Where do you stand Americans? Are you willing to fight for freedom from EVIL, VILE, RUTHLESS DICTATORS who continue to procure, create and distribute forms of weaponry that the entire free world deem inhumane and without question unacceptable?
Are you willing to take the chance that Saddam will not use those already deeply hidden weapons on his neighbors, his people or our allies? Do you fear war so much that in the face of the obvious you will choose to hide your head in the sand, risking ours and the world's safety against weapons of such hideous and inconceivable destruction that can only be described in biblical proportions?
DO YOU UNDERSTAND YET, THAT WE ACT NOW, BEFORE WE REACT LATER?
I am BEYOND being patient with the "peacenik" community. I have grown weary of their lack of understanding that we live in a different world than we did thirty years ago. We live in a world that is plagued with real DEATH and real DESTRUCTION at the hands of a man that WILL and DOES want to destroy humanity and all it stands for. We all enjoy peace because the brave before us were willing to die for it.
I have a daughter that I hug just a little tighter than I did 18 or so months ago. When I once feared the unthinkable and unpreventable accidents that might befall my only child, I know must consider the INTENTIONAL and UNCONSCIONABLE acts of a madman unleashing God knows what on to the world all for the insatiable desire for power.
The U.S. and its REAL ALLIES, represent the last stand of good versus evil. We are not a perfect nation of altruism. We make mistakes and take lives in our pursuit of freedom. But freedom comes at a real cost. Lives. I would much rather risk the lives of our loved ones for the pursuit of freedom from the likes of Saddam Hussein, than cower in our corner of the world waiting for our enemies to come get us.
Article comments
— go to most recent comments1 - Eric Olsen
Clear and and as forceful as a slogan. It's all there except there can be no opinion short of treason that should make a person "not deserve to be an American." Having stupid, vile opinions is a guaranteed right
2 - Dawn
Are you saying my opinions are stupid and vile? I think not standing up to our enemies when they clearly threaten our way of life - IS TREASON.
3 - Mark Saleski
when do i get my free jackboots?
4 - Dawn
Blow it.
5 - mike
You guys are MARRIED and you're spitting at each other on the board? What is this, James Carville v. Mary Matlin?
If so, go for it! I love it!
6 - Mark Saleski
sorry, i can't...i'm too busy "hating America" at the peacenik rally
>Blow it.
7 - Eric Olsen
Dawn, dear, read carefully before you coil and strike: I said "having stupid, vile opinions is a guaranteed right" in response to your saying that if they don't agree with you on this then they cannot "call themselves American." Obviously, I do agree with your opinion of the Iraq situation, just saying that being tolerant of "stupid, vile" opinions (ie, those that do not agree with your own, and my own in this case) is a key part of being American. Okay?
8 - cjones
You sound young. If you're not then I feel even more sorry for you. You have a lot to learn.
9 - Jim Carruthers
I was going to post an arguement, but that would be futile.
http://www.resort.com/~prime8/Orwell/
In nationalist thought there are facts which are both true and untrue, known and unknown. A known fact may be so unbearable that it is habitually pushed aside and not allowed to enter into logical processes, or on the other hand it may enter into every calculation and yet never be admitted as a fact, even in one's own mind.
George Orwell wrote that in the 40s, not much has changed.
By the way, when the USA signs onto the treaty to ban landmines, please let me know.
10 - Jim Carruthers
Oh, what the hell, I couldn't resist, it's like eating peanuts. From today's Salon a profile and excerpt from a new book on the differences in world view between the US and UK
http://www.salon.com/books/int/2003/02/05/walmsley/
War games
An excerpt from Jane Walmsley's guide "Brit-think, Ameri-think."
Feb. 4, 2003 | Ameri-think
In spite of the fact that the U.S. is arguably the most powerful nation in the world, Yanks are not a warlike people. America was founded by pacifist religious groups who had broken ties with Europe, and the legacy remains. Throughout their short history Americans have formulated or signed many policy documents meant to reduce the possibility of conflict: i.e., the League of Nations Charter, the Monroe Doctrine, the present U.N. Charter, and the Marshall Plan. They have entered both world wars late, and with considerable reluctance. In the sixties, America made Peace and Love fashionable; and by the early seventies, aversion to war was so widespread that Nixon was forced to extricate America from Vietnam. Yes, average Americans hate fighting ... yet, they are perceived by others as a trigger-happy and hawkish nation. This is because:
1. They are the world's foremost nuclear power (Might makes Fright).
2. They once "nuked" Japan.
3. They're moving further to the political right, in pursuit of
4. a Republican president who is unfamiliar with the map of the world, and thinks Greece is a musical.
