Good ol' McCain...

http://video.google.com/videoplay?docid=-7168787397434311377&q=ron+paul+south+carolina&total=435&start=0&num=10&so=0&type=search&plindex=8

McCain @8:45:

"I am not interested in trading with Al Qaeda, all they want to trade is burqas. I don’t want to travel with them, they like one-way tickets"

Ron Paul @9:35

Some people, like the Senator [McCain], thinks we should be there 100 years if necessary. How can he commit the young people of this world [to] five more generations in Iraq if necessary?

McCain smiled and shrugged his shoulders. But at least one of the Republican candidates talked about the need to not exaggerate the Iran Speed Boating Incident:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SAgcJRln2dE

Guess who the antiwar Republicans broke for in NH?

http://jimbovard.com/blog/2008/01/09/why-did-antiwar-voters-support-mccain-in-nh/

NN crunched the exit poll data from yesterday’s New Hampshire primary and found that “among the 34 percent [of Republican primary voters] who said they disapproved of the war, McCain had a wide advantage over the GOP field — even over Texas Rep. Ron Paul, the sole advocate of a U.S. withdrawal in the Republican field."

Perhaps such voters did not realize the temporal difference between exiting Iraq ”now” (in Ron Paul’s case) versus 10,000 years from now (in McCain’s case, according to his comment on CBS’s Face the Nation last week).

People like living in their bubbles and don't like being scared. Politics makes them sad, emotional, and upset. It makes people scared and afraid of stuff. They just want to "relax" and not burden themselves thinking about the realities of empire. They want to drink wine on the patio with their friends and talk about superficial stuff, a relaxed intellectualism. When it comes down to it, it seems that most people, even primary voters and people who consider themselves informed, do want to have anything to do with the cognitive dissonance they feel about our actions overseas, so they ignore it all and just glance at the cliff notes. They ultimately resolve the cognitive dissonance they do feel by coming to the conclusion that our empire is somehow "worth it" and that the benefits outweigh the costs, like it has a "trickle down" effect that we can't live without and fundamentally benefits us, or people are scared and think that pulling the plug on the empire will cause the Islamofascists to take over Texas and turn off all of our hot water. Cut through all of the bullshit that people preach about Islamofascism and it all comes down to fear. Fear of the possibility of real change, fear that the comfort zone/reality you have become accustomed to isn't sustainable somehow and will fall to pieces if you do not adhere to the mainstream. People don't pay attention and "go with the flow", i.e. uphold the status quo, because they are afraid. Maybe that is why Obama is appealing, he represents "change" without really changing anything that makes people feel uncomfortable, people feel like they don't have to read into it and can just feel good going on with their lives while the empire does its thing.

Whenever I see a comment like this lately, I feel compelled to remind the person making it that "these people" is us and wonder what part and how much of your comfortable standard of living you would be willing to sacrifice to make it unnecessary for us to use our naval forces to protect the flow of oil and other goods in that distant corner of the world.

You obviously do not want to sacrifice any of it, so keep playing apologist for the empire "protecting" oil while you simultaneously preach and complain about how people drive too much and tell us all how cool you Mr. Environment.

You bitch about Americans driving cars and act all holier than thou with your "I walk everywhere" soap boxing, but you play apologist for the Empire and claim it is "protecting" the flow of precious, sweet sweet oil. When did our Carrier fleets and cruise missiles get retrofitted with solar panels and sails to run on wind and solar power. I thought those warships looked a lot like Frigates myself.

How about policing the world? I know that this question is only part of the question though. You forget to include the assumption that the sacrifice doesn't apply to the Military Industrial Complex, the Global Neoliberal Megacorps, or the Federal Government.

This is a new and interesting tactic that is frequently used by LWM. When LWM gets tired of upholding the status quo, playing apologist for the war party, and basically talking out of both sides of its mouth about things like the environment and the empire, it start up with the bigotry. ZOMFG! I have never seen LWM do something like this before!

I guess it is supposed to distract me, but whatever, it still doesn't change the fact that you are willing to play apologist for the War Party and make false arguments such as the one you seems to be trying to sell about how monkey wrenching the Military Industrial Complex means we will all have to make some kind of massive sacrifice and lower our standard of living.

Given that Iranian speedboats have tried to entice US Navy ships to fire on them by trying to provoke them in international waters, I would say the Iranians want to start a fight...but it's just that they want the world to believe WE started it.

Yeah, sure, it must because they are Islamofascists that they are willing make such a gambit. Iran wants a fight with the US. Are you serious? The plans have already been drawn up by the US and Iran's little gaggle of speedboats, along with its infrastructure, would be wiped out in a couple of hours in a hail or Depleted Uranium "Shock and Awe".