but the U.S. is not the promoter of peace you make it out to be. In fact we arethe single most violent, and oppressive country the world has ever seen. Because this is the first time that any one country has had the ability to contol the entire world, as we do.

General McArthur said “A soldier above all other prays for peace”.
And all the while he stands ready to fight and if nessary die to defend us. If it wasn’t for their sacrifice and dedication to our freedom, we would have long ago ceased to be a free people.

Jack,

“It is probable that a twenty-five year old living in most of Europe, Japan, Australia, Latin and North America has no personal memory of organized violence and has never seen war except on television.”

You would also have to add to that comment virtually all of Asia as well. Most of the violence on the planet has been contained in very small areas, with no great global outbreak of violence.

How could we have possibly been this lucky?

America is in this position because we out spent everybody in the arms race.

Thanks Anthony for the periodic reminder Americans need. I am so bewildered by Ryan’s diatribe that I’ll just limit myself to another famous saying attributed to General Patton. It is noble to die for your country. But it is better to let the other bastard die for his country instead.

Translation:

If you are against the Iraq War, you are against the US Troops.

If you support the Troops, you must support Bush Junior.

As far as the translation “If you are against the Iraq War, you are against the US Troops…” How simplistic do you want to get? The troops did not get us into this war, our government did, and conflating the two makes no sense at all.

Have none of you heard of the Downing Street Memo, that provides proof (neither Tony Blair nor the Bush Administration has said it was untrue)President Bush intended to invade Iraq long before he had any evidence of WMD? Or that the people who provided bad intelligence which supported and justified his decision to invade Iraq have been rewarded with promotions instead of being held accountable for doing sloppy work?

It’s time for true American patriots to not only wake up and smell the coffee, but figure out how to make a better brew.

If ever the people of the world cease to divide themselves geographically, racially, morally, and spiritually, we will understand how futile war really is. The only real division is in what we possess. The only real solution is comprimise. Hence the problem I have with this president who, on one hand, announces his polarized logic to the world in defiance of “democracy”(either with us or against us), and in the other, declares himself a liberator while oppressing not only his dissenters, but the dissenters of his dissenters.

But perhaps what you really want to hear me say is ‘I’m not arguing with you. I just disagree with your opinion and I’m convinced that I can dissuade you of it.’.

Out of the past 3,500 years, only 230 have been without war. So you see, we’re not fighting any wars; it’s simply business as usual. Averages tend to form baslines.

Maybe it should be comforting for us to know that almost everyone alive is cherishing each day more now because they realize that it was an earned day. A burned hand is the best teacher, and a cautious cook is a learned hand.

Hey Ryan, I think you should take up residence with your Islamofascist bretheren. The so called “religion of Peace” (Islam) is the worlds opressing force.

Dice:

Actually, Christianity has far more blood in its hands. Your attack on Muslims is one of the main reasons the US is losing the War on Terror.

Be a Patriot. Stop being a Bigot.

Truth of the matter is, war alone secures no peace. WWI secured no lasting peace. The Gulf War didn’t secure the peace.

This war had as its goal the destruction of an asymmetrical threat from Saddam Hussein, that his WMDs, and a supposed alliance with our terrorist enemies, would allow Saddam to threaten our shores in a way that his far inferior military status would never otherwise allow. Only the Weapons and the terrorists made Saddam enough of a threat to the average American so that they agreed to fight this war. Otherwise, he was just a dictator whose ass we had already royally kicked, and could do so again. An enemy you can so confront is not that much of a threat.

The Democratization of Iraq was always part of the deal, but when we started this thing out, let me remind all of you that it was included in the plan not as the main goal, but as a goal that followed the tradition of other wars we had fought- democratization of a country once the threat it poses to us has been destroyed.

There was no clear and present danger to our country from Iraq, and if we wanted to free some country, we should have gone in and intervened somewhere where there was a threat to intervene against. America’s military is not there to make up for the laziness of an administration’s diplomatic policy, or the impatience and self-righteousness of its leaders. It is there to defend our country against the threats of the here and the now, and to intervene abroad when we can get the world behind our cause.

As a grandson of a WWII vet, I do not underestimate the bravery or courage of our troops, nor our need for them in this uncertain world. As a member of a generation that grew up in the aftermath of the Vietnam war, though, I do not underestimate the harm that misbegotten wars and foreign policies can do to our country, and our armed forces.

…some things are worth fighting for and war can be an appropriate response.

Nothing but platitudes, Jack. I mean, who the hell is going to argue with that?

The debate comes over the whether a specific issue is worth going to war. Do you have any specifics in mind, or are you just doing some subtle troll baiting?

Aldous, I don’t see the christians lopping off the heads of innocent people who don’t agree with their religion. It’s not about biggotry, its about free speech.I don’t see christians flying planes into buildings killing innocent people.

Ryan

I wasn’t really talking about the U.S. My post was generally aimed at the preservation of peace and how it requires the will and capacity to go to war.

Your comment on the U.S. being the most oppressive country in the history of the world does make me wonder about your frame of reference.

Rocky

I think we agree. You point out that the zone of peace has expanded farther than I wrote. This is a truly amazing development.

Subverter

I don’t know how you get 230 years of peace at any time since there were humans on earth. There were some pockets of peace, but even in these places you had what we might call war. A casual look at the most famous periods of peace (Pax Romana & and the Han Dynasty) reveal armed rebellions followed by brutal retribution, barbarian incursions, banditry and pogroms. And the areas outside the Empires were in more of less a constant state of war. The fact that in most of the world for most of history virtually all able bodied males were warriors tell us something about the world.

Jane Goodall’s chip observations found war even among these primates and young male dolphins form alliances to engage in the kind of aggression we would think of as warlike. It seems that the ability to make war is a sign of intelligence. Let’s hope that we can find the wisdom not to abuse that ability.

Aldous

Given that war was endemic throughout history, all groups all the time were fighting with their neighbors. We – all of us – are descended from the most successful. The others are gone.

Re Islam – just pick up a historical atlas. Look at the world in the 7th Century. Christians and Zoroastrians more of less occupy the entire Middle East. N. Africa is Roman (Byzantine) and what is now Algeria and Tunisia are among the most culturally Latin places in the world. These populations are large and have been established for centuries, in some cases millennia. Arabs are present only in small numbers outside Arabia. Look at the same area a century or so later. Something happened to radically alter the mix. Now go to Istanbul where you can see what they say is the sword of the prophet and his immediate followers. You can make up your own mind what happened without reading the history of Jihad.

AP

The thing about platitudes or obvious truth is that you have to repeat them because they are not so obvious in practice.

If everyone acted on what EVERYONE knows to be true and good there wouldn’t be any fat people, poverty would be almost non-existent and all the people on our morning commute would cooperate to get us all to work in the most efficient way.

Re war, not everyone agrees with you and me. There is a significant “give peace a chance” group that is extremely uncomfortable with any use or threat of force. Remember how these guys appeased their way to World War II. They found it offensive when President Bush said that sometimes violent men have to be subdued by violent means.

Stephen, as always, makes some good point re the preservation of peace. We learned our post WWI lesson and defended the peace with resolution after WWII rather than depending on the kindness of strangers and the goodwill of dictators. (Stephen, sorry to extrapolate from your points. I know you had a different context, but do you disagree?)

Where is the tribute to the women, Jack?

There is a significant ?give peace a chance? group that is extremely uncomfortable with any use or threat of force.

I’d argue that group isn’t significant at all, and even their tiny minority conviction would depend on the issue.

Do you want to want to cite a particular instance to debate, or do you just want people to assume you’re talking about Iraq and draw them into making an anti-Iraq war statement so you can disingenuously give them a blanket pacifist label?

Jack, I love this line “Pacifism is a valid strategy only among those who are unconcerned with their lives and liberty or those who know that others will defend them.”

Our military have little concern for their lives or liberty, they willingly give their lives, and certainly give up tremendous amounts of liberty to be in the military.

And yes, they depend on others in the military to defend them in the rear, in a firefight, on a ship, or in the air. They depend on all their support personnel.

