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Posted: So George Bush and his entourage are coming to London. Is anybody else feeling uncomfortable about having this murderous simpleton in Britain, not to mention his gang of gun-toting security guards? Could the timing be any worse for a state visit, given the current public feeling on the situation in Iraq?
It does give us an opportuniy to show The world what we think of Bush and his policies, and it looks like there are going to be massive protests here..
DomBRONZE Member Carpal \'Tunnel 3,009 posts Location: Bristol, UK
Posted: It kinda answers the question, to which my response is: If this was the reasons then the reasons were wrong and misguided.
Many other countries have broken more UN resolutions and been a bigger threat to their inhabitants and those around them. In some cases the US intervened without overthrowing the government, in some cases they did nothing, and in some cases they actively support the offending regimes.
And considering the fact that there were no terrorists cells in iraq threatening anyone before the war, whilst there are now plenty in Iraq and more across the world caused by opposition to the war blows the second argument out the water.
It seems to me to be a multitude of reasons - a political game within the Middle East that's back fired, with a dash of Arab/Muslim phobia thrown in.
Laytinmember 111 posts Location: bottom left of the US
Posted:
Quote: And considering the fact that there were no terrorists cells in iraq threatening anyone before the war, whilst there are now plenty in Iraq and more across the world caused by opposition to the war blows the second argument out the water.
How do you know this? Threats do not have to be publicly announced, threats dont have to be seen or heard, but they still exist.
Quote: Many other countries have broken more UN resolutions and been a bigger threat to their inhabitants and those around them. In some cases the US intervened without overthrowing the government, in some cases they did nothing, and in some cases they actively support the offending regimes.
If the US helps/intervens in every country, people will complain that the US is sticking it's nose where it doesnt belong. If the US never does anything to help, people will complain that the US is just sitting there getting richer whilst everyone else in the world suffers. If the US picks and chooses it's level of involvment, people will complain that the US sticks it's nose where it doesnt belong AND just sits there getting richer whilst the rest of the world suffers.
How should the US Government proceede? No matter what they do they will upset somebody somewhere, maybe even to the point that they do something tragic like blow up a building.
The US picks and chooses it's fights, maybe it does it for self gain, maybe it feels that it is actually doing some good. Who can really say except for the people making the decisions?
Wisdom calls aloud in the street, she raises her voice in the public squares; at the head of noisy streets she cries out, in the gateways of the city she makes her speech:
PaliGOLD Member journeyman 84 posts Location: Ubud, Bali, Indonesia
Posted: What it all boils down to is ethical relativism.
Western culture being dominant does not make it right for everyone else in the world. We have no right to assume it is, and certainly no right to force it upon them.
We may disagree with the way Saddam does business; we may wish that the people who suffer beneath him could have lives more like ours; but we cannot save people who don’t want to be saved.
In the future, Americans should discover how our presidential candidates stand on issues we care about before we elect them into office.
This American votes libertarian.
Genuineness only thrives in the dark -- like celery.
Raphael96SILVER Member old hand 899 posts Location: New York City, USA
Posted: I'd vote Libertine, but thats not a political party yet
Raph
Raphael96SILVER Member old hand 899 posts Location: New York City, USA
Posted: I was just sent this article and thought it would be interesting to post:
When Democracy Failed: The Warnings of History by Thom Hartmann
The 70th anniversary wasn't noticed in the United States, and was barely reported in the corporate media. But the Germans remembered well that fateful day seventy years ago - February 27, 1933. They commemorated the anniversary by joining in demonstrations for peace that mobilized citizens all across the world.
It started when the government, in the midst of a worldwide economic crisis, received reports of an imminent terrorist attack. A foreign ideologue had launched feeble attacks on a few famous buildings [Dutch terrorist Marinus van der Lubbe's successful firebombing of the German Parliament (Reichstag) building, but the media largely ignored his relatively small efforts. The intelligence services knew, however, that the odds were he would eventually succeed.(Historians are still arguing whether or not rogue elements in the intelligence service helped the terrorist; the most recent research implies they did not.) But the warnings of investigators were ignored at the highest levels, in part because the government was distracted; the man who claimed to be the nation's leader [Hitler] had not been elected by a majority vote and the majority of citizens claimed he had no right to the powers he coveted. He was a simpleton, some said, a cartoon character of a man who saw things in black-and-white terms and didn't have the intellect to understand the subtleties of running a nation in a complex and internationalist world. His coarse use of language - reflecting his political roots in a southernmost state - and his simplistic and often-inflammatory nationalistic rhetoric offended the aristocrats, foreign leaders, and the well-educated elite in the government and media. And, as a young man, he'd joined a secret society with an occult-sounding name and bizarre initiation rituals that involved skulls and human bones.
Nonetheless, he knew the terrorist was going to strike (although he didn't know where or when), and he had already considered his response. When an aide brought him word that the nation's most prestigious building was ablaze, he verified it was the terrorist who had struck and then rushed to the scene and called a press conference. "You are now witnessing the beginning of a great epoch in history," he proclaimed, standing in front of the burned-out building, surrounded by national media. "This fire," he said, his voice trembling with emotion, "is the beginning." He used the occasion - "a sign from God," he called it - to declare an all-out war on terrorism and its ideological sponsors, a people, he said, who traced their origins to the Middle East and found motivation for their evil deeds in their religion.
Two weeks later, the first detention center for terrorists was built in Oranianberg to hold the first suspected allies of the infamous terrorist. In a national outburst of patriotism, the leader's flag was everywhere, even printed large in newspapers suitable for window display.
Within four weeks of the terrorist attack, the nation's now-popular leader had pushed through legislation - in the name of combating terrorism and fighting the philosophy he said spawned it - that suspended constitutional guarantees of free speech, privacy, and habeas corpus. Police could now intercept mail and wiretap phones; suspected terrorists could be imprisoned without specific charges and without access to their lawyers; police could sneak into people's homes without warrants if the cases involved terrorism.
To get his patriotic "Decree on the Protection of People and State" passed over the objections of concerned legislators and civil libertarians, he agreed to put a 4-year sunset provision on it: if the national emergency provoked by the terrorist attack was over by then, the freedoms and rights would be returned to the people, and the police agencies would be re-restrained. Legislators would later say they hadn't had time to read the bill before voting on it.
Immediately after passage of the anti-terrorism act, his federal police agencies stepped up their program of arresting suspicious persons and holding them without access to lawyers or courts. In the first year only a few hundred were interred, and those who objected were largely ignored by the mainstream press, which was afraid to offend and thus lose access to a leader with such high popularity ratings. Citizens who protested the leader in public - and there were many - quickly found themselves confronting the newly empowered police's batons, gas, and jail cells, or fenced off in protest zones safely out of earshot of the leader's public speeches. (In the meantime, he was taking almost daily lessons in public speaking, learning to control his tonality, gestures, and facial expressions. He became a very competent orator.)
Within the first months after that terrorist attack, at the suggestion of a political advisor, he brought a formerly obscure word into common usage. He wanted to stir a "racial pride" among his countrymen, so, instead of referring to the nation by its name, he began to refer to it as "The Homeland," a phrase publicly promoted in the introduction to a 1934 speech recorded in Leni Riefenstahl's famous propaganda movie "Triumph Of The Will." As hoped, people's hearts swelled with pride, and the beginning of an us-versus-them mentality was sewn. Our land was "the" homeland, citizens thought: all others were simply foreign lands. We are the "true people," he suggested, the only ones worthy of our nation's concern; if bombs fall on others, or human rights are violated in other nations and it makes our lives better, it's of little concern to us.
Playing on this new nationalism, and exploiting a disagreement with the French over his increasing militarism, he argued that any international body that didn't act first and foremost in the best interest of his own nation was neither relevant nor useful. He thus withdrew his country from the League Of Nations in October, 1933, and then negotiated a separate naval armaments agreement with Anthony Eden of The United Kingdom to create a worldwide military ruling elite.
His propaganda minister orchestrated a campaign to ensure the people that he was a deeply religious man and that his motivations were rooted in Christianity. He even proclaimed the need for a revival of the Christian faith across his nation, what he called a "New Christianity." Every man in his rapidly growing army wore a belt buckle that declared "Gott Mit Uns" - God Is With Us - and most of them fervently believed it was true.
Within a year of the terrorist attack, the nation's leader determined that the various local police and federal agencies around the nation were lacking the clear communication and overall coordinated administration necessary to deal with the terrorist threat facing the nation, particularly those citizens who were of Middle Eastern ancestry and thus probably terrorist and communist sympathizers, and various troublesome "intellectuals" and "liberals." He proposed a single new national agency to protect the security of the homeland, consolidating the actions of dozens of previously independent police, border, and investigative agencies under a single leader.
He appointed one of his most trusted associates to be leader of this new agency, the Central Security Office for the homeland, and gave it a role in the government equal to the other major departments. His assistant who dealt with the press noted that, since the terrorist attack, "Radio and press are at our disposal." Those voices questioning the legitimacy of their nation's leader, or raising questions about his checkered past, had by now faded from the public's recollection as his central security office began advertising a program encouraging people to phone in tips about suspicious neighbors. This program was so successful that the names of some of the people "denounced" were soon being broadcast on radio stations. Those denounced often included opposition politicians and celebrities who dared speak out - a favorite target of his regime and the media he now controlled through intimidation and ownership by corporate allies.
To consolidate his power, he concluded that government alone wasn't enough. He reached out to industry and forged an alliance, bringing former executives of the nation's largest corporations into high government positions. A flood of government money poured into corporate coffers to fight the war against the Middle Eastern ancestry terrorists lurking within the homeland, and to prepare for wars overseas. He encouraged large corporations friendly to him to acquire media outlets and other industrial concerns across the nation, particularly those previously owned by suspicious people of Middle Eastern ancestry. He built powerful alliances with industry; one corporate ally got the lucrative contract worth millions to build the first large-scale detention center for enemies of the state. Soon more would follow. Industry flourished.
