What good do you see in it all?
 

I suppose this might be considered a corollary to SM's question on "good" people doing "bad" things. I remember reading the Diary of Anne Frank years and years ago when I was just a kid, and I remember her writing something to the effect that she believed that all people had some good in their hearts. I have always wanted to agree with her, but, sometimes, its hard, you know? I came across some writing from Adolf Eichmann where he was going on about "good" Germans (then 80 million in number) who had one exceptional or "pet" Jew on whose behalf they were writing a letter asking for clemency. Eichmann went on to say that if each individual "good" German was to believed, well then the entire Jewish race would have to be saved and we wouldn't want that, now would we?

Obviously, Eichmann won the argument against 80 million of his countrymen, but why? Why would 80 million bits of bright light be defeated by the few dozen black holes which constituted the Nazi leadership? Why would a Christian turn the other way in the face of outrages committed by other so-called Christians as George Jr. appears to have done in the face of various atrocities committed by OUR side in the Middle East? I am in no way condoning 9/11 or any other outrage committed by "them" against "us", but do we in our turn need to do things that are inhumane and will only fuel hatred for the Americans as a people by the international community? OK, so wrongs were committed by us in the past, so "they" have committed wrongs in the present; are we going to establish a reign of humanity by the commission of inhumane acts?

Is this the burden that humanity will always bear, to treat one another in an inhumane fashion? Is that bit of good in us all enough to give one hope or is it only an imaginary attribute that only children believe in before they are brought to their ends in whatever death camp is currently in vogue?

[pithy comment]

It's almost enough to make you believe in original sin ...

[/pithy comment, back later for serious thought]

mari - how do you propose that we stop the cycle of we did A, they did B, so now we have to...?

after someone attacks us (i.e, 9/11, kidnappings in Iraq resulting in beheadings) should we seek them out and get a giant group hug going in hope that they will reciprocate? because that was carter's method for dealing with the USSR, and it didn't work.
or should we seek them out and wipe them from the face of the planet? i know it won't bring back our loved ones, but at least they won't be able to harm us any more.

at the root of it all, it is important to understand that groups of people will take action that is logical and rational from their perspective. we have conflict because what group A sees as best for them, group B sees as harmful and will act to discourage. and so the cycle begins.

Maybe Carter's methods didn't work with the USSR, but they did work with the Camp David peace accords between Egypt and Israel. Besides, the USSR actually had the ability to destroy us, so tangling with them would have been very dangerous.

I don't see Bush's methods bringing peace anywhere. Do you?

I have no idea how we would stop that cycle, but wiping a group of people off the face of the planet does not seem like a great step forward for humanity. It sounds to me like you are advocating getting rid of the Muslim people in just the same way Hitler wanted to get rid of the Jewish ones. Will George Jr. one day write a memo about all the "good" Americans who have a single "pet" Muslim on whose behalf they are asking for clemency? Will a little Muslim boy one day write the Diary of Abdul Mohammed just before our troops hit his town in our frenzy of making the world "safe for democracy"?

Hatred only begets hatred. I understand that we can't just lie down and allow ourselves to be killed without protest, but do we have to kill innocent civilians by way of retaliation? Many, many innocent people have been killed in the Middle East, just as our innocent American people were killed in 9/11. Is there not enough good in your own heart, Lookout, that you wouldn't hesitate to personally put a round of bullets into the head of a little Muslim girl?

:thumpsup:
The best thing to do with terrorists is --
refuse to be terrorized.

Sure, tighten the obvious holes in national security, work with international partners to do the same... But heck, Osama's agenda is largely being carried out by Dick Cheney and Donald Rumsfeld these days. Who's pumping out toxic amounts of fear and hatred? Polarizing the world into Us and Them? Our leadership.

In the wake of Sept. 11th, the whole world stood with us. Today, 90% of it is understandably disgusted with us. How does that help?

When I became a citizen of "the Greatest Country in the World" this was not the standard of behavior I had expected.

- Pie

absolutely not. "Muslim people" didn't attack the WTC, "Muslim people" aren't the ones strapping bombs to themselves and their children, "Muslim people" aren't cutting the heads off of contractors.
a group of terrorists who are bound together by their deranged faith in an offshoot of Islam are. these are not individuals who are following the teachings of muhammed to spread peace and understanding. (keep in mind that muhammed espoused protection of the jews, because they are "people of the book") these are people that want the entire world to believe in their god, or die.

FTR, yes, they should be wiped from the face of the planet. that is not genocide - that is an acknowledgement of who the enemy is and a willingness to deal with them.

also FTR - do i take joy in the death of the innocent? no, not at all. but if at some point their parents had stood up to the evil that is around them, we wouldn't have to be in the first place.
as far as putting a bullet through a little girl? i haven't heard a single credible story about a US soldier popping arab kids for fun. i have spoken with individuals who have shot children to death though - i find no fault in them, what doesn't get reported is that it isn't uncommon for their "soldier" to send out kids to collect weapons during a battle. if there is battle under way and someone picks up a weapon, the only rational thing to do is drop them, regardless of age.

Well, I take some solace in your statement that you are not against ALL Muslim people, just the terrorist faction. When you wrote of wiping people off the face of the earth that would include children as well, hence my question about shooting them. Up until your post, I'd never heard of our guys shooting children over there. I can understand why a soldier might feel the need out of self defence to shoot a 12 year old boy who has a weapon that he refuses to surrender. Hatred begins young which only makes it all the more tragic.

people who are talking about the innocent civilians killed in a war zone are ususally referring to women and children. i can tell you that fighting in an islamic region is just plain different. the numbers may show a higher than expected body count for women and children, some of which may be attributed to the tactic of sending the family out because they know americans typically get squeamish about popping anybody but an adult man holding a weapon.
that is not to say that there have been 0 legitimate civilian casualties, because there have, but i think the number gets inflated because people don't get to hear about some of the ploys used by our enemies.

Amen, Pie.

What amazes me recently is outrage over the beheadings. I AM NOT ADVOCATING SUCH A THING. However, turn the situation around a little and look at it from a different perspective. Think of another country deciding to "liberate" the US from the "oppression" of the Bushco "regime". Tanks, planes, helicopters, and thousands of soldiers invade the land, searching for weapons of mass destruction. This time, though, WMD are certainly going to be found here because hey, we actually HAVE them.

Think about a fireworks display for the Fourth of July. Silly tradition, or at least it would be, if we were in the midst of of an enemy occupation. I'd say that's comparable to the wedding party US troops blew up due to the "silly tradition" of shooting guns into the air near the tent set up for the reception. Men, women and children were killed - by US forces.

Think about the prisoners US soldiers tortured, sexually assaulted and killed. I bet we (me included) would be shooting or beheading any invaders we could find if they came inside US borders to lend us this kind of "liberation". Think also of the thousands of prisoners we are currently holding in Guantanamo Bay, without charge or legal counsel.

I don't advocate killing contractors - after all, they're not fighting and not likely to be armed - certainly not the fairest of game. But perhaps in the midst of things they're still seen as a part of the whole, and profiting from the takeover of Iraqui soil. I don't advocate killing anyone, but if I felt as threatened as the Iraqis must (and yeah, I'm sure they're glad Saddam is out of power, but that doesn't negate the heinous crimes the "good guys" have committed there) I'd do whatever I could to get them the hell out of my country too. YMMV.

I was thinking more of civilians being killed by bombs and in air raids, just to clarify.

Jane, let’s say the American apocalypse happens: Bush remains in office come January 2005. Not only that, let’s say that he signs an executive order granting himself martial authority, and it stays in effect for the duration of his term … which doesn’t end in 2008 because he refuses to hold election for “security reasons”. He disbands the legislature, assumes control of all three branches, and enforces his edicts with military power. The press is federalized, guns are seized, and every human baby is stamped with a V-chip at birth.

It’s 2020. 10 different attempts a revolution have been quelled because the technological dominance of the Homeland Security office allows them to isolated and eradicate anyone who gains a significant following in dissent. The country is beaten down by terror, the people unable to regain control of their own government.

At what point would you welcome the intervention of another country? Would you be content to wait it out until Bush 41 dies, and power passes to whoever marries one of the twins? Would you be content to suffer under the yoke of oppression, hoping that somehow something would change?

Say the Brits invaded for the purpose of reasserting democratic controls on the country. Say they’re successful. Surely there would be some citizens who would rebel against them, some Fundamentalists who believed that the Bush America was the amillennial Kingdom of God. Surely they would take up arms.