5. The successful development of Star Wars will leave the US holding the nuclear trump card.
6. Yanks may not like fighting foreign wars, but they carry guns and spend a lot of time shooting each other.
7. They fight wars in Third World countries by proxy, using CIA operatives with slush funds instead of military troops.
8. In matters of foreign policy, they have been known to support right-wing regimes that seem to prefer genocide to Communism.
9. They are fully committed to the American Way of Life, and have scant time or tolerance for alternative points of view; and, more important,
10. they have 45,000 nuclear warheads, and will not put hands on hearts and promise not to use them.
11 - Dawn
I am both young and confused. But I HAVE GIVEN BIRTH - so fuck you.
12 - Eric Olsen
While Dawn may be in some ways politically unsophisticated, she boiled the situation down to its bare essentials quite well, other than the "un-American" part. Sometimes black and white is the best way to look at a problem to avoid the Hamlet factor of gray.
And Jim, I'd be interested in hearing what these familiar complaints have to do with the matter at hand. It's like, "and you're ugly too." That might be so but has nothing to do with the merits of the debate.
13 - Jim Carruthers
The matter at hand is disarmament, international rule of law, and the goal of the UN as a body to prevent war.
The United States cannot simultaneously expect letters of marque from the UN, while at the same time refusing to respect international agreements on weapons (ABM treaty and Land Mines, along with the 1972 treaty on Chemical and Biological weapons).
While I agree that Iraq should be disarmed, I don't think bombing the fuck out the civilian population is the way to achieve that goal.
Plus the escalating arms race between India and Pakistan needs to be neutralized, the stocks of biological weapons in Russia and the USA need to be destroyed, and the Saudis (who have blackmailed the USA into attacking Iraq) need to be brought to justice. This last can only be done by an international court, which the USA refuses to ratify.
Oh, and you're ugly, too.
14 - Dawn
Who said they were planning to bomb the fuck out a civilian population? I don't recall Powell saying, "Oh and by the way, people of Iraq, best dig a hole, cause while we are wiping the evil dicator and your ELECTED president/tyrant off the face of the planet, for fun, we will bomb the fuck out of you."
I guess I must have switched channels when he said that.
Oh yeah, and it takes one to know one.
15 - Jim Carruthers
Just the same as Powell didn't say Let Loose The Hounds of War! He made the case for disarmament, not war.
http://www.longstoryshortpier.com/archives/squawkbox/000227.html
It's called Shock and Awe, in fact, tune into As It Happens (http://www.cbc.ca), they are interviewing the author this evening.
16 - mike
Military planners never say they are "planning to bomb the **** out of a civilian population." Usually they say they are taking extraordinary precautions to prevent casualties, and that they are bombing to fight terrorism. That's what Hitler said in 1939 when he bombed Poland.
Explain, O Princess of Pain, how the following does not in fact constitute "bombing the bleep out of civilians":
http://www.cbsnews.com/stories/2003/01/24/eveningnews/main537928.shtml
17 - Jim Carruthers
http://www.resort.com/~prime8/Orwell/07_14_44.html
In the last war the British Empire lost nearly a million men killed, of whome abou;three-quarters came from these islands. Most of them will have been under thirty. If all those young men had had only one child each whe should now have en extra 750,000 people round about the age of twenty. France, which lost much more heavily, never recovered from the slaughter of the last war, and it is doubtful whether Britain has fully recovered, either. We can't yet calculate the casualties of the present war, but the last one killed between ten and twenty million young men. Had it been conducted, as the next one will perhaps be, with flying bombs, rockets and other long-range weapons which kill old and young, healthy and unhealthy, male and female impartially, it would probably have damaged European civilization somewhat less than it did.
Contrary to what some of my correspondents seem to think, I have no enthusiasm for air raids, either ours or the enemy's. Like a lot of other people in this country, I am growing definitely tired of bombs. But I do object to the hypocrisy of accepting force as an instrument while squealing against this or that individual weapon, or of denouncing war while wanting to preserve the kind of soceity that makes war inevitable.
- George Orwell, Tribune, 14 July 1944
18 - Dawn
I am still confused. Do you mean Queen of Pain as in I am the Queen of inflicting or receiving?
Cause I can definitely kick some ass, especially if anyone comes near my children.
I suppose I equate defending the freeworld from the likes of people like Hussein to defending my family. Shouldn't we all?
Jim - I am not sure what your point is. Could you be a little more concise and use less quoting of sci-fi writers please.
19 - mike
I mean inflicting, esp. on the innocent Iraqi victims of Shock and Awe (see my CBS News link above).
Speaking of which: U.S. military planners anticipate launching zillions of missles at Bagdhad, "rather like Hiroshima," to use the defense guy's boast. Bagdhad is a city of 5 million plus people.
So what, O Dawn of the Darkness, is the moral distinction between Osama bin laden flying planes into New York high rises, and Rumsfeld flying planes into Bagdhad high rises?
