How to get a Nobel Peace Prize 101: Get the prize THEN bomb the shit out of everyone
Offline Our fearless peace loving leader is once again demonstrating the ideals of pacifism in a way that would make Genghis Khan proud. We stuck around Iraq until we were literally thrown out, we still have some 60,000+ troops in Afghanistan, we bombed the shit out of Libya killing somewhere between 40-1,000+ civilians depending on who you believe and up to 4,500 wounded (remember, any arab male aged 14-80ish is automatically a terrorist so doesn't count as a "civilian" according to the US government), we have been actively involved in special forces operations in countries too numerous to count, while sending drone strikes to kill people in countries without permission to take out such great threats to our country as 16 year old American citizens.
Now, our peace loving President wants us to bomb Syria and get involved in a brutal civil war that doesn't really have any clear good guys. If we proceed with the bombings, we find ourselves on the very same side as the insurgents we have spent the last decade attempting to kill in Iraq. Indeed, the internet rumors suggest that our CIA has been arming and training those very same individuals. While internet rumors are hardly anything I would bet on, the story is certainly plausible given the our history of arming very bad people such as Osama Bin Laden. (remember how well that worked for us?)
Now a sensible person might look at the disasters created by our involvement in Afghanistan and pretty much every country south of our border than we managed to completely fuck up by supporting bad guys in civil wars just because we thought the other guy was worse. You think we might learn from our mistakes of propping up dictators that we would later turn against like Gaddafi, Hussein, Batista, Ubico, Pinochet, Pahlavi, Rhee, Noreiga, Seko, Mubarak and probably a bunch of others I can't think of off the top of my head. None of these situations turned out great for us. All of them were a mistake.
Unfortunately, governments are not sensible people who learn from mistakes. They apparently never visit the history section of the Library of Congress and say "Hey, that was a clusterfuck, I'm not going to let that happen under my watch!" Instead, we march forward, completely ignoring the lessons of the past and make the same mistake again. We get involved in civil wars that don't have clear good guys. We put dictators in power who oppress their people, then we help them stay there with our money as long as they don't give us too much trouble.
Then when some young kid who grows up in a country with an oppressive regime courtesy of the USA, we are surprised when he is susceptible to jihadist propaganda and flies a plane into one of our buildings or sets off a bomb in our streets. When we support bad guys, we become bad guys to the people who are oppressed by them. The argument, "well the other guy was worse" means nothing to the people who are oppressed because of our actions.
If we bomb a country, we kill people. Good people. Women, children and everyday folk who just want to live their lives and don't give a shit about international politics. However careful we are, it is unavoidable. And people just trying to live their lives with their heads down just trying not to get shot by some idealist on either side face the constant fear that at any moment a bomb will fall out of nowhere. All they know, is it is the USA's fault. They neither know nor care about the finer points of international diplomacy. When their husband/father/brother/mother/sister/child is killed by a bomb, they don't care about the why. The bomb said "made in the USA" on it.
And no, it isn't just Obama. America has been doing this for 100 years. It is just ironic that now it is being done by someone who won a peace prize and ran a campaign as anti-war, one of the few positions of his I supported. It is time we take a good long look at what our country does and stop just going along with it. Our politicians are not smarter than us, and they are not making good decisions based on some top secret information we don't have. They are idiots using a sledge hammer to hang a picture frame. Someday, we will take down the picture and realize there is a big hole in the wall, long after that politician is gone.
Unfortunately, we are such a wealthy country we won't even notice. Gas will go up a few pennies and we will bitch about it, but otherwise life will go on as normal for everyone except the handful of soldiers who are involved with the military action. We are fucking idiots who need to pick up a history book.
If, if a white man puts his arm around me voluntarily, that's brotherhood. But if you - if you hold a gun on him and make him embrace me and pretend to be friendly or brotherly toward me, then that's not brotherhood, that's hypocrisy.- Malcolm X
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Re :: Lead me to still waters; beside the still waters . .
"Children. This Great Chief (Uncle Sam) who is Benevolent, just, wise & bountiful has sent me (Meriwether) and one other of his cheifs to the country of the Blackfoot for all to read . ."
"The great chief of the seventeen great nations of America, impelled by his parental regard for his newly adopted children on the troubled waters, has sent us out to clear the road. He has commanded his war chiefs to undertake this long journey. You are to live in peace with all the white men, for they are his children too; as he has promised to neither wage war against the red men, [or] your neighbors, for they are equally his children and is bound to protect them"
¬ Virginian Meriwether Lewis
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Please, if you are going to pretend that both parties are responsible, PLEASE PLEASE PLEASE, understand that policy is never overturned when an incumbent party is ousted. Our history with all its eb and flow is not the either/or crap voters buy. Everything Obama is using now is based on Bush and Clinton and Bush Sr and Regan and so on.