But after an interval of peace following the terrorist attack, voices of dissent again arose within and without the government. Students had started an active program opposing him (later known as the White Rose Society), and leaders of nearby nations were speaking out against his bellicose rhetoric. He needed a diversion, something to direct people away from the corporate cronyism being exposed in his own government, questions of his possibly illegitimate rise to power, and the oft-voiced concerns of civil libertarians about the people being held in detentionmwithout due process or access to attorneys or family. With his number two man - a master at manipulating the media - he began a campaign to convince the people of the nation that a small, limited war was necessary. Another nation was harboring many of the suspicious Middle Eastern people, and even though its connection with the terrorist who had set afire the nation's most important building was tenuous at best, it held resources their nation badly needed if they were to have room to live and maintain their prosperity. He called a press conference and publicly delivered an ultimatum to the leader of the other nation, provoking an international uproar. He claimed the right to strike preemptively in self-defense, and nations across Europe - at first - denounced him for it, pointing out that it was a doctrine only claimed in the past by nations seeking worldwide empire, like Caesar's Rome or Alexander's Greece.
It took a few months, and intense international debate and lobbying with European nations, but, after he personally met with the leader of the United Kingdom, finally a deal was struck. After the military action began, Prime Minister Neville Chamberlain told the nervous British people that giving in to this leader's new first-strike doctrine would bring "peace for our time." Thus Hitler annexed Austria in a lightning move, riding a wave of popular support as leaders so often do in times of war. The Austrian government was unseated and replaced by a new leadership friendly to Germany, and German corporations began to take over Austrian resources.
In a speech responding to critics of the invasion, Hitler said, "Certain foreign newspapers have said that we fell on Austria with brutal methods. I can only say; even in death they cannot stop lying. I have in the course of my political struggle won much love from my people, but when I crossed the former frontier [into Austria] there met me such a stream of love as I have never experienced. Not as tyrants have we come, but as liberators."
To deal with those who dissented from his policies, at the advice of his politically savy advisors, he and his handmaidens in the press began a campaign to equate him and his policies with patriotism and the nation itself. National unity was essential, they said, to ensure that the terrorists or their sponsors didn't think they'd succeeded in splitting the nation or weakening its will. In times of war, they said, there could be only "one people, one nation, and one commander-in-chief" ("Ein Volk, ein Reich, ein Fuhrer"), and so his advocates in the media began a nationwide campaign charging that critics of his policies were attacking the nation itself. Those questioning him were labeled "anti-German" or "not good Germans," and it was suggested they were aiding the enemies of the state by failing in the patriotic necessity of supporting the nation's valiant men in uniform. It was one of his most effective ways to stifle dissent and pit wage-earning people (from whom most of the army came) against the "intellectuals and liberals" who were critical of his policies.
Nonetheless, once the "small war" annexation of Austria was successfully and quickly completed, and peace returned, voices of opposition were again raised in the Homeland. The almost-daily release of news bulletins about the dangers of terrorist communist cells wasn't enough to rouse the populace and totally suppress dissent. A full-out war was necessary to divert public attention from the growing rumbles within the country about disappearing dissidents; violence against liberals, Jews, and union leaders; and the epidemic of crony capitalism that was producing empires of wealth in the corporate sector but threatening the middle class's way of life.
A year later, to the week, Hitler invaded Czechoslovakia; the nation was now fully at war, and all internal dissent was suppressed in the name of national security. It was the end of Germany's first experiment with democracy.
As we conclude this review of history, there are a few milestones worth remembering. February 27, 2003, was the 70th anniversary of Dutch terrorist Marinus van der Lubbe's successful firebombing of the German Parliament (Reichstag) building, the terrorist act that catapulted Hitler to legitimacy and reshaped the German constitution. By the time of his successful and brief action to seize Austria, in which almost no German blood was shed, Hitler was the most beloved and popular leader in the history of his nation. Hailed around the world, he was later Time magazine's "Man Of The Year."
Most Americans remember his office for the security of the homeland, known as the Reichssicherheitshauptamt and its SchutzStaffel, simply by its most famous agency's initials: the SS. We also remember that the Germans developed a new form of highly violent warfare they named "lightning war" or blitzkrieg, which, while generating devastating civilian losses, also produced a highly desirable "shock and awe" among the nation's leadership according to the authors of the 1996 book "Shock And Awe" published by the National Defense University Press.
Reflecting on that time, The American Heritage Dictionary (Houghton Mifflin Company, 1983) left us this definition of the form of government the German democracy had become through Hitler's close alliance with the largest German corporations and his policy of using war as a tool to keep power: "fas-cism (fash'iz'em) n. A system of government that exercises a dictatorship of the extreme right, typically through the merging of state and business leadership, together with belligerent nationalism."
Today, as we face financial and political crises, it's useful to remember that the ravages of the Great Depression hit Germany and the United States alike. Through the 1930s, however, Hitler and Roosevelt chose very different courses to bring their nations back to power and prosperity.
Germany's response was to use government to empower corporations and reward the society's richest individuals, privatize much of the commons, stifle dissent, strip people of constitutional rights, and create an illusion of prosperity through continual and ever-expanding war. America passed minimum wage laws to raise the middle class, enforced anti-trust laws to diminish the power of corporations, increased taxes on
corporations and the wealthiest individuals, created Social Security, and became the employer of last resort through programs to build national infrastructure, promote the arts, and replant forests. To the extent that our Constitution is still intact, the choice is again ours. --- Thom Hartmann lived and worked in Germany during the 1980s, and is the author of over a dozen books, including "Unequal Protection" and "The Last Hours of Ancient Sunlight."