So, in all, it would appear there is little difference between pacifists and soldiers save for who they are willing to die for. Soldiers are willing to die for country or anyone they are told to. Pacifists are willing to die (as in the ‘60’s) for the oppressed and downtrodden.

Golly Gee, Jack, there seems to be little difference at all between pacifists and military save their choice of weapons and authority to whom they subject themselves.

Let’s not forget our firemen/women, and policemen/women as well Jack. I see little difference between them and our soldiers and pacifists either. And reporters, they are a dying breed in hostile zones willing to sacrifice their lives so we can keep liberty by staying informed.

Then there are mothers and fathers who have, and would be, willing to lay down there lives for their children.

Hell, Jack, let’s just honor and celebrate humanity shall we? We all do what we do for our own reasons, and for most of us those reasons include others.

Personally, I find as much honor and bravery in any person who cares about and works for the betterment of other people as I do in someone who joins the military so they can blow shit up. More in fact.

In the Army, I knew honorable and brave soldiers, and I knew some who weren’t worth 10% of the money tax payers spent on training them. I presume the Modern Volunteer Army has attracted more of the former than the latter, but, there are still, I am sure, those in the military whose reason for being there is to achieve some right of passage that comes with killing other human beings.

We all owe support and respect for our military, but, not to the exclusion of all the other brave and selfless people who are motivated to sacrifice their time and energy and lives for the benefit of others, like members of the Red Cross, or police, firefighters, moms and dads, and yes, even a few politicians.

Matel says “The question is not why some parts of the world are still subject to war.”

Maybe not in his mind, in this post, but this is a very important question which a lot of people want answered with a change that relieves their lands and people from the destruction, poverty and vastly shortened life spans of today. They want to know why these quarrels over their resources do not take place where the people running them live; why GWB and his crew don’t pick up rifles and command his fight from a battlefield tent like real warriors.

Ryan says “the U.S. is not the promoter of peace”.

The is evidenced not only by the creation of the country thru deceit and genocidal violence against the people who already lived here, the participation in and extension of slavery, and the xenophobic exploitation of every group of immigrants to come here. Though we are always hailed as the great experiment in self-government and human rights, it is obvious to the world that is exploited by us that our behaviour is merely an extension of colonialism, an attempt to perfect the craft of squeezing blood from the turnips growing every where else. The most important lesson, however, is lost: colonialism died because it was exploitive, not symbiotic.

People will labor happily under any type of government that allows them to prosper, but prosperity can not be had if the only relation between “them” and “us” is profit, because “they” will profit and “we” will only die. Sooner or later, “we” get tired of dying and the balance is upset because “they” would not share with “us”.

Indeed, one of the cruelest features of this neocolonialism is the racism it breeds. True or not, “we” feel that “they” think they are better than “us”, and the only relation “they” have to “us” (profit) is the glaring light that proves “us” right: “If they weren’t against us, they would share more with us, on our terms”.

Particular and recent application of this feature is the US policy of refusing reparations or restitution to people who were imprisoned wrongly. How can you take huge segments of a man’s life from him and not compensate him on some scale? Why is restitution available to the Jewish victims of Hitler but not to the Palestinian victims of Israel? These type of injustices (and no, these are not the worst) are never forgotten by the people who, for whatever reason - perceived or real - feel they are oppressed by their relationship with the West.

These are the straws the camel carries that the driver forgets about when the camel rebels because the driver stacks one more little, teeny weeny bit straw on top of the others. If the driver (the US in this case) would consider the camel (“terrorists” today, “Communists” historically) as his partner to work with instead of a tool to use up, there would be much less rebellion and much more work being done.

Instead, the rebellions are seen as unholy wars to unseat our authority as God’s Chosen People, and the rebels have lost their rights to life because of their audacity. We back anyone, including drug dealers, monopolists, racists and con men, as long as they protect our “right” to impose our will on anyone we choose. We conveniently frame our arguments with the rebels in terms that deny the existence of any wrongdoing on our part, and accuse them of “destabilization”, “corruption”, “terror” and worse. We blame them for causing the rebellions, as if we have done nothing to instigate or catalyze them.

That is not the mark of a peace promoter. But, the US is in the arms business. How many arms can you sell to peaceful neighbors?

Ron Brown talks about what a soldier does to keep us free.

Soldiers don’t decide anything in our government. They’re enforcers, nothing more. It isn’t the force of the soldier that solves our foreign relation problems, it’s the decisions of the civilian government.

I love the people that put their lives on the line to defend our policies, too. I just wish they took their citizenship as seriously and demanded honor from the people who put them in harm’s way, but of course they don’t get paid to think…

RKumra feigns “bewilderment” at Ryan’s words.

Would you rather be dead and noble or alive and unknown? Is it better to die for words you did not utter, or to live for your own? Is your life so miserable that you want to fight all the time? Is there nothing you would live for?

Dying in a fight is a coward’s way out of life. Real men (and women) want every second they can get, and guard their lives jealously. Above all, real people THINK their way thru conflict.

Hey Dice, I don’t see any Christians using racks and guillotines on people either. Does that mean that it never happened?

I’m not even gonna go into all the crap that has been done in the name of “modern” civilization. Face it, war is terror and brutality. GWB declared war on people he calls terrorists. If you support him, how can you now claim that the people you’ve declared war on are immoral because they respond to your killing of them in a way you are not prepared to use?

You say their victims were innocent. Are you the judge of this war? Are you the one to whom all intelligence flows? Or are just a bystander to and beneficiary of it, like me?

Matel seems to want us to appreciate the peace that the lives of all who have died in wars has bought us. For Memorial Day, that is a noble gesture, but for life in general, it is a distraction from the problem.

What if no one fought but the policymakers? What if they could not count on you or I giving up our lives to fight their battles? Would our lives be worse, or more peaceful?

A proper use of force is to ensure that people do not murder, rob or rape with impunity. Beyond that, everything is economic, and you really don’t need guns to fight battles over crops and mining and such. What you need is people who will sacrifice time and pride and silly traditions to ensure that everyone gets to eat and have a home.

After all, no one is rich if any one is in poverty.

In fact, this is the heart of conservatism, not the junk that is passed off as it today. Keeping people out of poverty ensures that our communities are safe for our children. Making sure your kids can eat ensures that your 200 pound, 6 foot 8th grader doesn’t beat my kid up for her lunch money!

So why do we let idiots convince us otherwise?

I’m Bob, and I Build…

David

I chose that line specifically because it lays out the dilemma.

Pacifism works only where you are facing an enemy who believes (at least sufficiently) in the rule of law or humanity. Passive resistance could work in the U.S. for that reason. It worked to some extent in British India. It works sometimes in the world today because of the implicit security umbrella provided by the U.S. and our allies.

But it is kind of a circular argument. Pacifism is effective strategies in situations were you already have reasonable and civilized people.

What if Jews tried passive resistance to the Nazis? In fact, most did not resist and posed no threat. That just made it easier for the Nazis. Gandhi famously used passive resistance against the British Empire. What if he had tried that same tactic against the Empire of Japan during the war? Would Martin Luther King have survived more than a couple of minutes using his tactics in Mao’s China? How about Albanian civilians sitting in front of Serbian tanks? The tanks won’t stop. Or would passive resistance have helped anyone against Saddam?

AP

I actually am not referring specifically to Iraq. Why don’t we do this for our debate? We will ask everyone up front to acknowledge that there are occasions where countries in general - and the U.S. in particular- have just cause and need to fight wars, and not only in the past but potentially also in the future. Then we won’t call them pacifists. After that, we should talk about the future i.e. starting from right now, what should be our course of action in Iraq.

But my post was not about Iraq in particular. It is about the general fact that war has been the normal human condition for most of human condition. There was never a golden time of peace and the closest we have come in all of human history to a peaceful world is right here and now. And one reason we have reached this level is that some people are willing to defend it.

Most of us can live in the Kantian world of peace and reason because some of us are willing to stay engaged in the Hobbesian world of conflict and strife.