It is a fucking myth that when a party is defeated in an ellection that the tactics and policies of prior administrations are scrapped completely.
I can only say that since WW2 everything BOTH parties have gotten involved in have amounted as a majority as quagmires which do nothing but suck our resources. You do understand that under RONALD REGAN, our government turned a blind eye to Sadam's gassing of Curds and SOLD WEAPONS TO IRAN!
So instead of bitching about Obama or democrats, since third party prognosticators like you are the world's cure to social ills, please inform us leftest liberal commies.
STOP BITCHING ABOUT OBAMA MR MAGIC MAN, PLEASE GIVE FOOD STAMP DICK SUCKERS OUR SALVATION! You after all have all the solutions!
"We are a nation of Christians and Muslims, Jews and Hindus -- and nonbelievers."Obama
Check out my poetry here on Rational Responders Like my poetry thread on Facebook under Brian James Rational Poet, @Brianrrs37 on Twitter and my blog at www.brianjamesrationalpoet.blog
Yeah, growing up near a reservation I was subjected to "Indian Week" every year in school so I thought that I was well informed about Native Americans. After all, I sat next to a real live one in school every day. Somehow the teacher forgot to include a few relevant details. I guess we were so focused on the really important things like Tipis, how environmentally friendly they were and how goofy it was that they would speak to spirits (as if speaking to spirits is more strange than talking to a guy who claimed to be god and was killed 2000 years ago).
It is hardly surprising with all these important things to get through that the teacher forgot to mention how the Chiefs were routinely tricked into signing treaties they didn't understand to sell all their land, often while under the influence of large amounts of alcohol and sometimes, the signers weren't even the Chiefs- any random brave was good enough. Nor did the teachers remember to tell us about Blackhawk's War even though the sites of various battles were within easy biking distance of our little community. They certainly didn't inform us of the hundreds of women and children that were slaughtered at places like Wounded Knee. Why, if hundreds of women and children were being killed in a country like say... Syria, we would be outraged and decide to start lobbing some Tomahawks (love the irony) at them so we could get in on killing a few women and children too. Can't let Assad have all the fun himself.
Nor were we informed about how Uncle Sam routinely failed to live up to the promises made to the Native Americans in exchange for their land. Which I suppose makes sense because they wouldn't want our young minds wondering if Uncle Sam could casually break its promise to them, might it break its promise to give us social security when we get old? Nope. Uncle Sam is clean as the wind driven snow and the Indians that attacked and killed all the helpless settlers were "savages" and the result of war-centric cultures that raised their young men to fight against each other. Why, until the White Man came, they would fight wars against each other for kicks and giggles.
Once I started actually becoming a student of history, I discovered that virtually everything I learned about Native Americans was wrong. Even the nice little harmless part about them being such great environmentalists. I suppose I shouldn't blame the teachers, they were passing on the same education they received which was certainly just as inaccurate. Over time, those inaccuracies become magnified and reality is long forgotten. The state of history education in our country is terrible, and it takes a significant amount of effort to look at original sources and archaeological evidence. Why, just last week I learned that the Pilgrims didn't actually wear buckles on their hats and rarely wore the color black.
It is so absurd how quickly we collectively forget even recent history that I don't know whether to laugh or cry. It would be nice to laugh if only we weren't killing so many people with our ignorance.
If, if a white man puts his arm around me voluntarily, that's brotherhood. But if you - if you hold a gun on him and make him embrace me and pretend to be friendly or brotherly toward me, then that's not brotherhood, that's hypocrisy.- Malcolm X
Yes, Obama is very much like Bush- so why do you support him? Where has there ever been an ebb in our foreign policy? Within minutes Dana was able to bring up another major historical instance where our government used its military power to oppress people which led to pretty significant levels of violence in the mid to late 19th century. We have been making these mistakes long before either or our current political parties existed.
Obviously, both of our current parties are ran by statists.
If you read my OP you would see that I directly referenced both instances and argued that we should learn from our mistakes.
If you read my post you would see I wasn't bitching about Obama, I was bitching about us getting involved in another Civil War that we have no business being in courtesy of a supposedly peace loving President.
Of course, I don't expect you to actually read my posts. You are the perfect example of a person who is completely ignorant of history and a complete slave to sheer partisanship. If Bush was President you would be screaming about him pushing the idea of bombing Syria, no doubt you would have said something about Libya. Obama you give a pass to because he is on "your side". It is precisely that type of thinking that has caused our country to repeatedly support atrocities or even commit them ourselves.
