Heh… Ryan, thanks for not getting too upset at my post.
My post was thickly ridden with sarcasm and inflated oversimplifications to make a point. I realize that, and I am sorry if I was offensive. But Mike is correct…this is in a similar form of the likes of Ann Coulter and others who can say irresponsible and completely illogical overgeneralizations, yet get support from conservatives because the statements fit their worldview. Now, yes, I realize that there are people on the “left” who do it too, however when people like Michael Moore or Bill Marr are using sarcasm and humor to make a point, they admit that it is sarcasm and humor. The likes of Ann Coulter and Michelle Malkin tote around their opinions as “fact,” and their offensive generalizations as “truth.” And that’s where I have a problem with them.
Now, don’t be a fox news watcher, though, Ryan, and allow my sarcasm to muddy the waters enough to where you miss all the other facts and valid points. :wink: Just because I was sarcastic, that doesn’t mean that the actual facts and the main points don’t still stand.
I’ll address a few of your concerns
:
#1. Brown people: I agree, WE meaning you, I, and most of taxpaying America are good people, and don’t want to see anyone die, brown or otherwise. The “brown people” thing is a little sarcasm that has some truth to it; when we make policy that results in people dying, it ain’t usually white people dying. There are whole host of reasons for that, starting with the demonization of “the enemy”. When “the enemy” isn’t like you (dresses differently, talks differently), and especially doesn’t have your worldview, and especially ESPECIALLY doesn’t follow YOUR religion (In our case, Christianity), then it is a heck of a lot easier to accept enslavement, child labor, abuse, torture, and death. It is a way to psychologically distance ourselves from people we hurt. This worked well with our First Nation people’s (Indians), it justified Slavery for hundreds of years, and it justifies Corporate Slavery and our foreign policy today, among other things.
Now, you said something interesting. “Once again with the brown people thing, I think it's because they aren't AMERICAN.” Since when is it right, Christian, or moral to kill people because they are not American? I know that it is sometimes necessary to kill, but in many cases we do it, it isn’t. Yet it is O.K. because they aren’t American? I know that you don’t believe that, but it is statements like that that tell me that the propaganda is working a little too well, and it is statements like that that illustrate my point here.
Now, most of us Americans nowadays really don’t want to see these bad things happened to anyone. But there are a select few people in this country who have vast amounts of wealth, and who are deathly afraid of losing it, and who will do ANYTHING to ensure that they continue to make money, even if it means that a few people die. They distance themselves from the situation as much as they can, and they continue to support and make decisions that result in people dying. And, because they are so easily demonized, and the propaganda is so successful, we taxpayers allow it to occur.
#2. Giving Saddam weapons, and puppetering: No, dude…we DID think this one through, and that is the scary thing.
You see, there are three rules that we follow when we deal with other countries in terms of trade and foreign policy:
1. “Free Trade” – Free trade means that we MUST be able to trade with you and vice versa. The idea behind this is that if you trade and make money, we trade and make money, and then no matter what happens between us, we’ll both be making money so we won’t attack each other. You see, we trade to make money, and the very wealthy has convinced us that it would be a national security risk NOT too. Oddly enough, there is really nothing free about this sort of trade.
2. “Mutual Gain” – This is the idea of I make what I’m good at, you make what your good at, we trade, and everyone gains. It’s not a bad idea, but here is how it ends up working. Hey, brown people country, NO…you can’t make computers, cars, and medicine because we and a select few other countries have the worldwide patens and rights to that technology, so if you make those things we will send the blackhawks to police you because you’ll be violating these patens. However, Brown people, you ARE good at making rice. So, you make your rice, we’ll make our computers, cars, and medicine, and we’ll trade…you’ll gain, we’ll gain, and we’ll all be happy!
The problem is, how many tons of rice will it take to buy a computer? Lots; and lots of labor and resources to boot. Under the idea of mutual gain, the 2nd and 3rd world will NEVER get ahead, and will always be trying to buy cars with grains of rice.
3. “Capitalism” – As it applies here our breed of Capitalism states that if everyone is making money, then everyone is happy. Problem is, some will only make a dollar for a days work, while dictators and our companies will make millions. So…not everyone is happy under this idea. This is especially considering that everything is done to take away the concept of “healthy competition,” which is an absolute requirement if Capitalism is going to work to any degree.
4. “Killing a few birds with one stone” – I don’t know what else to call it, so I call it killing a few birds with one stone. This is the idea that when we deal with other countries, we should try to make decisions that will fulfill many of our needs, regardless of whether or not it is a sound policy or the right thing to do. This leads to decisions like, “Hmmm…it is strategically good for us in the middle east to occupy Iraq, and we can make money off it, plus he is an evil dictator…so, lets tie 911 into Iraq and invade him instead of concentrating our efforts on real security risks like Bin Laden and Al Queda; security risks that don’t fit our other needs.”