Would they be right to do so? If they were your neighbors and friends, would you hide them, aid and abet them? Or would you recognize the great gain to be had by aiding the invading Brits, letting them peaceably rebuild the country, and then insisting that they leave when they promised?

Not all rebellions have moral equivalency. Not all uprisings are noble. Not all “Freedom Fighters” work for the best interest of the people.

-sm

and that is called story selling. good job SM.

All of the people rising against them wouldn't be Bush loyalists. There are plenty of people who would resent foreign occupation regardless of motive. Such people would, in my estimation, be misguided (assuming the Brits are as pure-hearted as described), but not deserving of being wiped out.

Whew! Straw man much, smooth? None of the things in your first paragraph are possible according to existing US law. As for V-chips, I thought they were for TVs, but for the sake of argument I'll assume you mean an ID or tracking device. If that's not the case, please correct me. I think that even if the slightest hints if your scenario should come to pass, the Right Wing, Bushies themselves, would have him put out as the Antichrist.

The events you describe are so far-fetched as to be unanswerable. Someone, somewhere, is going to have quite a stockpile of weapons. Somewhere, that someone would have enough sense to use them against the president in this case, or the vice president, and whomever comes behind them, until the "regime" is ended. it's also my (admittedly unpopular) opinion that if the Iraqi people had truly wanted out from under Saddam and his ilk, they'd have staged coup after coup until sanity prevailed. But they didn't. My belief is that horror, if it's an already known, predictable horror, is preferable to the unknown in many cases. People are scared of change - think, on a smaller scale, of battered spouses afraid to leave.

The Brits are our allies. We are not allies to the Iraqis. I don't recall us sending ballots out to Joe and Mary Muslim asking if they wanted our help. I recall dancing in the streets when the statue of Saddam was overturned, but I don't recall them singing our praises much since then. Maybe that's because we aren't asking?

I have to believe that even while making this argument, you see the folly in it. I understand using hyperbole to make a point, but I'm sure you recognize that what you are suggesting *might* happen is a distinct impossibility, so there's no merit in saying what I might or might not feel. The sky *might* fall, and I *might* wish for someone to prop it back up, but as rational thought prevents me from worrying about it, I cannot speculate what my reaction might be.

Our unwarranted invasion of Iraq is not a hypothetic, it has already occured. As I said before, I do not condone killing. But I have to wonder why that now, since we have the dictator in hand, we continue to occupy a nation which has every bit as much right to sovreignty as we do, and to terrorize, imprison and abuse its citizens.

Your analogy just won't fly, SM. A closer one to the current Iraqui reality would be more as follows: Bush becomes dictator and the scenario you describe unfolds itself, but instead of the Brits coming to our rescue, its the Chinese. Now we are not only reeling from the horrors of the recent Bush dictatorship, we are trying to deal with the invasion of a people who do not speak our language, are ethnically different than most of us, and who want to impose a system of government that we have no experience with and find threatening at best. On top of that, none of these Chinese are Christian. They seem to be some strange blend of atheist communists crossed with a wierd oriental belief in Confuscianism which most of us know nothing about. There is a more true parallel of what's going on in the Mid-East today.

To be pedantic, very few are Christian, not none.

Whatever. Picky, Picky, Picky. What? Did you turn into Morris the Cat this evening? :eyebrow:

If you're quibbling over whether SM's story could be a possible future, you've already missed his main point.

I'm not going to point out the point again because I couldn't do it as eloquently as SM and have you all miss it once again. It would be heartbreaking and cause me to post less in the future.

So, unless I'm being whooshed, here, Undertoad, you're saying that debating using straw men, impossible hypotheticals, and a "if you have to ask, you'll never know" attitude are encouraged here?

Please note: My quibbling is intended to be equally applicable to the situation in Iraq and SM's hypothetical. That is also true for my nitpick on marichiko's Chinese analogy - there are a few Muslim US soldiers in Iraq.

My quarrel with SM's little fable is not concerning any potential that it might occur, rather I question its usefulness as an analogy. Why don't you read what I wrote, UT?

I did, but I'm still trying to figure out the part where you justify beheading the Chinese.

So, then, Undertoad, like I was saying - what sort of logic did you find in smooth's scenario that the rest of us have missed? I honestly thought you were joking at first with your "I could tell you mere mortals, but since it's so apparent to anyone who can read, I won't" response.