Posted: OH my gosh....i read thru that!fascinating reading......when will we learn,not to be played like muppets by the powers that be and think for ourselves....after reading the above i feel like i understand a lot more about the roots of hitlers beginnings and even the present conflict.....they share certain similiarities....
Zyanya BellaBRONZE Member member 70 posts Location: USA
Posted: Once again I must remind myself to keep up on this thread. Too much to reply too....The whole hitler thing...You can't compare bush to hitler for several reasons. 1.) Though America invaded Iraq it is not an occupying country. We have not declared Iraq ours. We have not put Bush as thier leader, instead we are arranging an interim government. 2.) There has been no mass genocide of any kind. Bush is not rounding up muslims in the "homeland" and sending them to concentration camps. (By the way...just something that irked me...that article was not historically correct. Germany was called the "Fatherland") Someone stated we cannot save people who do not want to be saved. Who are you refering to here? There were just as many Iraqi's standing in the streets welcoming the soldier and the food and supplies as there are rebels opposing the over throw of Saddam. As far as linking Saddam, the Taliban, and Al qaueda it is not because they are all Arabic. It is because they are all terrorists in some way shape or form. They wreaked havoc and opression on thier own people and that is terrorism enough. As I have said before, we can't help the whole world. We are one country and we cannot fix it all. We can however fix certain things and Iraq happens to be one of them. Don't tell me I don't think for myself. My government doesn't think for me, I have my issues with it. Issues that would take entirely too long to get into here. I support the war for several reasons and one of those reasons is in Iraq with his life in danger as I write this. So as you complain and protest think of the man sitting in the sands of Iraq that you are NOT supporting. Think of the soldier giving his life not just in the belief he is fighting for his country but he is fighting to better the world. While you in all your freedom are protesting what you do not agree with think of he who is dying to protect that........
Always Beautiful
Raphael96SILVER Member old hand 899 posts Location: New York City, USA
Posted:
Quote: OH my gosh....i read thru that!fascinating reading......when will we learn,not to be played like muppets by the powers that be and think for ourselves....after reading the above i feel like i understand a lot more about the roots of hitlers beginnings and even the present conflict.....they share certain similiarities....
Quote: I support the war for several reasons and one of those reasons is in Iraq with his life in danger as I write this. So as you complain and protest think of the man sitting in the sands of Iraq that you are NOT supporting. Think of the soldier giving his life not just in the belief he is fighting for his country but he is fighting to better the world.
Although I do not personally know any soldiers I do support them. I feel pity for them. Poor, young, naive american and british soldiers do not deserve to die any more than the Iraqis that they are killing. They are the tools that Bush and company use to commit their crimes against humanity, and they do deserve something better.
Posted: Raphael 96, thanks for the essay, it was good, although it got a bit "iffy" towards the end. I'll have a longer think about it and explain myself better in a later post. I don't think too many parallels with current events should be extrapolated.
zyanya bella
Quote: 1.) Though America invaded Iraq it is not an occupying country. We have not declared Iraq ours. We have not put Bush as thier leader, instead we are arranging an interim government.
yep, only one that is "friendly" to the US... just like the puppet regime set up in austria... Oh, and what do you call a country that is controlled by the military forces of another country? If that isn't occupied, I don't know what is... I think you mean annexed (sp)- that means making another country part of yours by force and subjecting it to your rule.
Quote:
2.) There has been no mass genocide of any kind. Bush is not rounding up muslims in the "homeland" and sending them to concentration camps.
no, he is simply cracking down on immigration and sowing the seeds of racism against people of arabic origin, grouping them all as terrorists by proxy
Quote:
As far as linking Saddam, the Taliban, and Al qaeda it is not because they are all Arabic. It is because they are all terrorists in some way shape or form. They wreaked havoc and opression on thier own people and that is terrorism enough.
No, Sadam was a dictator and the Taliban are a people who had a regime in Afghanistan. They are not terrorists. On the other hand, Al Qaeda is a terrorist organization. Hitler was not a terrorist, he was a dictator. Following your reasoning, Bush is a terrorist because he is wreaking havoc on other peoples (eg those in occupied iraq).
Quote:
So as you complain and protest think of the man sitting in the sands of Iraq that you are NOT supporting. Think of the soldier giving his life not just in the belief he is fighting for his country but he is fighting to better the world. While you in all your freedom are protesting what you do not agree with think of he who is dying to protect that........
I can sympathise with what you are saying- but it is precisely some of these people that will be saved (and those who died would have been saved) if the "coalition of the willing" had not been so quick to take up arms. Some might say that he who is fighting and dying is making the world a more dangerous place to live in. It is a question of perspective. Just because someone believes they are doing the right thing, it does not mean that they are.
Your life is ending one minute at a time... So live it.
