Just pull out, and everything will be fine forever.

[LittleClarkie]

This was a local radio idiot talking this morning about Iraq and war protesters. He ranted about the fact that the peaceniks want us to just pull out of Iraq, and then everything will be fine forever, because the Muslims are only attacking us because we're there. And it's not as if they didn't attack us before the Iraq War or anything. Then he brought up how Iran wants to blow Israel off the planet. All with tons of sarcasm in his voice.

But, I kept thinking, the alternative is to keep fighting war after war until all terrorism is abolished, as if we were the only ones to be attacked in such a way, and somehow we are going stop all terrorism because it dared to attack the great US of A. We're special, doncha know, and the terrorists should have realized that and left us alone and attacked Israel again or something.

And of course, fighting them there just makes us so entirely safe here. Our borders are so well protected you know, as well as our ports. Nobody can get to our food supply. And of course it doesn't matter that we don't have the man responsible for 9/11 behind bars. Yes sir, we sure have everything under control. We're so safe I could just puke. :sarcasm:

What they are proposing is unending war we can't win. You don't fight a conventional war against terrorism. You fight at best a covert war against terrorism.

Why is their thinking so binary and simplistic. I like the morning radio guys when they're not talking politics. But it's like they're purposely obtuse on this subject.

I'm not so naive as to think that we will never suffer another terrorist attack if we pull out of Iraq. But it's like trying to swat a swarm of bees. We are radicalizing people. We are the ultimate recruitment tool. We aren't fighting terrorism. We're making it worse.

Don't these people see that the war will never end if our goal is to ultimately end terrorism? Terrorism will always be the tool of the poor.

Remember when Kerry said he could reduce the danger of terrorism to a nuisance, something you think about as you go about your business but not all consuming? How Freidman piped up then, and reminded people that reducing terrorism to a nuisance was actually our goal. Why would we want to be perpetually afraid?

It's like they're brainwashed.

I don't know. Maybe half of what I just said is bullshit. Maybe most of it is bullshit. I'm just ramble-ranting here.

When do we all wake the fuck up?

[wtmusic]

1. The idea that they can never completely control the world drives them nuts

so they try. And that's the problem.

[LittleClarkie]

2. Kind of being an obsessive, controlling micro-manager

isn't it.

Why don't we just seal off America in Saran Wrap and be done with it?

[calmblueocean]

3. No, you're right on the money

The Republicans have encouraged a culture that worships ignorance, power, and revenge. Within the confines of the Republican mindset, there is no reasoned response to terrorism. There is only total war. Even if they *knew* that going to war in Iraq would result in the release of a terrorist plague that killed 200 million people in America, they would still do it, because all they know is revenge and hate and fear.

[firefox]

4. It is not like we could not withdrawal and re-invade

Besides it is all bullshit anyway that we care about the Iraqis or democracy. We invade them illegally and leave them with depleted uranium. Wasn't Iraq considered a democracy in 1953 and wasn't it the CIA that put Sadam in power. Iran certainly was a democracy before we installed the Shaw.

We do not give a shit about democracy. We do not give a shit about the Iraqis. The power that is above the Republicans and the Democrats wants global domination. And besides that we could withdrawal to the Kurd territory or leave to neighboring countries and re-invade anytime we want. International law sure would not stop us from re-invading.

[TahitiNut]

10. That's it. Sell withdrawal as "Invasion Training"

Our troops need the practice. We should withdraw from Iraq just so we get a chance to invade again. Nothing like the real thing to train the troops!

[firefox]

11. Iraq was monarchy until 1958 coup

The monarchy was anti-communist. The coup brought in the communist. When the CIA put Saddam in power there was a terrible blood bath as if the USG cares about Iraqis. There has not been an honest debate about Iraq as all the background information and dissent has not broken through the echo chamber.

From http://www.upi.com/inc/view.php?StoryID=20030410-070214-6557r

In July 1958, Qasim had overthrown the Iraqi monarchy in what one former U.S. diplomat, who asked not to be identified, described as "a horrible orgy of bloodshed."

According to current and former U.S. officials, who spoke on condition of anonymity, Iraq was then regarded as a key buffer and strategic asset in the Cold War with the Soviet Union. For example, in the mid-1950s, Iraq was quick to join the anti-Soviet Baghdad Pact which was to defend the region and whose members included Turkey, Britain, Iran and Pakistan.

Little attention was paid to Qasim's bloody and conspiratorial regime until his sudden decision to withdraw from the pact in 1959, an act that "freaked everybody out" according to a former senior U.S. State Department official.

Washington watched in marked dismay as Qasim began to buy arms from the Soviet Union and put his own domestic communists into ministry positions of "real power," according to this official. The domestic instability of the country prompted CIA Director Allan Dulles to say publicly that Iraq was "the most dangerous spot in the world."

[LittleClarkie]

15. Wow, I'm learning things on this thread, thank you

It sounds like Qasim pulled a "Castro".

Or is it that Castro pulled a "Qasim."

Damn, I can't remember my history, but Castro was just a bit after this, wasn't he.

I'm sure all of that went over like a lead balloon and helped feed the Domino Theory

[Skip Intro]

5. None of it makes sense . We shouldn't be there. There's no good outcome.

Except for those companies that made profits, and our all but certain influence/control of the Iraqi oil fields, the whole thing is crap.

I don't know whether we should be there or not, tomorrow. Its a hell of a thing to say to a people, "we came, we destroyed, here's what's left, good luck." We just bomb and murder and maime and then leave? I'm not so sure that's what the situation calls for. But we sure as hell shouldn't be there to begin with.

We should not be in Iraq.

This whole "well, we're there to establish a democracy in the Middle East" argument is bullshit to start with, but they've nowhere left to go at this point. I almost get tired of saying it sometimes, but the WMD threat they pounded upon the world was bullshit, and the democracy flowers we're planting with clusterbombs will bloom at some point - not. To have done what we have done to that nation - 9*11 x 10 for Baghdad, and Iraq, for bullshit lies. Oh my god, it feels good to remain pissed at this. Those greedy lying bastards aren't in Iraq to build or encourage or work for peace - peace is a bad fucking word to those idiots - damn! Anyway, sorry, just amazing how these fuckers have peace being a bad word. Holy shit. What crap. In the name of a man who spoke of peace.

eiach!

[LittleClarkie]

12. I know,

don't be sorry.

It is a situation that pulls you two ways. It's a hell of a thing to fuck up a country, and then like a kid that just threw a baseball though a window, we say "Oops, sorry. See ya!" and then run.

But if Kerry had gotten in, I could imagine doing things right first, smoothing things diplomatically and THEN leaving. But Bush won't do things right. Nor do I think he's concerned with doing things right, whether he then leaves or not.

I think Kerry's finally figured that out too. Hence, his turn of heart.

We should leave, but they won't, or if they do, they will make a Saigon-style, leave good people behind cluster fuck out of it. So it's very nearly a no-win situation.

[hopeisaplace]

6. This could also be the new

method of birth control for the USA with the Supreme Court you're gonna end up with
..sorry your subject line kinda put me somewhere else for a sec ..
*slaps own face* :silly:

[LittleClarkie]

14. I had a friend who used to do that

slap his own face to knock the thoughts outta there.

I didn't think of that little double meaning until it was too late. But my heading is a bit, how shall we say, risque.

[Merrick]

7. Its like fighting back hair by yanking it out...

it only grows back thicker.

[Bouncy Ball]

8. If we kill everyone, including ourselves, there will be no more terrorism!

Of course, there will be no more humans, too.

But the animals will be happy!

Well, the non-domesticated ones, anyway. The domesticated animals will have a hell of a time at first.

[PurityOfEssence]

9. Fear of complexity propels people into idiotic beliefs

It'd be hard to find a sizeable country more complex and more at loggerheads than Iraq. Truly, the Versailles Treaty plagues us all to this day: this is a country cobbled together out of convenience by people who didn't know dick about the place, and it's only been held in check by internal strife and then a strong dictatorship.

To think we could go into a place about which we knew nothing and force our simplistic fait accompli on them is breathtaking in its hubris. Now we're there. We're not going to leave because the PNAC will torch the entire human race to buttress Israel and glomb onto the oil we so crave. Even if we did, it would create such an ugly mess that to do so would vilify us as a people--rightly so--for all time. We're stuck. Morally, to leave now is deeply wrong; regardless of the ugliness that got us there in the first place, we owe it to those people to stay there and ease their tranisition into whatever atavistic horror of a government they'll get.

Iraq is the tarbaby of all tarbabies, and we're stuck fast. The arguments about leaving are just silly: the PNAC and oilboys aren't going to leave.

Morally, we'd be assholes to leave right now and ignite an ugly inferno, but don't worry: that's not going to happen. We're going to stay there and bleed while making those poor people bleed MUCH more.

It'd be nice to hear a plausible solution to this, but it's almost as impossible as a true one for the Palestine/Israel problem.

Some situations just don't have real solutions.

We will stay there for a VERY long time and bleed endlessly. This doesn't make me as sad as the suffering we bring to the inhabitants of that luckless land. Whether we like it or not, fundamentalist Shiite Islam will take over the place, awash in a civil war. They really can't lose: should the Kurds split off, they'll be stomped on by Turkey and Iran (although they'll probably survive as an entity) and should the Sunnis pull in the massive support from the rest of the Muslim world, it'll only allow the Shiites to control their southern territory with its oil and links to the gulf.