I'll have to go dig up my secret decoder ring, I guess. :rolleyes:

Sorry, thought you were against straw man arguments.

SM gave you an alternate history - any alternate history, really, to try to work out where the beheadings you don't quite advocate deserve the status of being not-quite-advocated-for. And the beheadings were still abominable.

Show me where I used a straw man. Need a dictionary?

Smooth gave nothing akin to a history - he gave an impossible, laughable hypothetical work of poor quality, alarmist fiction. I call bullshit as to my "not quite advocating" beheadings. I fully condemn them. I merely offered reasons as to why the beheaders might feel them justified. Reminds me of what my father used to say about fisherman who wanted to kill all the Great Whites because of the surfers and swimmers who die occasionally in the ocean - hey, don't go in the water. That's where they live. Same thing applies here. Don't want to get your head lopped off by Muslim extremists? Don't invade their territory, toots.

And yes, the beheadings were abominable. But no less no than Allied troops killing the innocent in and around Iraq. Unlike with my far-fetched shark analogy, where the hell were the people our military has killed supposed to go? How were they supposed to stay out of the way of our "liberation"? Everyone who's been beheaded has made a CHOICE to be there, fully knowing that they are going into the line of fire. Contractor, medic, general or otherwise, they made an informed, conscious decision to be there. The people who live there have no such choice.

And make no mistake about it, the vast majority of people the US is holding in various prisons due to this clusterf*ck are civilians, and quite a few are children. THAT's an abomination, guy, and not a straw man in sight. ;)

You are mixing me up with Jane, UT. I also think you're having a little fun with us. I hear you and Hubris Boy are forming a mutual admiration society. ;)

Personally, I'm not trying to justify ANY beheadings, whether real or hypothetical. Jane's point and mine is just that it can be an interesting exercise to turn the thing around and try to view it from a different perspective. You can't tell me that you wouldn't feel slightly annoyed if the Chinese over-ran the US?

I'm sure you mean "if they liberated the US" since you are interested in accurate analogy.

I'm sure that you and I would feel the same about it: grateful, and pissed as hell at anyone who made their work more difficult, since they were attempting to improve my life and my chances at a successful and free society.

:eyeball: :eyeball:
:corn:

I guess my personal take on the "Chinese invasion" would be this: If you're going my way, I'll work with you. As soon as your purposes don't serve mine, I'll ditch you. If your direction is more than 90 degrees from mine, I'll fight you.

Seems a bit like what the Iraqis are doing, afaict.

Mari, I think you were right on with the redirection from Brit to Chinese. The cultural/governmental/religious factors play a huge role here. If the drive to unseat Saddam had come from within the Arab world, most of this negative fallout would never have happened.

- Pie

Well, since the Chinese government is so well-known for its generousity and humanitarianism, you go ahead and get down on your knees in gratitude when they get here, Undertoad. There won't come a time (in my lifetime, anyway) when the US will need China's, or any other nation's help to shield us poor, poor citizens from the US government. On the other hand, I'm also explicitly NOT saying that we should blindly follow our (democratically elected, but I'll give you a pass on that too for the 2000 election) leaders. All I'm saying is that if the Chinese come "liberating", my neighbors and I wouldn't be out of line in asking them to leave, and taking immediate action if they refused.

BTW, what makes you think the Chinese are any more interested in us having a "free society" than they are in giving the same to their own citizens?

You're being deliberately obtuse.

jane, i think you are being a tad argumentative. it is not impossible that sm's future could come true. how could you say that once, much less repeat it 3 times? how the hell do you know what the future holds? you been there? and mari's analogy with china?
where did she say they wanted to us to have a free society? as the quote marks you used would indicate.

you accuse SM of using a straw man, and then you promptly put words in UT's mouth so you can argue with them. and sm's post was well written, as most of his posts are. you're new, but i wanted to let you know that you are stepping in it here.

ps, have you seen my troll....er wig...around?

First, Jim, mari is not the one who used the words "free society" - that was Undertoad. Second page, about 2/3 of the way down, in one of many drive-by posts. I don't have to be from the future to know that Smooth's scenarion IS. NOT. GOING. TO. HAPPEN. I'm not arguing with mari - I think the China scenario presents a better analogy - we invaded Iraq, took down the dictator, and continue to hold many innocent citizens prisoner, have little "accidents", and generally bull up when anyone suggests that we ought to move right along. I'm saying that if Irag had wanted out from under Saddam, they're have done so themselves. It would have been bloody, to be sure, but certainly no more so than we've caused it to be.