Laytinmember 111 posts Location: bottom left of the US
Posted: I can not speak for the Brittish soldiers, but I seriusly doubt that they differ too much in opinion. The military customers that I have in my bar are for one thing, anything but naive! To say something like that is shows nothing but blatent disrespect for a group of people you do not know. I have heard some pretty cold and nasty things said by drunk soldiers and sailors, but I rarely hear them speek out against those that appose them here at home.
Wan hwo ren, please refrain from making gross generalisations about people, not only is it highly insulting to the intelligence of those who read what you say, it is also just plain rude and socially unacceptable. It can and should be compared to someone who says that all black people are N******* and those of hispanic decent are lazy wet backs and that everybody from West Virginia are imbread homophobic rednecks. Please for the sake of peace on this message forum please show respect to everyone, even if you do not like them, even if you feel that they should be pittied.
You are right, they do not deserve to die, nor do the Iraqis. They are not the only ones doing the killings. Just as many Iraqis die each day from Iraqi attacks as from Coalition. Unfortunatly the media really doesnt cover those too well. Bush is not commiting any crimes, the war is leagle, you dont have to agree with it for it to be leagle.
I'll reply to the other items tomorrow morning, now I need to go to bed so I can be ready for my lovley test tomorrow
Wisdom calls aloud in the street, she raises her voice in the public squares; at the head of noisy streets she cries out, in the gateways of the city she makes her speech:
I do think that soldiers are naive, they are victims of intense propoganda, and then once they become soldiers (or marines, whatever) the military has a ridiculous amount of control over these individuals. This goes so far that soldiers literally lose the right to decide what drugs go into their own bodies, like the American soldiers that killed 4 Canadian soldiers in afghanistan while on massive amounts of speed.
Soldiers are naive and gullible - that is about the nicest thing I could say about them because by saying that I acknowledge good intentions. I'm pretty sure that 99.9% of the soldiers in Iraq believe that they are helping America / Iraq / the world. My belief is that they are sadly mistaken, but of course we all have our opinions.
If I did not think that soldiers were victims then I would have to consider them evil monsters and this is NOT true. Soldiers are good people, with good intentions, as I think most people in the world are. They are just young and naive victims, they can not be blamed for the war.
Here's an interesting letter, a bit long but worth the read.
Dear American serviceperson in Iraq,
I am a retired veteran of the army, and my own son is among you, a paratrooper like I was. The changes that are happening to every one of you--some more extreme than others--are changes I know very well. So I'm going to say some things to you straight up in the language to which you are accustomed.
In 1970, I was assigned to the 173rd Airborne Brigade, then based in northern Binh Dinh Province in what was then the Republic of Vietnam. When I went there, I had my head full of [censored]: [censored] from the news media, [censored] from movies, [censored] about what it supposedly mean to be a man, and [censored] from a lot of my know-nothing neighbors who would tell you plenty about Vietnam even though they'd never been there, or to war at all.
The essence of all this [censored] was that we had to "stay the course in Vietnam," and that we were on some mission to save good Vietnamese from bad Vietnamese, and to keep the bad Vietnamese from hitting beachheads outside of Oakland. We stayed the course until 58,000 Americans were dead and lots more maimed for life, and 3,000,000 Southeast Asians were dead. Ex-military people and even many on active duty played a big part in finally bringing that crime to a halt.
When I started hearing about weapons of mass destruction that threatened the United States from Iraq, a shattered country that had endured almost a decade of trench war followed by an invasion and twelve years of sanctions, my first question was how in the hell can anyone believe that this suffering country presents a threat to the United States? But then I remembered how many people had believed Vietnam threatened the United States. Including me.
When that bullshit story about weapons came apart like a two-dollar shirt, the politicians who cooked up this war told everyone, including you, that you would be greeted like great liberators. They told us that we were in Vietnam to make sure everyone there could vote.
What they didn't tell me was that before I got there in 1970, the American armed forces had been burning villages, killing livestock, poisoning farmlands and forests, killing civilians for sport, bombing whole villages, and commiting rapes and massacres, and the people who were grieving and raging over that weren't in a position to figure out the difference between me--just in country--and the people who had done those things to them.
What they didn't tell you is that over a million and a half Iraqis died between 1991 and 2003 from malnutrition, medical neglect, and bad sanitation. Over half a million of those who died were the weakest: the children, especially very young children.
My son who is over there now has a baby. We visit with our grandson every chance we get. He is eleven months old now. Lots of you have children, so you know how easy it is to really love them, and love them so hard you just know your entire world would collapse if anything happened to them. Iraqis feel that way about their babies, too. And they are not going to forget that the United States government was largely responsible for the deaths of half a million kids.
So the lie that you would be welcomed as liberators was just that. A lie. A lie for people in the United States to get them to open their purse for this obscenity, and a lie for you to pump you up for a fight.
And when you put this into perspective, you know that if you were an Iraqi, you probably wouldn't be crazy about American soldiers taking over your towns and cities either. This is the tough reality I faced in Vietnam. I knew while I was there that if I were Vietnamese, I would have been one of the Vietcong.
But there we were, ordered into someone else's country, playing the role of occupier when we didn't know the people, their language, or their culture, with our head full of bullshit our so-called leaders had told us during training and in preparation for deployment, and even when we got there. There we were, facing people we were ordered to dominate, but any one of whom might be pumping mortars at us or firing AKs at us later that night.
The question we stated to ask is who put us in this position?
In our process of fighting to stay alive, and in their process of trying to expel an invader that violated their dignity, destroyed their property, and killed their innocents, we were faced off against each other by people who made these decisions in $5,000 suits, who laughed and slapped each other on the back in Washington DC with their fat [censored] asses stuffed full of cordon blue and caviar.
They chumped us. Anyone can be chumped.
That's you now. Just fewer trees and less water.
We haven't figured out how to stop the pasty-faced, oil-hungry backslappers in DC yet, and it looks like you all might be stuck there for a little longer. So I want to tell you the rest of the story.
I changed over there in Vietnam and they were not nice changes either. I started getting pulled into something--something that craved other peole's pain. Just to make sure I wasn't regarded as a "[censored] missionary" or a possible rat, I learned how to fit myself into that group that was untouchable, people too crazy to [censored] with, people who desired the rush of omnipotence that comes with setting someone's house on fire just for the pure hell of it, or who could kill anyone, man, woman, or child, with hardly a second thought. People who had the power of life and death--because they could.
The anger helps. It's easy to hate everyone you can't trust because of your circumstances, and to rage about what you've seen, what has happened to you, and what you have done and can't take back.
It was all an act for me, a cover-up for deeper fears I couldn't name, and the reason I know that is that we had to dehumanize our victims before we did the things we did. We knew deep down that what we were doing was wrong. So they became dinks or gooks, just like Iraqis are now being transformed into ragheads or hajjis. People had to be reduced to "niggers" here before they could be lynched. No difference. We convinced ourselves we had to kill them to survive, even when that wasn't true, but something inside us told us that so long as they were human beings, with the same intrinsic value we had as human beings, we were not allowed to burn their homes and barns, kill their animals, and sometimes even kill them. So we used these words, these new names, to reduce them, to strip them of their essential humanity, and then we could do things like adjust artillery fire onto the cries of a baby.
Until that baby was silenced, though, and here's the important thing to understand, that baby never surrendered her humanity. I did. We did. That's the thing you might not get until it's too late. When you take away the humantiy of another, you kill your own humanity. You attack your own soul because it is standing in the way.
So we finish our tour, and go back to our families, who can see that even though we function, we are empty and incapable of truly connecting to people any more, and maybe we can go for months or even years before we fill that void where we surrendered our humanity, with chemical anesthetics--drugs, alcohol, until we realize that the void can never be filled and we shoot ourselves, or head off into the street where we can disappear with the flotsam of society, or we hurt others, esepcially those who try to love us, and end up as another incarceration statistic or a mental patient.
You can ever escape that you became a racist because you made the excuse that you needed that to survive, that you took things away from people that you can never give back, or that you killed a piece of yourself that you may never get back.
Some of us do. We get lucky and someone gives a damn enough to emotionally resuscitate us and bring us back to life. Many do not.
I live with the rage every day of my life, even when no one else sees it. You might hear it in my words. I hate being chumped.
So here is my message to you. You will do what you have to do to survive, however you define survival, while we do what we have to do to stop this thing. But don't surrender your humanity. Not to fit in. Not to prove yourself. Not for an adrenaline rush. Not to lash out when you are angry and frustrated. Not for some ticket-punching [censored] military careerist to make his bones on. Especially not for the Bush-Cheney Gas & Oil Consortium.
The big bosses are trying to gain control of the world's energy supplies to twist the arms of future economic competitors. That's what's going on, and you need to understand it, then do what you need to do to hold on to your humanity. The system does that; tells you you are some kind of hero action figures, but uses you as gunmen. They chump you.
Your so-called civilian leadership sees you as an expendable commodity. They don't care about your nightmares, about the DU that you are breathing, about the lonliness, the doubts, the pain, or about how you humanity is stripped away a piece at a time. They will cut your benefits, deny your illnesses, and hide your wounded and dead from the public. They already are.
They don't care. So you have to. And to preserve your own humanity, you must recognize the humanity of the people whose nation you now occupy and know that both you and they are victims of the filthy rich bastards who are calling the shots.
They are your enemies--The Suits--and they are the enemies of peace, and the enemies of your families, especially if they are Black families, or immigrant families, or poor families. They are thieves and bullies who take and never give, and they say they will "never run" in Iraq, but you and I know that they will never have to run, because they [censored] aren't there. You are
They'll skin and grin while they are getting what they want from you, and throw you away like a used condom when they are done. Ask the vets who are having their benefits slashed out from under them now. Bushfeld and their cronies are parasites, and they are the sole beneficiaries of the chaos you are learning to live in. They get the money. You get the prosthetic devices, the nightmares, and the mysterious illnesses.
So if your rage needs a target, there they are, responsible for your being there, and responsible for keeping you there. I can't tell you to disobey. That would probably run me afoul of the law. That will be a decision you will have to take when and if the circumstances and your own conscience dictate. But it perfeclty legal for you to refuse illegal orders, and orders to abuse or attack civilians are illegal. Ordering you to keep silent about these crimes is also illegal.
I can tell you, without fear of legal consequence, that you are never under any obligation to hate Iraqis, you are never under any obligation to give yourself over to racism and nihilism and the thirst to kill for the sake of killing, and you are never under any obligation to let them drive out the last vestiges of your capacity to see and tell the truth to yourself and to the world. You do not owe them your souls.
Come home safe, and come home sane. The people who love you and who have loved you all your lives are waiting here, and we want you to come back and be able to look us in the face. Don't leave your souls in the dust there like another corpse.
Hold on to your humanity.
Stan Goff
US Army (Ret.)
Laytinmember 111 posts Location: bottom left of the US
Posted: I am not going to tell you how to live your life, but if I wasnt a doctor I wouldnt tell one how to save a life, I think that things would be better and tension would be lessond if we all applied that idea to our lives. IE not speaking on a subject that we know little on. Like you said befor, you dont know any soldiers, how is it that you feel confident about speeking on their behalf?
Do a little bit of research, those pilots were not on speed, and the military does have the right to refuse any drug be it perscription or whatever. They dont have to be treated for an illness. Try meeting someone and talking to them befor you go out and say how their life is.
When you just blert out a generalisation, it does nothing but make you look bad.
I like how you take one letter of a disgruntled person and treat it like the facts of life, as if it should be rated right up there with "What goes up, must come down".
The point of the matter is, since you dont know any soldiers and since you cant do anything but repeat what someone else says, be kind enough to know when to speek and when not to.
I could care less if you hate bush, the world knows he really aint to bright, to put it mildly, but do not sit at home and complain about something that you not only have little to no grasp of but also something that you can never understand.
Remember the golden rule? Treat others how you want to be treated. Not treat others good when they start treating you good. It isnt show respect to someone only after they first give it to you.
If we would all think more like children this world would be a better place.
Wisdom calls aloud in the street, she raises her voice in the public squares; at the head of noisy streets she cries out, in the gateways of the city she makes her speech:
Posted: um. where exactly did WHR say "this letter states exactly what i think". i believe the wording was:'here's an interesting letter...worth a read".
i'm not a mod(so you may feel i'm out of order saying this):
but to me that reply goes beyond reasonal debate and into one person saying "shut up cause you know nothing" which will never help us resolve an arguement/debate on something the whole world feels very strongly about.
i have been following this thread very closely as it seems to have been the first tim in a long time this debate has been carried out with respect and consideration... please don't stop that.
as you said yourself laytin treat others how you would like to be treated.
Rob
(aren't most children inquisitive, fun challenging.....and unintentionally cruel...? ) EDITED_BY: bluecat (1070442650)
Holistic Spinner (I hope)
Laytinmember 111 posts Location: bottom left of the US
Posted: You are right, maybe I did push it too far. WHR I apologise if I offended you in any way. I dont see a reason to continue this course of debate in the open arena, but if you wish please feel free to PM me.
Wisdom calls aloud in the street, she raises her voice in the public squares; at the head of noisy streets she cries out, in the gateways of the city she makes her speech:
Posted: Here's a link about a documentary that I saw a while ago. It was very well done, they interviewed many people from the american military that talked about the drugs they were forced to take. Fighter pilots take uppers before their missions and downers afterwards. Given the doses that the pilots who bombed the canadians had in them, they were quite likely right out of their minds at the time.
Other people described the drugs as making them extremely aggressive, but I don't know what drugs those were.
Laytinmember 111 posts Location: bottom left of the US
Posted: If you look in the archives, it has been done befor. I do reccomend that you read the post titled something like "Going to war on drugs".
I also saw the CBC documentery, it was shown to us by our Recent History Prof. (My favorite class, if you can take anything like it I highly reccomend it )
I viewd it as a hunt. Questions were not balanced, the reporter went into each and every interview driving for a certain point badgering those who were willing to talk.
I know a few US Air Force pilots, one partiualy close as he is soon to be my Father-in-law, a retired US Air Force Colonel. We speek daily since one of his hobies is the history of warfare (something I view as an important topic for anyone who wishes to know anything about life or the lives of those who lived before you). He was around when "go pills" were banned. He laughed at the civilian lawyers who were the driving force behind the AFCoS's decision to ban the drugs. Out of his 25 years in the USAF he was never forced to fly or considerd unfit to fly if he didnt take the pills, nor was his carrer jeprodised as these two young Officers's lawyers said.
He volunterily took the pills because with long sorties in Vietnam and other engagments (things that most civilians never really heard about) the idea of spending close to 24 hours in a cockpit and being expected to tank from a KC-10 while bouncing along the sky at 300 knots without something that kept you awake or steady would be scuicide.
Those pilots were just trying to save their own butts. They screwed up royaly and didnt know what to do and thought they could save their own skins by making a sob story for the media.
The ABC article said they signed for six go pills... how many didnt the pilots take? They were told to take as needed, not take all at once! If you can place the blame on the pills it is only because the pilots did not follow directions.
I would like to point out some grammer used by the Canadian article that punches up the idea. "Almost certainly" Paragraph Two "almost certainly resulting in the deaths of allied forces and innocent civilians". If you look at this part of the scentance, you will see that they have no idea what caused the deaths of innocents and allied forces, but they want to push the blame twords the pills. It could almost certainly be as simple as a civilian crossing the line of fire, or holding a stick that at a distance looked like a weapon. It could almost certainly be allies that were not properly identified, or allies that were not where they were supposed to be.
Both of these articles are extreemly one sided, and have little to no view from the other side of the argument. It is understandable that sombody might take them as gospel truth instead of opinion. It is important for anyone who wishes to debate anything to find out each and every angle befor you go into a debate, that way you know what the opposition will most likly say and what the undistorted truth is.
Wisdom calls aloud in the street, she raises her voice in the public squares; at the head of noisy streets she cries out, in the gateways of the city she makes her speech:
Posted: I see your point, but the fact is that they amphetamines may keep you awake for longer on extended tasks and may be useful on long missions, but it still reduces the quality of decisions introducing effects such as paranoia and rapid mood swings- factors that can make you not judge a situation properly. (tell me about it, I'm currently studying the influence such drugs and situational factors can have on decisions- particularly pilots) Thus it would be unfair to condemn them for manslaughter just like it would be stupid to condemn an insane person for the same thing (temporary insanity of sorts as it were).
Your life is ending one minute at a time... So live it.
Posted: I was also quite shocked to read those articles, I had no idea the US would prescribe drugs, but looking back on it, I guess its a "beserker" type idea to make their soldiers more effective/less rational.
Your life is ending one minute at a time... So live it.
Laytinmember 111 posts Location: bottom left of the US
Posted: These drugs are not real anphetomines, they are not the crap that you can buy on the street corner or in your neighbors drug lab. Try to think of it as more along the lines of a caffeen pill, perscription streangth.
KOB, I feel that you are reading into this wrong. It isnt an attempt to make the soldiers and pilots not care, it is an attempt to keep them awake so that they may stay alive! That is the second most important thing. (the first being the accomplishment of the mission)
I do like the change of heart about the "government controled media". Some here like to think that the US Government is cencoring the media, telling it what it can and can not report on. While this might be true to a degree, it isnt to the extent that some would have others believe. Then there is an interesting change of mind or opinion where people take the government controled US media at face value as if everything said were pure fact with no possibility of error.
I am not saying that WHR did this or anybody in particuler, just an observation
Wisdom calls aloud in the street, she raises her voice in the public squares; at the head of noisy streets she cries out, in the gateways of the city she makes her speech:
Quote: These drugs are not real anphetomines, they are not the crap that you can buy on the street corner or in your neighbors drug lab. Try to think of it as more along the lines of a caffeen pill, perscription streangth.
I could try to think of them as caffeine pills instead of Amphetamines but that just wouldn't be true, would it??
Quote: Amphetamines, a prescription drug, are known on the street as uppers or speed. Yet, a 20/20 investigation has found, the amphetamines, the speed pills, are now standard issue to U.S. Air Force combat pilots, to help them stay awake on long combat sorties.
Quote: I do like the change of heart about the "government controled media". Some here like to think that the US Government is cencoring the media, telling it what it can and can not report on. While this might be true to a degree, it isnt to the extent that some would have others believe. Then there is an interesting change of mind or opinion where people take the government controled US media at face value as if everything said were pure fact with no possibility of error.
I am not saying that WHR did this or anybody in particuler, just an observation
I'm not really sure what your point is Laytin.
I think it's important to think independently and critically, there is bias in almost any type of media. It would be silly to accept any particular source of information as the absolute truth.
Laytinmember 111 posts Location: bottom left of the US
Posted: WHR, you can take what 20/20 said at face value or you can do what I am doing and listen to the people who have actually taken the pills. It is not speed. Speed is an illeagle drug. What is taken by pilots may be similer, but it is not the illeagle substance that some people in this world like to take. Apples are similer to that of oranges, both grow on trees, both are fruit, both are made into juice drinks and only one is made into a pie. Speed can kill you, these "go pills" have never killed the user and the idea that they are at fault for the death of someone else is a long jump at best.
Ultamatly it doesnt matter what is in the pilots system, it is their responsibility and their responsibility alone if they drop those weapons or not. In an F16 there is nobody else there to keep you from squeezing the trigger.
Unfortunatly for the sake of our debate, there is no way that any of us on these boards can proove anything. We can however continue to enjoy the speculations our fellow debaters
WHR, dont worry about the point in my previous point, if it went over your head then it would take too much of my time to explain it. Perhaps someone with some spare time can take up my slack. Well I am off to help people drown their sorrows in mass quantities of alcohol Cheers
Wisdom calls aloud in the street, she raises her voice in the public squares; at the head of noisy streets she cries out, in the gateways of the city she makes her speech:
Posted: They are speed pills, I don't think there is any doubt about that. The thing about the media is they very seldom lie, they are biased of course and sometimes pass on lies that they are told, but it is not often that they blatantly lie. That is why I believe the many media reports that say quite clearly that they are Amphetamines, speed pills.
I guess you did go over my head Laytin, I guess that must happen a lot to you seeing as how you are so wonderfully articulate (with great spelling to boot )