Jack-
I think you extrapolate wrongly. Yes, we must confront evil, but inside as well as outside. Our sense of our goodness must not become a sense of moral invulnerability. We must have a point where we do indeed have a sense of shame, lest we end up being indistinguishable from our enemies. We are strong enough as a country to defend against our enemies, without making ourselves just like them.

Jack, you make what appears to be a compelling argument by asking: “Gandhi famously used passive resistance against the British Empire. What if he had tried that same tactic against the Empire of Japan during the war?”

But the just as compelling answer is that Gandhi was successful in India, and passive resistance to the Nazis and Imperial Japanese might well have ended the way it did in the USSR. There is no question that many innocent people died at the hands of the Soviet government. But, one has to also weigh how many 100’s of millions of lives were spared precisely because the US and other nations took a passive resistance stance against the nuclear armed Soviet Republic?

Passive resistance against the Imperial Japanese would no doubt have resulted in many more deaths and cruelties at the hands of the Japanese. More than the number killed and horribly maimed by the Nagasaki and Hiroshima bombs? Perhaps.

But the pacifist argument is that the ultimate victors in any passive resistance movement (the pacifists) will result in a victory by those committed to peace, instead of victory left in the hands of those who are committed to their perceived benefits and justifications for war.

Would the world not be a more peaceful place if the ultimate victors were always committed to peace and passive resistance from the outset as were the Russian people under Gorbachev and Yeltsin? They had no desire for violent revolution, they did however have a fervent desire for demonstration and the passive resistance technique of shutting the machinery of state down.

The cost of passive resistance is very high indeed. But, in light of the pervasive and ever prevalent state of war amongst humans, there is just as compelling an argument to be made for insuring the victors are always pacifists, instead of those Hobbesians committed to an eye for eye, making the whole world blind.

Jack,

Great aricle and very timely.
Memorial Day is about honoring our military men and women that served to protect freedom, they came from all walks of life, every political point of view, some joined willingly, some were drafted, all put their life on the line for the rest of us.
The tomb of the unknown may well be the final resting place of a liberal proster that didn’t want to be there, the honor given that site isn’t about politics, its about those that served and gave their life.

If Memorial Day is now political, lets change it to “picnic day”, or “mattress sale day” or something just as silly.

Just my opinion.

David

We differ in our definition of passive resistance and we don’t disagree besides that.

I would not characterize our building up our armed forces to the greatest extent in the history of the world passive. I don’t think we could call keeping deadly bombers and fighters in the air, troops armed with tactical nukes ready to defend the Fulga Gap at a moment’s notice and nuclear submarines constantly on the prowl beneath the seas pacifist. And I don’t think the arms buildup and the threat of deployment of nukes passes the pacifist test. I don’t believe Ronald Reagan and Harry Truman would be welcomed into the pacifist club, but maybe I am wrong.

I would call these things we did for two generations armed vigilance and in my original post I said that we have avoided big wars because we have been vigilant Peace is maintained through the ability and will to go to war. If you want to call that pacifism, I don’t have a problem with the concept. But you might want to inform conscientious objectors that they were mistaken when they chose not to serve in the armed forces of pacifism.

Of course a credible deterrent is only as good as the believe that you might use it. Various strategies are applicable in different situations. I would prefer to avoid war if there are other viable options. I am talking the general situation here. We could talk about whether any particular war was the best option, but that is another story.

Re you question more than we killed in Nagasaki and Hiroshima. Yes. A lot more. We don’t have to be overly hypothetical here. We can count the numbers in China and South East Asia. In the case of our opponents in WWII, more people were likely to die after the fighting than during. That says something. Beyond that, in the course of the 20th Century many more people in general died at that hands of their Communist or Fascist governments than in all the wars. The great leap forward and the Cultural Revolution may have killed as many as 50 million Chinese. About ten million Ukrainians died in Stalin’s terror famines. And remember the six million Jews who died in the holocaust were NOT victims of fighting and not victims of war.

J. Anthony Matel, Are you serious? You say “Nobody wants war.” That’s not true. Bush wanted this “war”. In fact, he wanted it so badly that he told us Iraq had WMD’s and that they were “an immanent threat to us” You say that some things are worth fighting for. While that’s true, I must agree with Ryan…â€There is nothing peaceful about going to war for a fabricated reason.†I would be more inclined to be supportive of a war aimed at true terrorists such as Bin Laden. Remember him? He’s the one responsible for the thousands of innocent people that died on 9-11. Bush has had 5 years to find him. Instead he chose to spend billions of dollars in Iraq. It makes me sick to know that my own brother went to Iraq and fought Bush’s war for fictitious reasons. He (my brother) was one of the lucky ones. He got to come home in one piece. What about all the other brothers, sons, husbands & fathers that didn’t get to come home? Tell me, what exactly did they die for???

Herin

I have been trying to keep this a general talk about war and peace and not about GW Bush.

Nobody wants war. Bush didn’t want war for its own sake. He believed it was necessary for the security of the U.S. and the world. He may have been mistaken, but he did not want war.

How could Bush or the U.S. benefit from this war besides the enhancement of security. Don’t say oil unless you can figure out how it would not have been cheaper to buy from Saddam, who would have sold for under the world price or how $20 billion in annual revenues (yes that is all Iraq oil is worth) could justify the billions you rightly say we have spent on this war.

The people who died in Iraq gave their lives in the hopes of avoiding more lost American lives later.

Jack said: “The great leap forward and the Cultural Revolution may have killed as many as 50 million Chinese. About ten million Ukrainians died in Stalin�s terror famines. And remember the six million Jews who died in the holocaust were NOT victims of fighting and not victims of war.”

And war just added to those numbers. If the goal of war is peace, then supporters of war have yet to ever find a victory other than fleeting and temporary; is what the pacifist would argue and quite logically so.

War is irrelevant. Really. I would day most of the turning points in the history of the world were the result of war. War never made peace. Well, you can just give up, be enslaved or savaged and call that peace if you want.Compromise? Depends on a whole lot, and history shows it doesn’t work with the bad guys.

There a a few here that ought to get around the world more. Some naive thoughts have been expressed BUT, surely we can agree that war is hell.

Jack,

I enjoyed your article and think it’s appropriate to Memorial Day. We could debate at length whether the relative peace of the modern era is due to military achievements or, perhaps in tandem, to a range of other factors, but there’s not much point here. Let’s celebrate the lives of people who have served their nation honorably.

But there is one area of the post that requires response:

Pacifism is a valid strategy only among those who are unconcerned with their lives and liberty or those who know that others will defend them.

And remember the six million Jews who died in the holocaust were NOT victims of fighting and not victims of war.

First, let’s just acknowledge that pacifism is the wrong term. The correct term is nonviolenct resistance, and the Jews who died in the Holocaust did not practice it to any great extent, to my knowledge. Resistance is as much a part of the process as nonviolence.

Second, we’re not sure of the degree to which it can work in some of the most brutal of circustances. It has, according “Mahatma Gandhi and His Myths,” worked against some potent enemies. Author Mark Shepard notes, for example, “In 1968, Czechoslovakian civilians nonviolently held Soviet armed forces at bay for a full week and stopped the Soviet leaders from ever subjugating that country to the degree they had intended. In 1944, military dictators were ousted nonviolently in both El Salvador and Guatemala. And during World War II, Norway nonviolently and successfully resisted Nazi attempts to reorganize its society along fascist lines.”

Behind the philosophy of nonviolent resistance, as far as I understand it, is that the resistance itself awakens a kind of latent humanity or spirituality in others. Gandhi wrote, “An armed man naturally relies upon his arms. A man who is intentionally unarmed relies upon the Unseen Force called God by poets, but called the Unknown by scientists.”

It’s not for the cowardly. Gandhi wrote, “Between violence and cowardly flight, I can only prefer violence to cowardice.”

So, while I think it’s critical to remember of brave soldiers who’ve died defending the U.S. and a democratic way of life, we shouldn’t denigrate or sell short the concept of nonviolent resistance.

Jack said: “Nobody wants war. Bush didn’t want war for its own sake.”