Show me where I've put words in Smooth's mouth. I also asked for proof of using a straw man - no answer on that either yet.

New or not, lumberjim, thanks for the advice on "stepping in it", whatever you mean by that. If your intent was to spare me the embarrassment of getting eaten alive by more experienced, red-hot debaters, I'll fend for myself. ;) Thanks for your concern, though.

Also, at the other quality message boards where I post, accusations of trolling, even thinly-veiled ones, or ones that include singing, are grounds for banning. I suspect that's not the case here?

Argumentative does not equal wrong.

Jane, we were previously trying to construct a good analogy, so if you believe that China in the analogy is not acting in the US's best interests... do you also believe that the US is not acting in Iraq's best interests?

I'm not Jane, but I definitely believe that many Iraqis believe that the US is not acting in Iraq's best interests.

Oh, you might have registered before the registration process showed the Cellar rules. Hit the new registration page and see what the rules are.

Okay, do you think they're wrong?

my bad. I misunderstood.

as did you, it seems:

.

there is no banning here. well, unless you are really really exceptionally annoying.

by stepping in it, i was cautioning you that you are being shitty to people that are generally well thought out and careful about what they say. i'll not take up their side of the argument, as they're both big boys, and can fend for themselves as well.

now 4 times, you say the future sm describes is impossible. i disagree. Do YOU need a dictionary? impossible means there is zero chance that it could happen. it is POSSIBLE that we could be invaded by a race of space faring octopi, and put into slavery on another planet. improbable, yes, impossible?....no. .....or are you being "deliberately obtuse?"

Smooth made damn good point as as UT said, pity you all missed it, particularly you jane. Since you seem incapable of enough imagination to understand what he was saying, i'll outline a more likely and more realistic scenario. I'll ignore the fact that the likelyhood of the scenario should be irrelevent.

Widespread failure/unaccountability of over 2 million votes in november by electronic voting machines causes the election to fall into disarray. The issue goes to a supreme court that gets loaded in bush's favor and the election is largely viewed as hijacked, even inside the US. The Patriot II act is dug up, re-branded the Save the Children and Kill Terrorists act creating the groundwork for a police state in the US. Another major terrorist attack involving chemical weapons in D.C causes a far further erosion of civil liberties while keep discontent below boiling point. The heads of the major media networks, all of whom have strong ties and relationships with the white house (big biz has done well and the republicans have done well from them) push an agenda that changing leadership in the middle of this crucial war for our freedom would be counterproductive and hurt the effort to keep our proud fighting men and women able to do their work....

While anyone here will attest that I am no fan of the invasion of Iraq, the idea that the people would rise up is laughable. They did, multiple times. The last time was just after the first Iraq war, they thought they were doing it with the support of the US who promptly pulled out and left them to get shot to bits. If you talk to anyone that was on the ground in the intervening 10 years or so (I have) you'd know that the opression was so absolute, so complete that organising a resistance movement capable of taking down Saddam as he stood was close to impossible.

Trust me, get get trolls out of here fairly fast. Apart from Radar, eveyone needs a laugh.

I hope they're wrong.

UT, I certainly do not believe that the US is acting in the best interest if Iraq.

Lumber, I will concede to "highly, highly in-friggin-probable" instead of "impossible". My feeling is that the connotation is the same, but whatever floats your boat, right? And sorry for the UT / Smooth typo. Trying to defend my position in the midst of bedlam here at my desk - apologies to anyone offended by the name switch. I'd still like a cite or putting words in anyone's mouth, though.

Jaguar, you're preaching to the choir about the stolen election - I even referenced it somewhere in the middle of this trainwreck - the fact is that we are still comparing apples to oranges with this "US is analogous to Iraq because of A and B." I will call your scenario just as highly in-friggin-probable as the aforementioned one.

You know, my husband, a decorated Army Ranger, disagrees with your assertion of what "anyone who was on the ground in the interening 10 years or so" might opine. He was there, but doesn't presuppose to know what the entire if the Iraqi nation might or might not have felt. I don't consider your opinion that is was impossible for the Iraqis to oust Saddam any more reasonable than my opinion that it's impossible that the Chinese, or the Brits, or the Martians, might have to liberate us from Bushco. As I mentioned before, I think the Iraqis could have killed Saddam if they had chosen to, but did not do so due to well-founded fear.

Lumber, be honest, now: you watched that Twilight Zone marathon on SciFi last weekend, didn't you? :alien:

I am truly not trying to be shitty here on purpose. I feel very strongly that the war in Iraq is wrongheaded, unwarranted, and self-serving. I also like to debate intelligent people with different points of view. I'll stop now, as I don't want any hard feelings.

here and here

So, Jane, you figure Hussein was a better deal for them, or what?

First cite: asking for clarification. It was a question. It's called mirroring. I gave him a synopsis of the way I understood what he said, and asked for clarification. Absolutely not putting anything in anyone's mouth.


Second cite: Hey, he REFUSED to say wht information we should have gleaned from the post, saying only that HE understood, and he was NOT going to explain it. I gave my opinion of his Angelica Pickles-style debate. I charaterized his attitude as I saw it. I'm still looking for that ring, BTW.

Thanks for the fun, guys. You've kept me occupied for a couple of hours, but now I'm off for lunch. For real debating fun, go to straightdope.com.

Well we'll agree to disagree on the probability of that little scenario. As for the likelihood of Saddam being overthrowable, after a number of attempts that had been bloodily put down, is it any surprise? You don't really make that much sense, you seem to be saying theoretically it was possible but everyone was too scared. Doesn't that mean, in practical terms it just plain wasn't going to happen? Considering how many attempts had failed and the perceived apathy of the outside world is it any surprise it didn't happen? I prefer not to talk in absolutes and you would notice I said ''close to" impossible, not impossible, but impossible outside exceptional and unlikely circumstances that were unlikely to occur in the near (Saddam's lifetime) future without external influence of the kind your husband would be involved in applying.

I base my opinion on journos I've spoken to who were in Baghdad and managed to speak to those that were willing to express their discontent. I'm obviously not aware where your husband was but I doubt he was in such a situation and I can't think what he would be doing in any major city that he would be allowed to talk about frankly.

First of all, Jane don't worry about it. LJ loves to fan the flames sometimes, but he's an alright kind of guy (we all have our little idiosyncrancies). SM and UT come from the right side of the board, but even they can sometimes see reason. We all have fun pulling one another's tails. Don't take any of it too seriously, and stick around. We can always use another intelligent liberal around here.

Now back to my analogy with the Chinese. Western culture, religion, and political systems are as foreign to the Arab world as Chinese thought would be to us. Let's say in our little hypothetical future scenario that the Chinese came in with hearts of purest gold - no ulterior motive for their intervention. How many of us would really believe this? I know I would be hugely skeptical of their motives. Why? Because historically the Chinese have never been friends with the West. Because they DO have a very different system of government than ours. And that's just for starters.

The Western and Arab world have been at loggerheads every since the Crusades if not before. We have different systems of belief. Our cultures are very different, as are our systems of governance. Of course any Arab nation is going to be at best suspicious of us and skeptical of our motive.

I am skeptical of our motive. We don't intervene in the internal affairs of other third world countries where something as valuable as petroleum is not at stake. I hate to be a broken record, but once again "It's the oil, dummy!" No wonder that the people of Iraq do not greet us with open arms. And we have made their lives worse, not better. At least under Saddam they had electricity. Now they are most likely to see electricity when they're being tortured with it.

So to complete the analogy Mar, if it was your neighborhood without electricity after crushing the Bush regime, and the strange Chinese had taken the task of repairing it, but had not completed it because hardliner Bush loyalists were bombing their facilities and pipelines...

...you personally would fault the Chinese then?

Most likely as a patriotic American, me and my little band of guerillas would be out there doing our best to disrupt the Chinese forces. To make the scenario even more realistic, lets say that a group of Western terrorists for some reason of their own had set off bombs in a major Chinese city, killing thousands of Chinese just weeks or months before the Chinese decided to come to our aid out of the pure goodness of their hearts. Let's say further that prior to this Chinese intervention the Chinese leadership had made a number of statements which seemed to imply that the US was giving sanctuary to the terrorists. When the Chinese army sets foot on US soil to "free" me, my every hair is standing on end and I feel that my country is going from the frying pan to the fire.

Oh yeah, and don't forget the Chinese have banned any American who worked under the former Bush dictatorship from having anything to do with repairing the power supplies. This, in effect, gets rid of all our skilled people because they had no choice but to work under the Bush dictatorship, like it or not.

oh dammit! now we're going to have to go back and reinstitute slavery... after all if they didn't want to be slaves then surely they would have freed themselves, right?

So Mar, whenever you found them repairing the electricity, you would capture and behead the Chinese?

Have you read the long lists of what the Americans have done over there, or do you really believe it's just one big Abu Ghraib?

Once more this is a false analogy. In the US whites greatly out-numbered slaves, so while there were any number of small uprisings, the possibility of an outright rebellion was nearly impossible. We are not discussing a system of slavery here, but rather a government dictatorship. In theory, at least, it was within the realm of possibility for the Iraqui people to turn against Saddam just as the people of India led by Mahatma Ghandi rose against British imperialism. Who is to say that this might not have happened in Iraq but for Western meddling? In fact the intervention of US forces in the Middle East has added to the instability of that region, rather than detracted from it. Dictators like Saddam are able to rally people against what they percieve to be a threat by the Western world.

By the way, talk about a thread getting hi-jacked! But I guess in a way this comes back to my original question about the "good" in peoples' hearts. I think many wrongs are committed due to our inability to place ourselves in another person's shoes and understand how they might percieve what is going on around them.

It's often said that no guerilla movement has ever succeeded against a government in place without outside help. Think of that, and remember that the future is THIS:

http://www.bigbrotherawards.org/img/award.jpg (forever)

French revolution didn't involve outside help. The Russian one had minimal meddling, the Vietnamese fought off the french without little or no help. That's off the top of my head.

If someone had said in 2000 it was possible for someone to hijack two jets, fly them into both World Trade Center towers, and completely demolish both towers, how far-fetched would you have classified it.

These kinds of questions have always been asked. After WWII and during the Cold War, there were many movies about possible political unrest in the US. An analysis of many of the Nazis who committed atrocities found most of them to be clinically sane, not to mention all of those who stood by and let the Holocaust happen. The most dangerous phrase is always 'It could never happen here'. It is very similar to the one recited by 11 million people in German concentration camps.

Since September 11th, a great deal of power has been concentrated in the executive branch. We already know that Nixon attempted to abuse his authority with government agencies, in essence declaring himself to be the government and to have any criticism of him investigated as criticism of the United States itself. More power has been given/returned to the White House than Nixon ever had at his disposal.

Our founders were very wise in installing three branches in our goverment as checks and balances. Of course, since a President can sometimes select members of the Supreme Court and hand picks the Attorney General, sometimes the relationship does not always appear as adversarial as it should be.

Nixon's impeachment by a true bipartisan Congress was one of our nations best and worst days at the same time. It demonstrated that noone was above the law and that when necessary, Congress had the will to uphold some basic standard of democracy above party affiliation and politics as usual.

The fact is that most patriots start out as traitors and most 'freedom fighters' as terrorists. The label only changes if they win. Thanks to the Patriot Act, we are safer than we have ever been from terrorists. We are also safe from patriots, if we should ever need them.

Our only hope in a stable and functioning democracy is the ethical backbone of Congress when it really matters, the impartiality of the Supreme Court, the apolitical stance of our military and their commitement to 'support and defend the Constitution', and an informed, actively engaged public that is able to balance a desire for liberty with that of safety.

Movies about Bad Things That Can Happen Here

Seven Days in May (1968)

Fail Safe (1964)

Enemy of the State (1998)

The Siege (1998)

The Pelican Brief (1993)

Movies about Bad Things That (Almost) Did Happen Here

All the Presidents Men (1976)

Thirteen Days (2000)

What...no
The Manchurian Candidate ? ;)

Wag the Dog?

I thought "we" (as in US Banks and financiers including JP Morgan) paid for it for the most part.

The Russian revolution was funded by JP Morgan?!? Damn capitalist warmongers! I knew you couldn't trust 'em! :eyebrow:

Which revolution? There's all sorts of bit an pieces in there, you'll have to be specific. I should have in the first place.

Quite a bit of it ... playing both sides against the middle, IIRC, but for the most part I was referring to the October Revolution.