Sounds like a perfect description of "Operation Iraqi Freedom" to me.

I reserve my highest outrage for such morally repulsive acts done by my government, with my tax dollars. By my lights, I share culpability for acts such as these that are done in my name, and thus the responsibility for righting these wrongs is primarily my own.

The willful inability to see the crucial and self-evident distinction between crimes done by our government and those done by others, and the offhand dismissal of our proper outrage as "blaming America first," is, in my opinion, the most serious moral failing of the hard-core Right.

Tribalism is a form of social organization. It likely does have its roots in the stone age. So do clans. And so do states. The four major classes of social organization--Band, Tribal, Clan, and State, all occured in the stone age. They all still exist today, albeit in different proportion.

The view that tribes are uncivilized comes from a mindset that social evolution = progress. It doesn't. Evolution does not equal progress.

It is true that Iraq is a cradle of civilization. Not "THE" cradle. "A" cradle.

Protecting American citizens, and simultaneously relieving Iraqis of totalitarianism is apparently more noxious than one man depriving an entire country of all the liberal ideals of our founding documents.

Protecting American citizens from what, exactly?

Saddam was no military threat whatsoever to the USA and anyone who thinks that he was is having a psychotic hallucination.

“A coward dies a thousand deaths, a hero only one.” -Shakespeare

I'm not at all sure that we want the same things.

-- Jonathan Hoag

I think you will be surprised.

As a moderate liberal I distrust corporations as immortal and amoral entities that need to be closely regulated due to their vast power from their economic clout.

Certainly some regulation is required. On the other hand, laws such as Sarbanes-Oxley have the unintended effect of fueling Globalization. One can regulate as much as one wants if it's understood that everything is mobile including the benefits corporations provide.

I do not believe that corporations are citizens, in my view only human beings can be citizens. Only citizens should have the right to influence government policy through the exercise of their franchise.

If one wants to sue a corporation, should all 6 zillion shareholders be called into court? Corporations can't vote and would still contribute to lawmakers no matter what form the business takes. I think you are more concerned with the bad actions of some corporations than the form.

The situation we have today is corporate lobbyists actually writing the bills which effect the corporations for which they lobby. I'm quite sure that the founding fathers did not have this sort of arrangement in mind when they wrote the Constitution.

I agree, yet expecting Sen. Blowhard to be conversent about topics from surgical procedures to electronic radiation spectrums is asking a lot. OTOH I wish there were some way to ensure legislators actually read what they are voting on.

Also, I believe that any government largesse should go only to citizens, not corporations.

Even if it were to fund cures for cancer or hydrogen energy research?

In politics as in life, everything is a matter of degree.

I do not believe that corporations are citizens, in my view only human beings can be citizens. Only citizens should have the right to influence government policy through the exercise of their franchise.

The argument is made sometimes that corporations are simply citizens acting in concert. So when they pierce the corporate veil and make the "owners" responsible for their actions, and put some accountability back into such "free associations", maybe I'll start thinking of whether corporations deserve the status of "personhood". The one-way door on accountability cuts off incentives for responsible behaviour (as does the gross dilution of each stakeholder's piece of the action).

Cheers,

In politics as in life, everything is a matter of degree.

There you have it: the hypocrit finally admits he has no fixed standards about anything.

What a surprise.

I get all over LOL when I hear that bentonite, a very fine grained clay of many uses, was used only by the Iraqis as a dispersant for bioweapon-grade anthrax. It is truly a natural for the purpose. It also is widely available as a mineral supplement at health food stores. Its discovery and original source, though, is rather suspicious. From the Wikipedia:

The absorbent clay was given the name bentonite by an American geologist sometime after its discovery in about 1890 - after the Benton Formation (a geological stratum, at one time Fort Benton) in eastern Wyoming's Rock Creek area. Other modern discoveries include montmorillonite discovered in 1847 in Montmorillon in the Vienne prefecture of France, in Poitou-Charentes, South of the Loire Valley.

Most high grade commercial sodium bentonite mined in the United States comes from the area between the Black Hills of South Dakota and the Big Horn Basin of Montana. Sodium bentonite is also mined in the southwestern United States, in Greece and in other regions of the world. Calcium bentonite is mined in the Great Plains, Central Mountains and south eastern regions of the United States. Supposedly the world's largest current source of bentonite is Chongzuo in China's Guangxi province.

/

Wyoming...hmmm. But the French...the Chinese!

I first came to know it in the course of investigations into methods of producing fake Chinese antiquities. This was before 9/11, of course. Have to laugh if I weren't crying.

It's a matter of degree, and shooter's workin' on his GED. Welcome to Mall Wart.

Damn, the flamers are pouring extra gasoline into the fuel tanks of their flame throwers today!

To those who responded negatively to my earlier post let me just say that I resent being called a racist. It's not racist to recognize thuggery, brutality and murderousness in other humans of whatever culture, my own included. I'm appalled by the scale and intensity of the violence occurring in Iraq, whether committed by Sunni, Shiite, Al Qaeda or the U.S. military.

As for it being very "white" of me to criticize the barbarity going on, I would answer that being white is a pretty distant fifth or sixth in how I identify myself. I would start with Global Citizen, followed by American, followed by vocational and geographical characteristics. I'm fortunate to belong to a culture that on paper at least is blind to color, religious belief and ethnicity. The same cannot be said of a single Middle Eastern country, including Israel (though I much prefer Israel's belief system over, say, Saudi Arabia's).

Certainly, Europe and America have done many terrible things in the past and continue to do them in the present. Yet for close to a thousand years Europe and America have tried with greater and lesser success to transcend humankind's naturally barbarous state by attempting to follow the humane ideals expressed in the Magna Carta, English Constitution, Declaration of Independence, Declaration of the Rights of Man, U.S. Constitution and Bill of Rights. I'm profoundly bothered that the government acting in my name is flouting the ideals contained in these documents through its actions in Iraq.

That said, I will never be an apologist for the barbarous behavior of the warring factions in that country. If we've learned nothing else from America's ill-conceived invasion, it's that long-standing, seething hatred between Iraqis existed for a very long time, literally hundreds of years, and was kept in check only by the Ottoman Empire, France and England and later a homegrown totalitarian dictator. Had the U.S. not invaded and Saddam Hussein died a natural death a decade or two in the future, the same unfathomable violence would have erupted then rather than now -- I sincerely doubt that Uday and Qusay would have kept the country together; they likely would have turned against each other. This is because of the tribalism, sectarianism and dysfunctional culture that Iraqis have historically clung to well before a nation called Iraq ever existed.

I'll take Western Enlightenment ideals over Medieval Muslim ideals any day. And, yes, for all its faults, Western culture is by most objective measures less oppressive and more conducive to human health, security and happiness than Middle Eastern cultures.