Sorry, but that is one opinion against others which are entirely opposite. For example:

Bush wanted war with Iraq, records support that proposition prior to 9/11. Possible Reasons:

1) Avenge the assasination attempt on his father by Saddam

2) Acquire a military and threatening presence in the Middle East as a hedge against any who would threatent to cut oil supplies from the Middle East

3) Poll numbers: The kick Bush got in his poor poll numbers prior to invading Afghanistan may have been a simple case of one good turn deserving another. If polls went up after invading Afghanistan, he may have reasoned they would go up even more after invading Iraq - afterall, he was looking for reelection.

That should for starters…

Jack-
I do think that Bush wanted this war. Maybe he thought there really was a threat. Maybe he thought the war would be a walk in the park which nobody would much blame him for involving us in, because we were obviously going to find what we were looking for, and everything would be fine.

But regardless, he was wrong, and not merely because he was unlucky, or because there were crucial details he couldn’t have known about. I opposed his reelection because I believed then, as I do now, that Bush proved himself unworthy of the office.

It’s been a perpetual headache trying to convince the right that he screwed things up, a frustration that they’ve so readily accepted explanations that don’t hold up to close scrutiny.

I’m no dove. When we’ve gone in before, I’ve always advocated going in full force. In the past I have had little patience for pull-outs or back-offs, especially where Saddam Hussein was concerned. But I never wanted my country to sacrifice its standing in the world, and after 9/11 the momentum of the War on Terror, to face a dictator obviously going nowhere fast.

Yes, there was a moment when I felt our war in Iraq was justified, after Colin Powell’s speech. And yes, I did think we’d find WMDs. Terrorists, I wasn’t so sure about, and I was still concerned for the progress of the war on Terrorism. But I underestimated how far this government would go to get a war. I overestimated their professionalism in sussing out the real threats and issues facing our country. And I underestimated how much of a death grip they would keep on their public image.

I have never known an administration to be so cavalier in matters of life and death for our men in uniform. Less than a quarter of a percent of our defense budget could have gone to putting real armor on our soldier’s vehicles. but no, doing that would admit a mistake, as would have increasing troop levels during the first part of the war, when it could have done a great deal more good.

Instead, the messenger gets blamed. The media gets blamed simply for stating the truth. The whole thing becomes about pessimism and optimism regarding some politicians plan, rather than the real world effects of our military policy on our soldiers. The image of the war is held as more important than the substance of its situation.

In the end, it makes me angry to see the honor and the sacrifice of our soldiers used by an administration that so abused their willingness and the willingnes of their countryman to defend this country.

Reed (and others)

Once again, we are talking about times when the oppressor had already begun to become less oppressive and in those cases you could hardly call it a triumph in any case. The Nazis considered the Norwegians fellow Aryans. They were much less indulgent with Jews, Poles or Gypsies.

I guess you could put it this way, non-violent resistance works only when your opponent doesn�t really want to kill you or cause you serious injury.

In the case of the Jews and Nazis, it probably would have helped had they refused completely to cooperate in any way. But the result probably would have been the same. You have to appeal to their better natures. If their ideology is to kill or dispossess you, and they think this is a positive good, it is hard to think of a way you can do this.

In the long run, we are all dead. You could argue that the scores of Chinese, Russians, Ukrainians etc who died of communism represent the failure of war, but I don�t see how, since they died in times of peace for their nations. China was not at war during the great leap. The Soviet Union was not at war during the terror famines and not for the whole period of the Gulags.

In the 20th Century, it was most dangerous to live in a communist country, after that a fascist one even in times of peace. War is not the biggest killer. By far totalitarian governments hold that record.

I read about this is many places before and it makes sense historically. I have included. one link of many possible

Translation:

If you are against the Iraq War, you are against the US Troops.

If you support the Troops, you must support Bush Junior.

Posted by: Aldous at May 29, 2005 02:30 AM

Aldous,
What utter rubbish!!! Do you honestly beleive that nonsense? Ask yourself this, Who, wants this war? It’s the politicians in Washington and Big Business. They are making money from this. It’s surely not the poor service member getting shot at is it? Service Members are by and large the most patriotic citizens you will ever meet. How do I know this you ask? I retired after 20 years of service in the defense of this nation. All of my time was active duty, (11.5 years overseas, including Bosnia(20 months) and the first gulf war) I support my troops, However I do not support gwb at all.

Wayne

I suggest you check Aldous’ other contributions to various parts of this blog before you get too upset about what he writes.

Wayne, Aldous has of late, taken to facetiously stating the Right’s position in the hopes that folks will react to it when it is boldly and forthrightly stated, instead of couched in hyperbole and spin.

David

It merely caricatures my positions and very often doesn’t represent them at all. I have written on other occasions that, in my opinion, one reason the left keeps on losing elections is that it believes its own cartoon images of its opponents. While I enjoy watching my side win “against the odds” I don’t think it is healthy for the country.

If you misdiagnose the problem, you are unlikely to solve it. If you misinterpret your opponents, you are less likely to be able to beat them. The Dems miscalculation is their misfortune and none of our own. They exchange the deceptive pleasure for always believing they have the high ground for the reality of winning elections. Oh, I know, next time will be different. When they people wake up the Dems will once again take their rightful places. Maybe the people are not the ones who are dreaming.

Jack said:

The Dems miscalculation is their misfortune and none of our own. They exchange the deceptive pleasure for always believing they have the high ground for the reality of winning elections. Oh, I know, next time will be different. When they people wake up the Dems will once again take their rightful places. Maybe the people are not the ones who are dreaming.

Well, I confess, I find it very difficult to argue with this line of thinking and logic. Well said, Jack.

War is not the biggest killer. By far totalitarian governments hold that record.

No question. And good link. This is why some people are concerned that the U.S. seems to be evolving in a less pluralistic, less tolerant, more autocratic, less open, and more reactionary direction.

I guess you could put it this way, non-violent resistance works only when your opponent doesn’t really want to kill you or cause you serious injury.

Again, as I tried to show before, this probably oversimplifies the dynamic. As Shepard notes, “[The fact there tends to be less destruction in in nonviolent struggles] doesn’t arise because nonviolent struggles are aimed at ‘nice’ enemies. After all, the British aren’t so much nicer than the French, who killed 800,000 Algerians — that’s one out of every thirteen — during Algeria’s war of independence. No, the difference arises because, in a violent struggle, the violence of each side goads the other to greater violence. Also, each side uses the violence of the other side to justify its own violence.”

I’m not suggesting nonviolence resistance is the answer to all the world’s ills or conflict. I’m only saying that the dynamic is more complex and less well understood than you’ve asserted.

Jack-
Well, that’s what it boils down to eventually. What we Democrats have been saying is that the war plan’s been a load of crap, our intent being to have an alternative strategy brought to bear to improve things. Only, your side sees your plan as the exclusive plan for the salvation of the war. Since we don’t look kindly on that, we are accused of being pessimists, accused of rooting for defeat in the war.

You know my work- winning the war is a priority with me. The alternative is a new terrorist haven, and I would consider that a defeat in the War on Terrorism. My attitudes are common to my party.

My opinion is that the Republicans have won not because of uncommon vision, but because the leaderships relationship with reality concerning their policies is tenuous. They have enough of a PR machine out there to make their stuff conventional wisdom, and We Democrats lose because we are not on the ball in countering that, and countering the irrational fears that the GOP has succeeded in stirring up about liberal politics. Y’all aren’t to the point where you’re telling them we’re going to rape their cows and steal their women, but you’re gettin close.

In many ways Bush and the war are one, and by putting a rejection of the way the war is being run as a rejection of Bush, y’all have succeeded in holding onto your plans and doing things your way. But where are we at right now? Only January of this year has been worse.

At what point is the war and the lives of the soldiers more important than the man you elected president?

Why don?t we do this for our debate? We will ask everyone up front to acknowledge that there are occasions where countries in general - and the U.S. in particular- have just cause and need to fight wars, and not only in the past but potentially also in the future.