Now, when you understand the above, you’ll understand that yes, we knew exactly what we were doing when we put Saddam into power and supported his dictatorship. When you understand the above, you’ll understand that it really is profit over people, and trade over democracy and freedom, despite the fact that our propaganda will say that it is about the people of the other country, and that it is about giving them freedom and democracy.
And, the real problem with the above is that only thing it is good at doing is making money for a select few. It does nothing good for us in protecting our security. We need to start realizing that Trade is not the answer to everything; and that if a dictatorship is going to violate rights of their own people, and if a dictatorship hates us and everything we stand for, then chances are they are going to try to screw us if they can in trade agreements. If we realized that, we wouldn’t be dealing with the likes of Al Queda and the Insurgence the was we are today. We also need to realize that Mutual gain only keeps countries poor, which makes them hate us, which is a security risk for us. We need to discover ways where everyone makes real money and gets ahead in trade deals, not just us and a few dictators. We need to realize that you can’t take out key components of capitalism, like healthy competition, and expect it to work and be fair for everyone. And…we need to realize that sometimes you have to do the right thing, instead of trying to see how many birds you can hit with one stone.
So you see, how we dealt with Saddam fits right in with our policies, which has backfired as it often does.
The problem is, most voters who need to start voting consciously on these issues don’t even know that these issues exist. The propaganda is working.
#3. 9-11: I realize that terrorists hit our billions and killed thousands; white as well as brown. I was all for going after those responsible too.
But on top of going after Al Queda, what we need to all understand is that despite the theological beliefs that were used to get the hijackers to do it, the reason it occurred was because of an oil deal gone bad. This is the reality, folks. We should be angry at those who would attempt to do a deal like that with the likes of the taliban to make $$ as well; but instead we reelect them and their friends. Once again, the propaganda worked.
We also need to understand that the guy who was responsible for the attacks (Bin Laden) was a guy who we enabled to be in power to gain strategic positioning in the Middle East. Now although our reasons for supporting the Taliban was more related to the Soviet Union at the time, do you see the trend? We supplied the Taliban with weapons too, just like Saddam.
If we don’t want terrorism to occur, we can start with reforming our policies of supporting dictators and oppressive regimes to suit us, or a wealthy few.
#4.
Is it so hard to believe that we attacked Afghanistan to get the Al Queda groups that maliciously attacked our American Civilians?
No…that is definitely why we attacked them. But that’s not what my issue was…why did we STOP attacking them to go after Saddam? (silly rap music in background) “If you wanna go and take a ride with me….HEEY MUST BE DA MONEY!”
#5.
How did they ever intimidate the American people into voting Bush back into power?
Umm… dude? This administration did a wonderful job of convincing people that Kerry was a liberal who would take away your guns (gun control) and your money (taxes), and that Kerry’s policies would invite terrorists to kill us, and finally (drum role please) Kerry wants to take away the “value’s” of good God-fearing Americans. That was the icing on the cake. Carl Rove can be accredited for getting 80 million or so of Christian-right voters who were AFRAID that if Kerry got elected, that their Christian values would be harmed. So…by making people AFRAID of losing their money, rights to self-defense (guns), lives (through terrorism), and Christian values, they got re-elected.
They were re-elected through fear, period.
#6. Our troops dying …
This is the issue that fusterates me the most.
Our troops are there because they want to defend America and keep us safe, and I have nothing but respect and support for them. I have trained a small handful of them. You can see my “Support our Troops” page on my own website, which I’ll be updating.
However, why our troops enlisted to defend our country, and why they fight for us is not the same as why we send them. And, often, we send our young men and women to die so that a few can secure financial interests, and that is the reality.
And, that SHOULD piss you off. It totally pisses me off.
#7. Sources - The sources are out there, but I am not going to spoon feed them on a thread where most who don’t agree with me aren’t going to look them up anyways. I’ve wasted plenty of time already in this thread. I can’t really sum up my political science degree in a few handy webpage links either.
But, you can start with that link in the last post. There is a lot of information there, and you can look at the links the left of the page.
You can do searches to find information here as well:
http://www.opensecrets.org/
A list of Companies and materials can be found in a Senate report titled: “U.S. Chemical and Biological Warfare-Related Dual Use Exports to Iraq and their possible impact on health consequences of the Gulf War,” U.S. Senate, 103d Congress, 2d session, May 25, 1994.
Also released in 94’, although published in 92’ from the U.S. general accounting office: Iraq: U.S. Military items exported or transferred to Iraq in the 1980s.”
That out to give you a good start, anyhow.
You see, the thing is, YOU and everybody else are going to have to want to seek out the information yourselves to genuinely want to find out the truth. Too often in the past I would spend time citing tons of sources, only to have those who dislike what I say because it doesn’t fit their worldview slough them off, not check them, and give illogical attacks regarding them, and continue to drink the cool-aid in their own idealactic boxes. But for those of you who want to honestly research and make an informed decision, I have given you a good start.
Thanks for the discussion,
Paul :asian:
