Pure
Fiel a Verdad
- Joined
- Dec 20, 2001
- Posts
- 15,135
I appreciate the difficulty of Gore personally, in the Senate, having obviously decided to exit with some grace. OTOH, the Democrats--led by Gore--, who profess a concern for Black Americans, thoroughly soiled themselves. Imagine Bush-not Gore-- having to *start with a shutting up of Black Congresspersons! Further, the Dems' later behavior shows an appreciation of the issue; they had a 'late awakening' and haven't let go of the Florida 'Black voters' purge' as an issue* [see ** at the very end]; now, of course, that it's perhaps too late.
Indeed, the argument can be made that that moment is the start of the Dems 'rolling over' for the Republicans, culminating in the Patriot Act, invasion approval, etc.
Why might the Dems have been so compliant. Perhaps because they had no good ideas of their own, what to do.
Consider what appears to be Moore's proposals: 1) Invade Afghanistan massively and early. 2) a little vague on whether to go into Iraq--dick around till there's UN approval?; 3) once in Iraq, far more troops were and still are needed [somewhat the Kerry position].
It's by no means clear that 1) has any merit, esp. in possibly shifting the present 'recruiting effect' that's occurring in Iraq. Cementing links with al qaeda and Taliban; making the Taliban more into national heroes. 3) is a least questionable, and distinctly reminds one of Vietnam. Iraq is a *large place, and 500,000 troops, say, would arguably be *more targets, and more inflaming of Iraqi sensitivities to 'invasion.'
Moore's comparison of Osama and McVeigh is particularly silly, by the way. The 'outlaw' or 'criminal' idea is not very advanced beyond Bush.
In short, while it's great to give Republicans a black eye, expose their corruption and lies, Moore (in F 9-11) 1) has little analysis of the Iraq invasion, except as an oil grab; 2) has no analysis of al queda, except as a 'criminal' group (duh!....aren't acts of or during war, 'criminal' by definition!); 3) has no analysis of the domestic security issue, except bringing out the nice fact that the Patriot Act was 'waiting in the wings', probably mostly drafted.
Two virtue of the film, besides what's been mentioned: Emphasizing profiteering (see speech, below). Underscoring the emotional devastion of the war on the unfortunates in it. And to underscore that few of them know what's going on. Iow, what are they being sacrificed for?
An old speech worth reading, is this, by a decorated Marine Major General:
WAR IS A RACKET
{date, late 1930s)
by Smedley Darlington Butler
Major General - United States Marine Corps [Retired]
Born West Chester, Pa., July 30, 1881
Educated Haverford School
Married Ethel C. Peters, of Philadelphia, June 30, 1905
Awarded two congressional medals of honor, for capture of Vera Cruz, Mexico, 1914,
and for capture of Ft. Riviere, Haiti, 1917
Distinguished service medal, 1919
Retired Oct. 1, 1931
[...]
Republican Candidate for Senate, 1932
Died at Naval Hospital, Philadelphia, June 21, 1940
For more information about Major General Smedley Butler, contact the United States Marine Corps.
Chapter One
WAR IS A RACKET
WAR is a racket. It always has been.
It is possibly the oldest, easily the most profitable, surely the most vicious. It is the only one international in scope. It is the only one in which the profits are reckoned in dollars and the losses in lives.
A racket is best described, I believe, as something that is not what it seems to the majority of the people. Only a small "inside" group knows what it is about. It is conducted for the benefit of the very few, at the expense of the very many. Out of war a few people make huge fortunes.
In the World War a mere handful garnered the profits of the conflict. At least 21,000 new millionaires and billionaires were made in the United States during the World War. That many admitted their huge blood gains in their income tax returns. How many other war millionaires falsified their tax returns no one knows.
How many of these war millionaires shouldered a rifle? How many of them dug a trench? How many of them knew what it meant to go hungry in a rat-infested dug-out? How many of them spent sleepless, frightened nights, ducking shells and shrapnel and machine gun bullets? How many of them parried a bayonet thrust of an enemy? How many of them were wounded or killed in battle?
Out of war nations acquire additional territory, if they are victorious. They just take it. This newly acquired territory promptly is exploited by the few – the selfsame few who wrung dollars out of blood in the war. The general public shoulders the bill.
And what is this bill?
This bill renders a horrible accounting. Newly placed gravestones. Mangled bodies. Shattered minds. Broken hearts and homes. Economic instability. Depression and all its attendant miseries. Back-breaking taxation for generations and generations.
[...]
But the soldier pays the biggest part of the bill.
If you don't believe this, visit the American cemeteries on the battlefields abroad. Or visit any of the veteran's hospitals in the United States. On a tour of the country, in the midst of which I am at the time of this writing, I have visited eighteen government hospitals for veterans. In them are a total of about 50,000 destroyed men – men who were the pick of the nation eighteen years ago [ca 1920]. The very able chief surgeon at the government hospital; at Milwaukee, where there are 3,800 of the living dead, told me that mortality among veterans is three times as great as among those who stayed at home.
Boys with a normal viewpoint were taken out of the fields and offices and factories and classrooms and put into the ranks. There they were remolded; they were made over; they were made to "about face"; to regard murder as the order of the day. They were put shoulder to shoulder and, through mass psychology, they were entirely changed. We used them for a couple of years and trained them to think nothing at all of killing or of being killed.
[...]
In the government hospital in Marion, Indiana, 1,800 of these boys are in pens! Five hundred of them in a barracks with steel bars and wires all around outside the buildings and on the porches. These already have been mentally destroyed. These boys don't even look like human beings. Oh, the looks on their faces! Physically, they are in good shape; mentally, they are gone.
There are thousands and thousands of these cases, and more and more are coming in all the time. The tremendous excitement of the war, the sudden cutting off of that excitement – the young boys couldn't stand it.
That's a part of the bill. So much for the dead – they have paid their part of the war profits. So much for the mentally and physically wounded – they are paying now their share of the war profits. But the others paid, too – they paid with heartbreaks when they tore themselves away from their firesides and their families to don the uniform of Uncle Sam – on which a profit had been made.
They paid another part in the training camps where they were regimented and drilled while others took their jobs and their places in the lives of their communities. The paid for it in the trenches where they shot and were shot; where they were hungry for days at a time; where they slept in the mud and the cold and in the rain – with the moans and shrieks of the dying for a horrible lullaby. [end Butler excerpts]
http://www.lexrex.com/enlightened/articles/warisaracket.htm
-----------
[**] Recently in the news was an item on a fresh attempt of Florida Republicans to keep Blacks who may have been felons (or who bear the same name as a felon) off the voters' lists.
Indeed, the argument can be made that that moment is the start of the Dems 'rolling over' for the Republicans, culminating in the Patriot Act, invasion approval, etc.
Why might the Dems have been so compliant. Perhaps because they had no good ideas of their own, what to do.
Consider what appears to be Moore's proposals: 1) Invade Afghanistan massively and early. 2) a little vague on whether to go into Iraq--dick around till there's UN approval?; 3) once in Iraq, far more troops were and still are needed [somewhat the Kerry position].
It's by no means clear that 1) has any merit, esp. in possibly shifting the present 'recruiting effect' that's occurring in Iraq. Cementing links with al qaeda and Taliban; making the Taliban more into national heroes. 3) is a least questionable, and distinctly reminds one of Vietnam. Iraq is a *large place, and 500,000 troops, say, would arguably be *more targets, and more inflaming of Iraqi sensitivities to 'invasion.'
Moore's comparison of Osama and McVeigh is particularly silly, by the way. The 'outlaw' or 'criminal' idea is not very advanced beyond Bush.
In short, while it's great to give Republicans a black eye, expose their corruption and lies, Moore (in F 9-11) 1) has little analysis of the Iraq invasion, except as an oil grab; 2) has no analysis of al queda, except as a 'criminal' group (duh!....aren't acts of or during war, 'criminal' by definition!); 3) has no analysis of the domestic security issue, except bringing out the nice fact that the Patriot Act was 'waiting in the wings', probably mostly drafted.
Two virtue of the film, besides what's been mentioned: Emphasizing profiteering (see speech, below). Underscoring the emotional devastion of the war on the unfortunates in it. And to underscore that few of them know what's going on. Iow, what are they being sacrificed for?
An old speech worth reading, is this, by a decorated Marine Major General:
WAR IS A RACKET
{date, late 1930s)
by Smedley Darlington Butler
Major General - United States Marine Corps [Retired]
Born West Chester, Pa., July 30, 1881
Educated Haverford School
Married Ethel C. Peters, of Philadelphia, June 30, 1905
Awarded two congressional medals of honor, for capture of Vera Cruz, Mexico, 1914,
and for capture of Ft. Riviere, Haiti, 1917
Distinguished service medal, 1919
Retired Oct. 1, 1931
[...]
Republican Candidate for Senate, 1932
Died at Naval Hospital, Philadelphia, June 21, 1940
For more information about Major General Smedley Butler, contact the United States Marine Corps.
Chapter One
WAR IS A RACKET
WAR is a racket. It always has been.
It is possibly the oldest, easily the most profitable, surely the most vicious. It is the only one international in scope. It is the only one in which the profits are reckoned in dollars and the losses in lives.
A racket is best described, I believe, as something that is not what it seems to the majority of the people. Only a small "inside" group knows what it is about. It is conducted for the benefit of the very few, at the expense of the very many. Out of war a few people make huge fortunes.
In the World War a mere handful garnered the profits of the conflict. At least 21,000 new millionaires and billionaires were made in the United States during the World War. That many admitted their huge blood gains in their income tax returns. How many other war millionaires falsified their tax returns no one knows.
How many of these war millionaires shouldered a rifle? How many of them dug a trench? How many of them knew what it meant to go hungry in a rat-infested dug-out? How many of them spent sleepless, frightened nights, ducking shells and shrapnel and machine gun bullets? How many of them parried a bayonet thrust of an enemy? How many of them were wounded or killed in battle?
Out of war nations acquire additional territory, if they are victorious. They just take it. This newly acquired territory promptly is exploited by the few – the selfsame few who wrung dollars out of blood in the war. The general public shoulders the bill.
And what is this bill?
This bill renders a horrible accounting. Newly placed gravestones. Mangled bodies. Shattered minds. Broken hearts and homes. Economic instability. Depression and all its attendant miseries. Back-breaking taxation for generations and generations.
[...]
But the soldier pays the biggest part of the bill.
If you don't believe this, visit the American cemeteries on the battlefields abroad. Or visit any of the veteran's hospitals in the United States. On a tour of the country, in the midst of which I am at the time of this writing, I have visited eighteen government hospitals for veterans. In them are a total of about 50,000 destroyed men – men who were the pick of the nation eighteen years ago [ca 1920]. The very able chief surgeon at the government hospital; at Milwaukee, where there are 3,800 of the living dead, told me that mortality among veterans is three times as great as among those who stayed at home.
Boys with a normal viewpoint were taken out of the fields and offices and factories and classrooms and put into the ranks. There they were remolded; they were made over; they were made to "about face"; to regard murder as the order of the day. They were put shoulder to shoulder and, through mass psychology, they were entirely changed. We used them for a couple of years and trained them to think nothing at all of killing or of being killed.
[...]
In the government hospital in Marion, Indiana, 1,800 of these boys are in pens! Five hundred of them in a barracks with steel bars and wires all around outside the buildings and on the porches. These already have been mentally destroyed. These boys don't even look like human beings. Oh, the looks on their faces! Physically, they are in good shape; mentally, they are gone.
There are thousands and thousands of these cases, and more and more are coming in all the time. The tremendous excitement of the war, the sudden cutting off of that excitement – the young boys couldn't stand it.
That's a part of the bill. So much for the dead – they have paid their part of the war profits. So much for the mentally and physically wounded – they are paying now their share of the war profits. But the others paid, too – they paid with heartbreaks when they tore themselves away from their firesides and their families to don the uniform of Uncle Sam – on which a profit had been made.
They paid another part in the training camps where they were regimented and drilled while others took their jobs and their places in the lives of their communities. The paid for it in the trenches where they shot and were shot; where they were hungry for days at a time; where they slept in the mud and the cold and in the rain – with the moans and shrieks of the dying for a horrible lullaby. [end Butler excerpts]
http://www.lexrex.com/enlightened/articles/warisaracket.htm
-----------
[**] Recently in the news was an item on a fresh attempt of Florida Republicans to keep Blacks who may have been felons (or who bear the same name as a felon) off the voters' lists.
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