Jack, so far no one has disagreed with the premise of your post. That’s why it’s called a platitude. This post reminds me of a man insisting “humans must breathe air to survive!” Duh.

The only real debate on this issue will be over specific instances or considerations of the use of force.

RKumra, your General George S. Patton quote read, “It is noble to die for your country. But it is better to let the other bastard die for his country instead.”

It should read, “The object of war is not to die for your country, but to make the other bastard die for his.”

I know it’s nitpicking… but I want to make sure you get it right :)

Guys

Sometimes we obvious talk past one another. I notice the extremists on the left, while you guys see the weirdoes on my side. I know that most of us inhabit neither end.

The problem that I have with anti-war movements is that they sometimes project more nobility on to the enemy than justified. During the Vietnam War, for example, protesting the war was legitimate. Supporting N. Vietnam (like Jane Fonda) or sporting VC flags was not. In the Iraq War we should recognize that very little of the opposition in Iraq is made up of people we would consider admirable. Even if we got in for the wrong reasons, we are stuck there now and we are fighting the right enemy.

When campuses ban ROTC or even prevent recruiting on campus, I don’t think they are doing their part to help their country. I would like to see more suggestions on how to win this war.

When I was in high school, I took a cross-country ski course. There was a slide of a poor guy in the middle of a thawing lake. The instructor asked the class, “What should he do now?” Some of us thought he should go really fast, while others thought he should go slowly. The instructor told us that the correct answer was that you should never get yourself in such a situation. This was no doubt a good advice, but it wasn’t much help to the guy out on the ice and since then I have learned valid strategies for getting out of a mess like that.

What I hear a lot is advice like the instructor gave back then. But we are halfway across the lake and the ice might be breaking up. I think the priority should be getting to the other side.

jack,

I think the best solution in Iraq is an international peacekeeping force. I’m welcome to ideas about how to make that happen.

The United States was founded by 13 colonies who ran themselves on the basis of their founding business charters. Getting rid of the british could have simply meant getting rid of one king for another. Instead, the business charters created the foundations for businessmen to create a nation of (somewhat) equals.

And meanwhile, Canada in 1774, which did not join the American revolution primarily because the British guaranteed FREEDOM OF RELIGION to Canadian Catholics under the Quebec Act. (In fact, the reason we don’t have a united northern america today is because we didn’t trust Catholics). Canada continued to operate as a nominal province, and expanded westwards through a series of treaties (not Indian wars), and became fully democratic through a further series of negotiations.

Japan and West Germany are democracies because of the Marshall plan (not because of rough men, unless by “rough men” you mean the thousands of businessmen who created the economic recovery plan for Japan and West Germany)

South Korea and Russia are democracys because of civil protests. In each of these countries, the United States thought we had a firm grasp of what was going on, and was surprised by the will of the people, and… in the case of South Korea, the president of the U.S. had to be convinced to withdraw his power from the dictator so that democracy could come about.

India is also a democratic nation founded on civil protest, but it is still a democratic nation because it has good leaders who focus on reforming its economic system.

The union army did not give the black man a right to vote, Martin Luther King did. Crazy Horse did not give Native Americans a better life, gambling casinos did. And Shanghai is not moving towards more self rule because the city is fighting China, it’s because China realizes Shanghai will make more money if it gives it more freedom (which it’s doing).

Transformation is occuring because of men who are willing to work the land and invest money in new enterprise. Are we where we are today because of the Revolution, or because of the Reformation?

Julia

Julia

I am not saying that the military is sufficient for democracy, but it is necessary to defend it. I also believe democracy requires a free market (which is what you probably mean by business people) As for the details you mention.

Germany and Japan are good examples of democracy given a chance by imposition. If you U.S had not won the war and imposed its form, these places would not be democratic today. Germany is an excellent example. The zone controlled by the democratic allies became a prosperous democratic state. The part controlled by the Soviets became a backward police state that is still economically behind even after fifteen years of economic union and aid.

Speaking of divided countries, South Korea without the primarily U.S. defense (one of the few times we got UN support to fight tyranny) would have been conquered by the North. North Korea is one big concentration camp.

The fall of the Soviet Union is open to lots of interpretations. A bottom up revolution is not among the usual ones.

India is a fantastic success story. The British were amenable to passive resistance, as I discussed before. But I have great admiration for the world’s largest democracy.

And the Union Army did free the slave and made voting possible. It was a right that needed to be developed and Martin Luther King succeeded also because the U.S. is a country of democracy and law.

Let me say again, I believe that democracy requires the free market, as you mention. But it also has to be defended and I am grateful to those who do so.

I also observe that wars and organized violence are less common now than they were in the past. We are increasingly able to resolve disputes peacefully. One important reason is the free market. In the 1980s, we saw a big realignment of Japan and the U.S. Without global free markets, such would have provoked a war. We really owe a big debt to the free market and globalization.

During the Vietnam War, for example, protesting the war was legitimate. Supporting N. Vietnam (like Jane Fonda) or sporting VC flags was not. In the Iraq War we should recognize that very little of the opposition in Iraq is made up of people we would consider admirable.

Gosh, Jack. I guess I haven’t noticed the college kids walking around wearing scarves with exhortations to suicidal jihad, or those Hollywood liberals getting snapshots taken while goofing around bin Laden…

This is still nothing but platitudes, Jack. No American is making a hero of the guys who chopped off Nick Berg’s head.

Let me say again, I believe that democracy requires the free market, as you mention. But it also has to be defended and I am grateful to those who do so.

Let me say again, duh. I didn’t see anywhere in Julia’s post where she even implied her country didn’t need to be defended.

AP

If the need to defend the country is so self evident, why do people above keep on questioning it.

I also said clearly in my resonse to Julia (who is one of our more thoughtful posters) that I agree that the free market is also necessary to democracy. Many thing are necessary but not sufficient. Defense is one. Free markets are another. Rule of law is a third. I am sure we could think of many.

Re protestors taking the side of the enemy, you may disagree, but I see it in the exaggerated sense of calling prisoners POWs.

They are not because Al Qaida is not an entity that entitles this. (That doesn’t excuse torture, by the way, but it is a definitional problem.)

And BTW - I have seen protestors wearing what looks like the garb of the enemy. Unless you habitual wear those sorts of headdresses, or it has become unexpectedly cold, it is probably part of the street theater.

jack,

I just wonder if we have bought into this idea that you must set the stage for freedom by starting with violence. Canada managed not to do it. I wonder if the U.S. might be exactly the same today if we HADN’T had the revolution. I wonder if we owe our freedom more to the Atlantic ocean, and the fact that we were starting fresh, than anything else.

Germany was one of the strongest democracies in the world before it voted itself into a dictatorship. You say it owes its freedom to our willingness to defeat Hitler. But would Hitler have existed if it weren’t for the reperations payments imposed on Germany that destroyed its economy? World War II happened because the Germans were brutally dealt with after World War I.

World War I was a fight for land, the last of the European “I’m a more powerful guy than you are” wars. It was those type of wars that we were trying to get FREE from. Those wars didn’t help anybody. And we can thank all those men running those wars for establishing the really poorly planned national lines across the middle east and africa that managed to unite warring tribes under the banner of nationalism, and disenfranchise whole groups of people (like the Kurds), and set up a whole new slew of wars to this day.

I look at how we are handling China. I see a dictatorial nation transforming into an economic powerhouse. I see a nation giving more and more freedom, without violence, to its people because it recognizes that its economic ascendency depends on their ability to make sound economic decisions.

Isn’t that a better way to create liberty than by invading and killing the leadership of that country?

I think violence can bring the opportunity for change. But it only brings about the opportunity. Killing someone does not create the PTA.

And if violence only creates the opportunity for change, then perhaps we can work on finding less harmful ways for creating the same opportunity.

For instance, Kim Jong Il is a crazy, evil, man. But would he prevent us from funding and building a textile mill in North Korea? And could we say that we will only build that textile mill if the owners and profits go to the workers and owners of the mill and not to him?

The Cong are not great leaders of liberty. But why is Vietnam opening up its borders to capitalism? Why are they so interested in encouraging american investment? Could it be that our American businessmen can do more to transform Vietnam than the “rough men” who went there to give them freedom in the 70s?

Also, if we say that Jesus transformed the world, and the Church was the reason we came out of the dark ages… then we’re talking passive resistance and loving kindness changing the world. And literacy.

Julia

Coutries do not go to war simply because they have philosophical differences with one another’s politics, culture, etc. War is a product of need and power expansion. In our case we need oil and we need a stronghold in the Mid-east. Hence, let’s get Iraq. They will never be a democracy as we know it because the culture requires control of government to be religiously based. Criminals will not go to jail, punishment will be an eye for an eye. Some criminals will be punished by having their families killed or their first born maimed. Only the priledged will attain position and wealth. Their senate, congress or whatever they call it will be a sham. It will be made up of religious factions who will nbever agree. There will be more street demonstrations than one can imagine. In the end, America will be held responsible.

We need to be more agressive, take over the oil first and start sending it back here ASAP. Use some of the money to provide our troops with impregnable equipment so we can crush buildings with minimal effort. We need to drop leaflets and make announcements notifying everyone that on Tuesday the 23rd (or pick a date) we are going to level the country and everything in it so people need to pick another place to run and hate us from. The leaflet such have a footnote - don’t get too comfortable!

Speaking of blood thirsty tyrants, an interesting new bio of Mao. You can read the review in the economist

Jack-
Yes, our priority should be getting to the other side, now that we’ve made the mistake. But I think the instructor’s point went deeper than that. I attended a self defense class one semester in college, and my professor taught us that most of self defense was not getting into those desperate situations where the kicks, the punches, the throws and other uses of force were necessary. That in fact getting into that situation meant that we had failed for the most part to defend ourselves.

I think it’s relevant to describe what he taught us:

1)Being aware of our situation, of the proximity and character of the threats around us, and not letting our potential enemies get into a position where we didn’t have the time or the faculties to react properly.

2)Projecting an aura of confidence and awareness that would discourage those looking for an easy mark.

3)Being peacemakers in situations rather than the people foolish enough to escalate things.

We should avoid wars when we can, not out of cowardice, but simply because they are such a difficult way to get anything done. I think strategically speaking, it’s a liability to have an administration more interesting in reshaping the world than discovering its actual shape. We lost the opportunity to confront al-Qaeda on many fronts because we went into this war. In our rush to confront Saddam, we may have allowed al-Qaeda the time to prepare their game plan for the next few years and set it in motion. We may be facing another terrorist attack because Bush went to confront this false threat in Iraq.

Our inability to get this war right and the false bluster of our leaders has left us marked as easy targets by those who know now that we are stretched thin, fairly blind to what’s going on in the rest of the world, and not all that successful with dealing with guerilla fighters. Even if this is not the case, this kind of weakness of rhetoric and action invites others to consider attacks and intrigues they might have counted as too risky otherwise.

Finally, Bush has us stumbling headlong into problematic situations, because he seeks to build things up to confrontations. Not every possible confrontation works out for the better as far as we are concerned, and we would do better if Bush picked his battles better.

Jack, I read the review of Mao’s biography and I can tell you most of it is political propaganda (a.k.a bull-shit). First, the assumption that, “Mao, it seems, was utterly contemptuous of the downtrodden masses whose saviour the party proclaimed itself to be,” is laughable. That’s like saying Bush is trying to destroy oil companies. The entire reason that Mao became active was to fight the poverty he, his family, those he knew, and the rest of China had to endure.

As for the statement, “As for who best embodied the spirit of the Long March, it certainly wasn’t Mao, who hardly marched at all; he was carried most of the way in a litter,” that’s just complete bull-shit. No one on the long march ever made such an account of Mao’s actions. Any documentary you will find on Mao will show you that he walked with the rest of the soldiers.

In fact, up until the cultural revolution, Mao was as great a leader as anyone could ask for. It wasn’t until his later years that he started going mentally insane and becoming paranoid of everyone around him. In any event, he is hardly as evil as Stalin or Hitler. I’m still missing the reason why the majority of Americans are convinced Mao was a blood-thirsty dictator.

If the need to defend the country is so self evident, why do people above keep on questioning it.

No one is questioning it, Jack.

I see questions concerning Bush’s misuse of power. I see Julia and Stephen talking about alternatives to military action to bring about change. But not one single person questioned the need to defend this country if necessary.

Again, if you want to talk specific uses of power or future scnarios, you’ll get some debate on a particular instance, but nobody has - and I don’t think anyone will - dispute the fact that a country must defend itself.

Ha! Of course, you’re going to see people calling me a wack-job for wanting to apply the “Bush Doctrine” to North Korea in my latest article. But I am citing a specific instance, and I expect and look forward to lively debate. :)

Zeek

I am not an expert on Mao, but the reason I think he is a blood thirsty tyrant is the very large number of people who died as a result of his policies, especially during the Cultural Revolution. China is arguably the world record holder for civilian deaths in a single year and given the competition from Stalin’s Soviet Union and Hitler’s Germany it is not a weak field.

You could forgive him because he went crazy, but you could say that about most leaders who have done serious damage. How would history feel about Hitler if he hadn’t overreached in 1939? After all, Hitler loved dogs, built a fine autobahn system and supported environmental protection. He was still a bad guy, but the full extent of his evil had not yet manifested itself.

As a young man Mao created the system that his insanity abused as an old man (I am taking your work for the insanity part). He built a cult of personality and a party structure that caused the death of tens of millions. Maybe some people don’t want to bicker and argue about who killed who, but I think that qualifies him as a bloodthirsty tyrant.

AP,

Yes, you are right. I certainly am not the type of person who would say we should disband all the policemen in the United States. And I certainly wouldn’t say that we should go to Osama bin Ladin and ask him if he’d like us to fund his next business venture (as a solution to stopping him). Obviously, we need enforcers. It is all simply a matter of degree.

I feel lately that we have turned to “war first” as the answer, instead of “war last”. In much the same way, I feel that this is the same mentality as people who think jails solve everything, instead of focusing on programs that offer economic alternatives to crime.

The U.N. peacekeeping budget, over the entirety of the 50+ years it has operated, is less than we have spent on the Iraq war. And every year it struggles to get full funding. (I think the budget this year is 3.5 billion).

Our priorities are all out of wack. The Marshall plan was such a work of wonder. No one thought it would work. Everyone thought it was naivete, and that the Japanese would never be capable of founding a democracy. And we feared that spending so much money on people we previously thought were crazy, evil, war-mongers, would only make them powerful while weakening ourselves.

Instead, we both won.

And we never repeated the experiment. Why? Why did we abandon that solution? Why are we turning into Britian and France and Germany in 1940, and not being America in 1946?

There is a lot of oversimplification and ignorance of history in this thread. The idea that the US went around and imposed its form of government on other countries is ludicrous. But it is my observation that in order to push our agenda we often resort to caricature of the facts. I was challenged on another thread when I made the comment that the US was founded on liberal principles. Is there any fact that will go unchallenged if it doesn’t support ones own political philosophy? It does weary a mind.

p.s. Jack, I’m surprised you are quoting a socialist, given your proclivities. By the way, the quote is “Good people sleep peaceably in their beds at night only because rough men stand ready to do violence on their behalf.” I googled your version and found it repeated (ad nauseum) on conservative web sites.

Mental

Orwell was a Socialist. So was my father. That that ideology seemed to make more sense back then. Maybe they were not wrong. It just that we have grown beyond the ideology. Sort of like a 1950s vintage television, we have come to expect more, but the product was good for its time.

I got my quote from Garrison Kielor. I don’t know if he is a socialist. He is a very liberal Democrat, however.

Re founded on liberal principles. You have to define the time period. The world has changed alot and so have the definintions. American conservatives conserve the liberal tradition. Liberals have become social democrats.

I linked to an article re in one of the blogs above.

Ryan,
You are the poster child for what the media of America wants us to think. Matel pointed out that we have grown so acoustomed to living in relativley saftey, that we the many blessing we have are lost on us. Ever since we started the war in Iraq, the media has told us that it was the wrong thing to do. They have highly publicized the abuse at the prisons and every little thing that the U.S. Military doea wrong. Yet, when an American soldier stops to give candy to a kid, or help an old lady across the street it is not even mentioned here in the U.S. Without the U.S. that kid that just got a pice of candy from the soldier would have starved to death or that old lady would have been subject to a violent crime. Like Matel said the U.S. is the defender for peace and i am grateful for the soldiers that die so that they can save me from the same fate. Maybe we need to take waepons into space, so some sensless dictator does it first and holds the whole world in a grip of terror. So, it you are going to bash America and its values move to Iraq and see how much America is needed there so that those fellow humans can have the same freedom and peace we take for granted.

Wayne, Well said! It’s good to hear a reasonable opinion especially when it comes from a member of our military. Thank you for your service to our country.

Aldous, You say “If you are against the Iraq War, you are against the US Troops.”
ARE YOU FOR REAL??? I and many others in this country DO support our troops (we realize that they didn’t have any say in going to Iraq) but DO NOT support Bush’s war on Iraq. As I said in my earlier statement, I have a brother that served in Iraq. So according to you because I don’t believe that Bush sending our country to war with Iraq was right, I don’t support my brother??? Does that actually make sense to you? I have great respect for our military men & women and I don’t believe that their lives should be endangered unless there is an immanent threat to our country. (Last time I checked, it had been determined that there never were any WMD’s which means our country was never under an “immanent threat” as Bush originally claimed.) As for your statement that I must support Bush Junior if I support the troops… who are you to tell me what I must or must not support? I take serious offense to self righteousness of that statement. Perhaps you should open your mind to the possibility that there are opinions other than your own.

Jack,

Maybe some people don?t want to bicker and argue about who killed who, but I think that qualifies him as a bloodthirsty tyrant.

I’m not saying Mao was without fault or that he deserves to be excused for his lack of foresight, but to put him up with Stalin and Hitler is illogical. Hitler was concerned with the superiority of the Aryan race and world-domination, Stalin was concerned about world-domination and the preservation of his own power. Mao, on the other hand, was trying to pull the average Chinese person out of poverty. Admittedly, he failed rather horribly at that with some foolishly idealistic plans, but you can’t deny that he was more of a Nationalist than Jiang Jieshe (a.k.a. Chiang Kai’Shek).

I understand that good intentions abound in people who have commited evil acts, but the likes of Hitler and Stalin hardly had even good intentions to boast of. I also think it’s important to note the desperation of Chinese pesants at the time Mao took power. Desperate times called for desperate measures, the only problem was that the desperate measures occaisionally perpetuated the desperate times.

In short: Mao, not so great, but not as bad as Hitler and Stalin.

Zeek

I was just posting a response to your comment re the Sunnis on the other thread. If you were 1% as generous with your own country as you are with Mao, there would be no cause to criticize anything at all. Even if we killed the entire population of Iraq, it wouldn’t amount to the number of Chinese Mao’s “reforms” and mismanagement killed.

I take the point about the choices being pretty grim for the Chinese. But apply the same to Iraq and you also must be much more generous.

jack,

I would hardly call Zeek saying that Mao is not as bad as Hitler and Stalin “generous”. I’m sure Zeek would also say that Bush is not as bad as Hilter and Stalin.

Here. I’ll say it. Bush is definitely not as bad as Mao. See how generous I can be? I would take Bush over Mao, Hitler, or Stalin anyday. Bush has screwed up FAR less than Mao. Pleased?

‘Ever since we started the war in Iraq, the media has told us that it was the wrong thing to do.’
Gray,

Thats because it was.

‘Ever since we started the war in Iraq, the media has told us that it was the wrong thing to do.’

It wasn’t just the media. After inspectors crawled all over Iraq for months and it became clear there were no WMD, I said the same thing.

Zeek and Jack,

I think the most important difference between Mao and Hitler is that the Cultural Revolution was a largely “grassroots” phenomenon, whereas the Holocaust was a carefully planned industrial operation. They are really apples and oranges.

Jack,

It amuses me how our current administration’s apologists are reduced to invoking the excesses of foreign tyrants. Talk about the soft bigotry of low expectations!

The problem with the Republican attitude towards news is that they treat the revelation of negative facts as the media siding against them. There’s this expectation that the media should advocate for their side, and not get in their way with negative facts (not disputed often) that hurt the reputation of their party’s agenda items.

If our democracy is to work, though, our media must be capable and willing to report on the mistakes and malfeasances of our government’s activities. Democracy is a government of trust, and that trust is earned by the actions of those governing. If that trust is undeserved we should know, and promptly enough to react in a timely fashion.

If our democracy is to work, though, our media must be capable and willing to report on the mistakes and malfeasances of our government’s activities.

Damned straight. I’m following the perils of Philippine journalists in my local paper. They’re exposing government graft and corruption, and getting assassinated one-by-one for it.

The police are ineffective where they’re not totally corrupt - in fact only 17% of crime victims in the Philippines even bother to call the cops.

The police did just give journalists permission to arm themselves, though, and there’s already been at least one shootout in Manilla. It’s crazy.

I really admire the courage those guys have to make their country better. I hope our journalists keep the same kind of commitment for making our government transparent.

Here’s what I’m talkin about.

IMO we do too much ” Monday morning quarterbacking” with respect to the war in Iraq. We tend to refer to it being the wrong war for this reason and that. Many of the reasons only became fact after the war began. In truth some of those “facts” with respect to the WMD capability IMO are still unknowns. In any event I will call them facts for purposes of this post.A strong case both pro and con for the war based on what was known prior to the conflict could be made.

I am very much opposed to the media “embedded” reporters and so on, bringing us only the negative aspects of the war.In truth they do not report on the war, they report on battles and skirmishes which tend to show the worst of all cases. It is only when those film clips are further sensationalized with dialogue by the “experts” who report the news on TV are people led to believe that this is the current status of the “war” in Iraq.

Julia,
Your Crazy Horse example is ridiculous. The American Indian was surpressed by the government. They had no opportunity to improve their lot in life. They tried only to hang on to what they had, they never wanted or asked for more. For their effort they were driven from their land and herded onto reservations where their plight continues to this day. Laws were enacted to govern and control Native Americans.

The Union Army most certainly did provide the black man the opportunity to vote. Unfortunately the right to do anything, especially something as important as voting, is not much use without education.

Aldous:

Please accept my apologies for the attack in my last post. Guess I need to warm up that crow now.
As always,
Wayne

steve smith,

While many native americans did fight (most notably the Sioux), they didn’t win their fight, which is a good point. Maybe if they’d won, things would have been different for them. For those who tried to assimilate, they were also slaughtered. So… they are a good example of what happens when you don’t have the power (by arms, or whatever) to defend yourself from other people.

As for the union army… well, they gave the black man an opportunity to vote, then the KKK and the white militias engaged in a terror campaign (via lynching, burning down houses, etc), that prevented them from voting. In the reconstruction aftermath, the union army at first tried to prevent these atrocities, but the U.S. economy was steadily spiraling downwards, so they changed their mind and decided to try to make nice with their southern white friends, and made pacts with the anti-black politicians. It sealed the fate of the Jim Crow south which disenfranchised the vote up until the 1960s.

Before the lynching and burning, black people had been rapidly forming schools and establishing farming communities. The impetus behind the schools was that these former slaves were very religious, and wanted to be able to read the bible themselves. The farming communities they established were on the land of former white people, however, and the northern government (as part of their pact with the South) returned the land to the white people who enacted a sharecropper system. This sharecropper system, incidentally remains in much of South and Central America and is why those countries kept trying to go communist. It’s a good way to keep people poor.

Now, if the union army had held strong, (been the rough men that we needed), perhaps we wouldn’t have had another 100 years of disenfranchisment for black people. On the other hand, Martin Luther King and the rest were able to get these rights, without raising an army.