The answer, sweet pea, is that there is no moral distinction. And so if you support the Pentagon's plan, you are the exact moral equivalent of those Arabs who cheered bin laden.
So there.
20 - Jim Carruthers
If the world is mad at America for anything, it should be for the invention of the phone-in talk show. The idea of a news broadcast once was to find someone with information and broadcast it. The idea now is to find someone with ignorance and spread it around. (Being ignorant myself, I'm not mad personally.)
-- P.J. O'Rourke
Well, so much for changing my conceptions of what 'murricans know about the rest of the world. Co-incidentally, I just finished reading "An Empire Wilderness" by Robert D. Kaplan.
On the US military and foreign policy at Fort Leavenworth:
"During another discussion a visiting Canadian officer said, "The biggest threat to Canada is that the United States will collapse on itself. Canada's problems are out in the open, but the degree of turmoil in the U.S. is not admitted." Canadians have always sneered at the "disorderly" United States, but I noticed that protests from the American officers to the Canadian's remarks were muted."
But that digresses (look, something shiny!)
Could you be a little more concise and use less quoting of sci-fi writers please.
Of course, since we are only talking about wholesale slaughter. Eric Blair was many things, but "sci-fi writer" was not one of them. Blair was an ex-policeman who served in Burma, fought in the Spanish Civil War (Picasso created Guernica after the fascist bombing of the civilians of that town, a reproduction of which hangs in the UN Security Council. This week, the UN covered the painting with drapes before Colin Powell's presentation, maybe it was an irony thing) and wrote as a journalist, essayist and novelist under the name George Orwell. Orwell was 47 years old when he succumbed to tuberculosis in January 1950.
The point? When he writes about the consequences of bombing civilians, he is writing about events he experienced first hand. You could do worse than to read his essays on "Politics and the English Language" and "Notes on Nationalism". Despite the passage of more than 50 years, not much has really changed.
21 - James Russell
Sometimes black and white is the best way to look at a problem to avoid the Hamlet factor of gray.
Well, it's always easier to look at things simplistically and boil them down to absolutes than it is to look deeply at things...
22 - Eric Olsen
You can do all of the deep thinking and investigating you want - which I have been doing for a year and a half now - and it still comes down to yes or no, black or white in decision-making terms.
Mike, I am always sympathetic to the plight of civilians, and their peril is always the worst part of war on a moral level, but I am very surprised and disappointed that you would compare an unprovoked terrorist attack whose only intentin was to kill innocent civilians, and a war of self-defense and liberation where every reasonable precaution will be taken - as it clearly was in Afghanistan and elsewhere - to avoid civilian casualties. This is perverse and disingenuous and I have a hard time believing you really believe it. I am shocked - you are not Chomsky.
23 - Dawn
Let's not forget, the terrorists who flew OUR planes into OUR buildings DIDN'T call ahead to let us know.
The Iraqi people have been preparing for war for a couple of months now.
Had we had warning of such an attack, I think we would have cleared out of those buildings right?
Mike - Even my shameless ass thinks you went WAY too far with that comparison. SHAME, SHAME, SHAME ON YOU.
Move to France if you are going to be so ridiculously without a clue.
I MEAN REALLY!
24 - NC
Dawn, your comments are sickening. By what law do we risk the lives of thousands of innocent Iraqi civilians? They are not for us to kill; this is Saddam's job. Also, you act as though he poses some sort of threat to the U.S. and to those around him. When has he ever taken aggressive action toward another nation? And to the extent that he has, can you blame him when people like that Jew who died on the Space Shuttle keep blowing up his nuclear-bomb-making factories? Perhaps if certain imperialist nations minded their own beeswax, he wouldn't feel so threatened. Food for thought.
We can and must work to find a way to disarm him without the use of force. I believe if the UN were to pass a unanimous resolution ordering Saddam to disarm, he would do so. And if he didn't, we could try him in absentia in the International Criminal Court. While we wouldn't actually be able to enforce the verdict because he would have atomic warheads by then, I for one would jerk off vigorously at the thought that we had used the proper channels of international law to achieve a hollow, meaningless, purely symbolic victory.
The simple fact is, before we undertake to use force, we owe it to our enemies to let them build up the strongest possible arsenal. If that means we lose a few more Americans in the process, so be it. We are, after all, hardly better than Nazi Germany; and wouldn't you secretly enjoy seeing those hook-nosed Zionists finally get taught an atomic lesson? The wages of occupation are bitter and radioactive! And before you make the argument that they have civilians too, let me remind you that they all serve in the military.
Hoping you will see the light,
N.
25 - Eric Olsen
Well-put NC, I would take it one step further and say that we should never fight anyone with greater firepower than our opponents possess. After all: fair is fair. If we go after cannibals in New Guinea who have sticks and rocks - sticks and rocks it is for us. Since we are never any better morally than those we oppose, why should we have any military advantage?