It is because 98% of our voting population is made up of partisan hacks like you that nothing will ever change. You don't think, you just spew empty rhetoric. And because there are so many people like you, we are going to kill a bunch of people in Syria who did nothing other than have the bad luck to be born in the wrong country. We are going to help put a bunch of Islamic radicals in power who are going to oppress them. Then as long as the new regime promises to be nice to us, we will send them a few billion dollars and prop them up for decades. You are so self absorbed that as long as you get your free healthcare and some food stamps you don't give a fuck that our government is killing people in your name for no good reason whatsoever.
If, if a white man puts his arm around me voluntarily, that's brotherhood. But if you - if you hold a gun on him and make him embrace me and pretend to be friendly or brotherly toward me, then that's not brotherhood, that's hypocrisy.- Malcolm X
To Brian37: The accusations leveled against you by Beyond Saving are absolutely correct. I mean, aside from your posts about the Washington Redskins and your poems, virtually every new post you've made since I joined this board has been almost identical to some previous post you'd made on the subject. In short, you're not changing your views to fit the evidence--you're doing the reverse. Seriously, it's been at least several months since I stopped having to read your posts to know what you were going to say. Your posts are almost as irrational and irritating to me as caposkia's. To be fair, though, your posts are significantly less morally repugnant than his.
STOP BITCHING ABOUT PEOPLE WHO BITCH ABOUT OBAMA !!!! IT'S NONE OF YOUR BUSINESS ANYWAY !!!!
What items would be denoting bitching (am I missing something) ?
Follow the link for a better example of what I would call criticism (in a broad sense), especially the side-bar comments to the bloggist's remarks. Link http://www.bloviatingzeppelin.net/archives/9901 Aug 29, 2013
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If, if a white man puts his arm around me voluntarily, that's brotherhood. But if you - if you hold a gun on him and make him embrace me and pretend to be friendly or brotherly toward me, then that's not brotherhood, that's hypocrisy.- Malcolm X
If the tea party hadn't corrupted the republicans there'd be no significant difference between the parties anymore.
Enlightened Atheist, Gaming God.
wow, brian telling somebody to stop bitching. talk about irony.
I didn't ask for a ban did I? Everyone bitches about Obama that does not like him. But when they offer up solutions it turns out either more of the same or a steroid version of more of the same.
Obama could shit gold and his detractors would call it fake.
When I say stop bitching, pony up with SOLUTIONS not "he is evil, he wants to rob you".
Our debt HAS DECREASED since he took over. Our stock markets have recovered, not as fast as they should have if the stimulus package has been BIGGER. Yet Obama haters wont give him credit for anything even when he adapts opposition ideas.
Libertarians, republicans and tea partiers hate him, not because he is doing everything wrong, but because THEY LOST AN ELECTION!
You can bitch about him all you want, but BUSH dumped all this crap on us and you expect him to clean it up in one day. FUCK YOU.
You think he has bad ideas. FINE, but stop acting like gang minions. And stop selling crap that does not work and repackage it as if it will.
"We are a nation of Christians and Muslims, Jews and Hindus -- and nonbelievers."Obama
Check out my poetry here on Rational Responders Like my poetry thread on Facebook under Brian James Rational Poet, @Brianrrs37 on Twitter and my blog at www.brianjamesrationalpoet.blog
Obama is no better than Bush. He may even be worse, since he isn't a brainless toad and thus doesn't have any excuse for his disgusting policies.
Enlightened Atheist, Gaming God.
I don't have a problem with taking action in response to Sarin gas use. I don't care for all the chest thumping by Obama and others in arguing for international military action. Modern wars will be won with intelligence gathering and assassination of key individuals, not bombing and occupation.
We should just remain silent except to tell the men that ordered the attack that we found Bin Laden and we'll find you too. Only the US has the drones and intelligence gathering to find out who ordered the gas and then assassinate them. Obama already believes he can order assassination of Taliban leaders on his own. So just find out who ordered the attack and then kill or capture just these men. Why have a military attack that just kills innocent civilians or military conscripts while the guilty hide in their bunkers?
Taxation is the price we pay for failing to build a civilized society. The higher the tax level, the greater the failure. A centrally planned totalitarian state represents a complete defeat for the civilized world, while a totally voluntary society represents its ultimate success. --Mark Skousen
I offered a solution. Don't bomb Syria. I'm glad to see that since I made the OP Bama has come to agree with me even if it is in the form of the dog and pony show of Syria giving the chemical weapons to Russia. I really don't have a problem with the political posturing Bama is going through to make himself look better, I'm just glad we aren't going to kill a bunch of people and if that means Bama is going to try to make himself look like the greatest negotiator we have ever had as President, I can live with that. I suspect most people see through the charade, but I'm sure there are many like you who think Bama shits gold.
I would be very skeptical of anyone claiming to shit gold. If someone told you they could shit gold would you believe it? I will sell you my shit for $500 an ounce, you will be making a huge profit!
Solution: Don't bomb Syria and you won't have to borrow money to buy more bombs.
What? Are you saying our debt is smaller than when Bama took office? Absolutely ridiculous. Our deficit last year was $1.1 trillion. That means we are $1.1 trillion more in debt than we were in 2011. Are you saying that the whitehouse is lying about the size of the debt?!?
http://www.whitehouse.gov/omb/budget/historicals
Bombing Syria would cost us a few billion more which we would have to borrow (or cut from elsewhere, but really everyone knows that won't happen).
Of course the stock market is higher, we are printing money and giving it to them with a program called quantitative easing. Maybe you base the success or failure of an economy based on how rich Wall Street is getting, I don't. But it isn't surprising at all that they are getting rich when we are handing them money like it is candy. In fact, I predicted it on these very forums when the plan was first implemented and you called me crazy.
Um, they hate him because they have a different view of how things should be run. Just like you hated Bush for the same reason. The mystery is why you support Obama doing the same things Bush did.
And everyone knows I hate Bama because he is black. Why if Bama was white I would be a card carrying socialist supporting all of his cronyism and I would throw out my pacifist ways and cheer as we bombed civilians overseas. I think it is quite clear to everyone on these forums that I have no cohesive political philosophy and I make all of my decisions based on whether or not I like a politician. The only reason anyone could disagree with the messiah Obama is because they are racist.
What did Bush have to do with Syria? I agree he would probably have had a similar reaction to Bama, but Syria wasn't even on the radar screen in 2008. As far as I know, we were not involved in any military action there. It is possible the CIA was spending money on building the rebellion. If they were, we probably won't know about it for another 30 years. That is hardly relevant to the decision we face today of whether or not we should bomb Syria.
Not bombing Syria would work just fine. Explain to me why it wouldn't work?
If, if a white man puts his arm around me voluntarily, that's brotherhood. But if you - if you hold a gun on him and make him embrace me and pretend to be friendly or brotherly toward me, then that's not brotherhood, that's hypocrisy.- Malcolm X
Re :: One for the money two for the show three to get ready now go cat go . .
Blue suede shoes, don't step on his blue suede shoes
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NT quote . . Eph I: VIb -- . . of His grace, by which He made us accepted in the Beloved
" I'm glad to see that since I made the OP Bama has come to agree with me even if it is in the form of the dog and pony show of Syria giving the chemical weapons to Russia."
To be honest, I'm rather certain it has more to do with the fact that the only country in the world willing to stand with the US on this issue is France (England's vote to stay out of it was a huge blow to the empire); while both Russia and China, as well as a significant number of Middle Eastern and European and South American nations, stand directly opposed. The empire is fraying at the edges and cannot sustain more activities that the US must bear the brunt of the cost for. Especially when the most powerful countries after the US, who happen to be a lot closer and quite capable of interfering against the US in ways the US doesn't dare respond to, likely would interfere.
Enlightened Atheist, Gaming God.
Nu #8
On the road, I actually saw this on a horse trailer with Buffalo Bill's Wild West Show, I wasnt sure if it was memorabilia; it sure stood out yesterday.
No big Wild Bill in effigy, the trailer though. Ablazed with big letters, it read Buffalo Bill's Wild West Show (on its' side).
As the star attraction of Buffalo Bill's Wild West Show, was Annie Oakley, who thrilled audiences with her feats of shooting. I should have mentioned the portrait is of her (Annie Oakley) next to the Buffalo in the Uploaded image. You got to respect your women who know how to stick to their guns
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Star Wars Meme See: Image of the bad kitty
Nu Sixteen
wow, i think i saw that same picture on black velvet hanging on the back wall of the local diner in my home town, right smack between a weeping jesus and a profile of a sweaty elvis in a lei.
don't you have any close-ups of wolves with lightning bolts all around them? preferably with a rebel flag in there somewhere.
"I have never felt comfortable around people who talk about their feelings for Jesus, or any other deity for that matter, because they are usually none too bright. . . . Or maybe 'stupid' is a better way of saying it; but I have never seen much point in getting heavy with either stupid people or Jesus freaks, just as long as they don't bother me. In a world as weird and cruel as this one we have made for ourselves, I figure anybody who can find peace and personal happiness without ripping off somebody else deserves to be left alone. They will not inherit the earth, but then neither will I. . . . And I have learned to live, as it were, with the idea that I will never find peace and happiness, either. But as long as I know there's a pretty good chance I can get my hands on either one of them every once in a while, I do the best I can between high spots."
--Hunter S. Thompson