Letters to the Editor
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This is not a legitimate and authentic sockpuppet
omooex @ 6:27
Why don't you just ignore him? Isn't it better than spending the day advertising his presence?
Why don't you just ignore the people who aren't ignoring Bucky1?
Twit.
-- L.W.M.'s sockpuppet
Not that it really matters...
Omooex,
You are relatively new here so you have missed much of the fun from the last year. The history. In a way, you are like an American neocon barging his way into Iraq and issuing an edict saying to the Shia and Sunni: Democratize and live in peace!
You ignore the history and sectarian rifts, which can be summed up thusly: Bucky contends that we worship the secular state, government and war because that is our religion, our dogma. Sounds a bit like Ann Coulter, doesn't it? We think Bucky is the religious zealot because all he wants to do is smash the state and return to an imaginary paradise that he believes existed before man fell from grace and created th evil state. Maybe, like Bucky, it is you who is doing the fetishizing. Look it up. We don't attribute magical powers to the state or think there was a Garden of Eden where a talking serpent tricked us into taking a bite of The Apple of the Knowledge of Government and Liberty, which God had forbidden us to eat.
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Safe for Democracy? How about safe for self-determination
So I would put it this way instead:
Until liberals defend their extensive record of actually making the world safe for democracy — for their fellow citizens, and for citizens around the world — the American people will keep giving neoconservative Republicans another chance.
-- Amity
That hasn't actually been the reality. When deomcracy has led to a form of secular progressive socialism, like Iran or Cuba in the 50's or Venezuela today and a host of other places around the globe over the last 100 years, America was there to try and prevent that. Democracy has meant a government that plays ball with the U.S. and that won't nationalize our corporations that are robbing the wealth and national resources of the people. Plain and simple. I wish liberals had been making the world safe for democracy. I've come to realize that the best thing we can do is make the world safe for people to make their own decisions and we can usually do that best by letting them decide things for themselves. Not sure why Packer doesn't get that. Not as smart as his Dad, probably.
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Whatever became of Jim Hoagland's vouching for the Pro-War case on Charlie Rose?
Something has been stuck in my figurative "craw" since the days running up to the start of the war and occupation. At the end of one of his last shows featuring Washington pundits supposedly sharing their "inside" information about the strengh of the case that was being made for the invasioon in 2003, Charlie Rose asked the WAPOs own Jim Hoagland if he could confirm that he had had seen or knew believable evidence that backed up the claims of War Hawks, evidence that average Americans were not privy to. Hoagland firmly nodded while, without condition, saying "yes."
I'm no expert on these matters, but I did consult a variety of critical sources in those days, and even in my corner of the USA, I knew that there was no "there" there. I was confident back then that Hoagland wasn't privy to anything new or excitng. And nothing has emerged to change my take on the matter. His nod and confriming words must have reflected the end result of lots of one-on-one salesmanship from the spinners of the war effort. He was acting as a stand-in for all the neo-cons and others who had been whispering in his ear for many a month by then.
I have not seen Jim Hoagland on many subsequent Charlie Roses, and when I have seen him, it is in his capacity as the WAPOs man on Europe. Did he ever fess up to being had? Or is he a particpant in the great game of claimig victory by default by pretending that there was never another side to the argument. Has Rose ever called out any of these mouthpieces for repeating falsehoods to the public?
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@ JackieBinAZ
Soccer.... A friend of mine's kid played on the Sedona high school team a couple of years back. My daughter is in her thirties now, but when she was a teenager she wasn't into soccer; she was on something called a dance team. I never did figure it out but it seemed like something midway between a chorus line and a cheerleading squad -- about twenty girls. I traveled to high school gyms all over California, sitting in the bleachers and thanking God for the expenditure of all that youthful enthusiasm somewhere where the world could absorb it and still stay in its orbit.
God, Massachusetts and clams. It reminds me of my first years in California. One of my friends at school had a French roommate who taught us how to wade to the offshore rocks below the campus at low tide and pull the mussels off them. Wow! That was 40-some years ago, and though the rocks are still there, there's not a mussel on any of them today. Somehow, when I think of the loss of innocence, I don't think so much of GC!'s Mennonite farmers, I think of Henri and those mussels. Butter, garlic and white wine, as I remember -- a revelation in the land of hamburgers.
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It became apparent to the military ...
...while analyzing WWII that a great many combat troops never fired their weapon and that quite a large number of those who did never aimed at anything, choosing to release rounds at more or less random into the air. It's actually kind of difficult to get well adjusted, civilized humans to want to kill other people for what boils down to no real reason.
The military went about fixing that problem essentially by dehumanizing the enemy, there was a fair bit of that done in WWII but by the time of Vietnam the process of dehumanization was in full swing.
Now in Iraq we are seeing the harvest of that which we have sown. The comment about "no language, no culture, no civilization" was a telling one.. It obviously came from a troop who had been through the military dehumanization of the enemy process.
I have seen reports like this myself. Mankind can be very violent, but organized slaughter of the innocent on a scale that is difficult for the mind to comprehend takes a strong government. A big, strong government. The kind that the collectivists think will bring them good times and latte; but instead will enslave them. (think USA in last 7 years)
I have read reports by historians on the real 'wild, wild, west' and have discovered that the movies and TV shows about the west lied to me! Imagine that. Turns out the west before the government came was not all that violent; murder rate in some regions was less than Boston I think I read once.