How do you destroy the hatred in men’s hearts? How do you convince the people with the land and the power to act against their own best interests?

Yes, we need men with guns. But, do you know what the greatest blow to the KKK was? It was the fact that Superman started fighting them in movie cartoons. And all of the sudden, all of the children of KKK members were making fun of their fathers. Why did Superman start fighting them in movie cartoons. Because of one man. One man who had a friend who worked in the movie business. One man who was offended by injustice, and found an innovative way to fight against it.

It’s important to keep that in mind.

Julia

Julia,

My comments were a disagreement with your examples (in their original context) using the American Indian and the Union Army as to what gave those groups better lives and the right to vote respectively.

The Sioux Indians was the generic name given to the seven bands of the Lakota. I am descended of the Blackfeet (my great Gramdmother was an 8th generation Lakota Indian). While it may be true had the Native Americans won the war things may have been different, it is also true that all Native Americans were not involved in any wars but, were victims of them (wars). I repeat that the Native Americans were not in a position to win any “wars” due to inferior weapons, federal regulations concerning them and, most importantly they had no idea they were in a war, they were fighting to defend the land that they were born and lived on. The “casinos” that you refer to impact so few Native Americans it is not worth mentioning.

I am not adressing the Martin Luther King issue because there are so many influential black people that sacrificed and set solid examples with respect to the rights of ex-slaves and black americans long before MLK did.

The greatest blow to the KKK was Superman is a ludicrous statement. Children of KKK members laughing at their fathers? How many times do you think that would happen in a household. If you answered more than once you are wrong.

Please read page 4 and 5 from this link in reference to the civil rights movement:
http://www.learner.org/biographyofamerica/prog12/transcript/page04.html

The rest, I gleaned from Freakonomics, (in addition to anecdotal stories from my Southern upbringing):
The Klan enjoyed a resurgence during World War II. It centered in Georgia, and was pretty much running the government there. A man named Stetson Kennedy decided that he was going to fight them. He joined the Klan, and fed information to the assistant attorney general. But his efforts didn’t do much damage. In fact, the Klan numbers kept burgeouning. Mainly because it was a good money-making operation for white people who were poverty stricken.

Then he decided to go to a friend who worked on the Superman radio show. They put together four weeks worth of shows. When the first one came out, Kennedy went back to his Klavern to find them in distress. The rank and file were horrified. Their sons were running around playing Superman vs. The Klan, and using all of their ridiculous passwords. Two weeks later, the meeting room for Kennedy’s Klavern was empty, and new applications were zero.

In “The Fiery Cross: The Ku Lux Klan in America” the historian Wyn Craig Wade calls Steston Kennedy “the single most important factor in preventing the postwar revival of the Ku Klux Klan in the North”

So maybe it wasn’t “the greatest” blow. I certainly give credit to the Southern Poverty Law center for bankrupting them later on. But it was a pretty big blow.

As far as the Native American point: I really was simply trying to say that economic opportunity is really more important for Native Americans. They have complete “liberty” on their reservations, but its not like being able to vote for your tribal leaders puts food on your table. Anyway, it was a bad example. I subscribe to the “American Colonies” version of events, by the way (pulitzer prize winning book). You’d probably really enjoy that, by the way.

Pretty much any example is bad. They’re all complex.

I’m simply trying to bring up the point that our nation puts a lot of emphasis on our warriors. I don’t think J. Anthony needs to remind us that we need “rough men”. We spend more on the military than all other nations combined.

We need a little more balance in our ways to solve problems. Instead of concentrating so much money and time in “rough men”, a little more energy towards econmic progress might be a good idea.

In addition, notice that I put liberty in quotes in reference to reservations. I think we all understand the problem with the philosophy of freedom and reservations. My point remains. Economic opportunity is what creates lasting, democratic, free-from-violence communities.

Julia,

To me this is a closed issue.

PS : With respect to the KKK I am too a Southerner. If you are familiar with Pulaski, TN (I lived very near there for several years) you know full well that I am familiar with their influence on society.

Jack,

If you were 1% as generous with your own country as you are with Mao, there would be no cause to criticize anything at all.

Jack, I AM generous with my country, just not my country’s politicians. As Ronald Reagan said, all the best leaders are in business… If you ask me (which you aren’t), politicians are mostly the left-overs of American entrepreneurs who couldn’t make it in the business world. In other words, politics is a last ditch attempt at succcess.

Even if we killed the entire population of Iraq, it wouldn’t amount to the number of Chinese Mao’s “reforms” and mismanagement killed.

If we killed the entire population of Iraq it would be worse because 1) it would completely destroy the country and 2) intentional/purposeful slaughter is far more malicious than negligent murder. It seems to me as though you are saying that even if we kill everyone in Iraq we’re still doing better than Mao, that’s really poor justification…

steve s,

Unfortunately, in order to make succinct points, the true complexity of the issue always gets watered down.

But, if you say that my Superman statement is ludicrous, I must provide factual documentation. As for your example that others sacrificed before MLK, the point is, what are the incidents that actually created change? Again, I have to give better documentation, or else, anyone else who is reading this doesn’t have enough data to come to their own conclusions.

Your posts here seemed to indicate you think that even more “rough men” would do us good. Yet you haven’t provided an example that has shown that your beliefs are accurate. What creates lasting, positive change in the world? What is the best way to move towards “peace on earth”? What are the actual ways that people who have been oppressed, have thrown off the shackles of their oppression AND improved their lot in life?

There have been thousands of revolutions in the history of the world. If all it took to have a better life was to kill the people who oppress you, then we would have solved all of our problems a long time ago. It is what happens after the killing that matters. And if it is what happens after the killing that matters, perhaps there is a way to skip the killing part.

How much money do we spend on weapons, and “rough men”, and how much do we spend on peaceful solutions?

And then why, when we put so many more resources into “rough men” do we then have all these complaints that we don’t spend enough on rough men?

the argument that “the democrats are/were just as bad” as the (current) republicans is just meaningless, dumb, obfuscating rhetoric with no moral basis or justification … the entire political system has become so thoroughly corrupt that arguing one side against the other has become useless and counterproductive, which plays right into the hands of the BUSHCO agenda, which is power at ANY cost including the very freedom and democracy that THEY, bush/cheney/rove/rumsfeld (and not ALL republicans) claim to be protecting …

i am not pro-DEM and anti-REP - i am just completely appalled by the agenda and the actions of THIS GROUP OF PEOPLE who are tearing apart everything america has ever stood for and making a mockery out of democracy in the eyes of the world …

it’s not about democrats vs. republicans anymore folks - BUSHCO’s “war on terror” is a scam and a deceit whose real target is the terrorization of every american voter into fear-based submission, i.e., “you had better vote for us because god is on OUR side and if you don’t ‘the terrorists’ will get you” - the events of 9/11 were a horrific terrorist act which killed 3000 americans - using their deaths as political and psychological leverage is evil and immoral hogwash of the highest order …

I have the utmost respect for our military people. A strong military, and the willingness to stand against aggression is necessary. Our soldiers don’t just talk about it. They have put their lives on the line, and risked their lives, and some have died for our nation, and for those of other nations.

Unfortunately, government sometimes carelessly squanders precious lives needlessly, which makes the military the target of criticism that should be targeted at the Congress and Executive Branches of government that have misused their positions of power, and attempt to scape-goat the military.

Unfortunately, those in Congress and the Executive Branch are the ones that are rarely punished for transgressions. They are rarely held accountable, and the military people often get scape-goated.

That’s truly unjust.

And, I’m troubled by the way some veterans have been mistreated. It’s hard to believe some of the ways they have been mistreated.
____________________

Khandara,
Let’s Vote out all of the incumbents and replace them all with third party candidates or non-incumbents, and let the new comers know they’ll be voted out too if they don’t act responsibly, and prove it by showing a comprehensive list of Solutions, which are being resolved, or have been resolved. The people should have a better, more systematic way to grade government, make it more transparent, and demand that they be responsible too. What we’ve been doing doesn’t seem to be getting problems resolved. Especially, since we are all utilimately accountable.