If this doesn't show why Syria's the next target, then nothing will. For us to hold our precious foothold in the area, we need to be able to supply it and that can only come from two points: Jordan and Syria. As Saudi Arabia rips itself apart with fundamentalist madness, we will secure the western approaches.

I hate the PNAC. I hate them for their evil and their incompetence. We are now the bad guys, and that's that. That we're facing stark raving lunatic fundamentalists living in the fantasyland of hate is no comfort, in fact it's a source of great fear: such people don't understand life, bound up as they are in a fantasy afterlife, and they are the kinds of people who will destroy the human race. That shouldn't rattle one too much, we have our own. Then again, after the supreme ugliness of those who run our culture, we don't have any moral high ground from which to disparage them: we are the princes of greed, and humans are mere impediments to our vainglory.

None of this bodes well; I fear for my children, and I'm disgusted by what we've become as a nation.

Sleep well, dammit.

[LittleClarkie]

13. Indeed, not just evil, but stupid AND evil

What a wonderous combination. And Bush just continues to reward stupidity as long as it plants a big kiss on his butt.

[gratuitous]

16. I find it odd

That conservative radio hosts who can barely articulate what passes for thinking in their own little pea brains are so cocksure about what I'm saying and thinking.

Here's the 4-1-1 for the conservawhacko radio show idiots:
Don't speak for me.
Don't try to tell me what I think.
Because you get it wrong.
Not just some of the time. Every time.
Wrong. As wrong as can be.

If you want to know what I think, bring me on your program, we both get mics that neither can cut off. You talk, then I talk. Don't interrupt, because if you do, then I get a free swing with my Louisville slugger.

Until then, just try to say what you think, and leave me out of it.

[LittleClarkie]

17. Right. They tell the world who we are, get it wrong

and then we never seem to get a forum to set the record straight. We are not all one thing or another, one movement or the other. They never ask.

Someone said we are like a minority for whom it is okay to assign a stereotype.

And these guys aren't even radio pundits. They are morning radio drive time shmucks, one of whom thinks he's Rush, Jr.

[MadHound]

18. Welcome to the propaganda machine

Back in the "good ol' days", there were a plethora of media outlets, and it was a federal mandate that diverse points of view were given to the public. The Fairness Doctrine helped keep demagogues like Rush and his ilk in check.

However Reagan wiped out the Fairness Doctrine, while at the same time media outlets started to merge and consolidate. This continued through the Bush and Clinton years, and various pieces of legislation helped this further narrowing of media outlets.

It has now gotten to the point where five(yes 5) media conglomerates own aprox 95% of our media, television, newspapers, magazines, books, movies, the whole shebang. Five companies.

Now if you look closely at these companies, you will see that three of them have direct connections to the military industrial complex, and the other two are benefitting indirectly. This is why we're seeing the media falling down so badly on the job. And why each and every one of them is pushing the war for all they're worth. Money and more money in obscene amounts if at stake, and they are all out to get their share.

This is being fostered in a very anti-intellectual climate here in America, a climate that has been growing worse by the year. Students in our schools and colleges aren't being given the quality of education that was present even a quarter century ago, which was significantly below the standard set a quarter century before that. Throughout much of the twentieth century there was a palpable anti-intelluctual backdrop, which is now coming into its own here early in the twenty first century. Whereas once people would call a bright person an egghead or geek, it was a given that the same people still respected intellectual achievements even if they didn't understand them.

Now the intellectual is not just disrespected, but is outright threatened, both literally and figuratively. Ignorance has been crowned king in this country, and it will take many years and much effort to unseat him.

Thus we wind up with your two DJs, amongst millions of other brain dead sheeple. They're too intellectually void to question what they're being told, too intellectually lazy to follow through and see if they're actually being fed the truth, and yet even if they did the follow through, they still cannot broadcast their real concerns for then they would be fired and easily blacklisted in a tight job market. Thus, willingly or unwillingly, they spew forth the propaganda, continuing the echo chamber effect that has been oh so common here in the US.

So we fight it where and how we can. Sadly, I don't think it will change much. I feel as though we are headed into another Dark Ages, where the light of learning is lost, and we live out our lives in superstitous dread. Personally, I'm preparing for the worst, because nobody is going to look out for me. Perhaps we can pass this knowledge on from person to person, at least it will keep the knowledge alive somewhere. But it is a long dark tunnel we're staring down, and I don't see the light at the end.

[11 Bravo]

19. Damn! Why couldn't Poppy Bush have followed that advice?

The world would be a better place.