WAR!

Quote
johnny k
Not for the first time, I'm amazed by the President's speaking (and writing) ability upon such an emotional event. I'll allow myself a few minutes of glee before the reality of continuing war returns.

While JK will probably be horrified by the bluntness of my previous post I will second his comments mentioned above.

Obama has his faults. Most notably his naive idealism (someone really needs to club him over the head with this repeatedly) and his failure to jump on reform of the financial/economic sector as the only/paramount goal of his first term in office.

But that was a fantastic, eloquent speech.

(Cue the Tea party idiots and their "Hitler did good speeches too" mantra - Actually no, he didn't - Hitler mastered body language and gestures combined with emotive slogans to fire up the prejudices of the great unwashed, much like Rush Limbaugh and Sarah Palin nowadays.)

Obama communicates purely with words - he hardly ever moves more than his head - he is calm and thoughtful, a rare thing in any public speaker, much less a politician.

If it had been Bush (which it never would have been since he believed Al Qeada was in Iraq) - it would have been a smug grin and a "we got 'im!" and then a fob off to the Press Secretary...

Yup, still being partisan.

TL



Edited 1 time(s). Last edit at 05/02/2011 01:25AM by Tony Leggett.

How some newspapers presented it.

Granted, this was rush work, not by the a-team (late Sunday night rush?), but... . Nature of the content aside, a few of these are not cool, dudes.

ddt

I particularly like, "The butcher of 9/11 is DEAD DONATE YOUR CAR."

Sigh...

hang out at Rense.com and godlikeproductions.com. Needles in needle stacks.
Not WAR! related, but read through this thread. It's amazing what some people believe or even FAKE/waste their time with.
http://www.godlikeproductions.com/forum1/message1468214/pg1

Quote

I do not sell any books, dvds, cds, videos or anything else except the Official John Lear
Tin Foil Hat ($20).

That is teh awesome...

LOL - Next time you're up here, he openly lists his address in Las Vegas, and invites people to drop on by. He might be touring the rings of Saturn, so plan ahead. :)
(I have no idea who that is, but the thread cracks me up)

What I really disliked about the whole 'Osama has been killed' thing, is the fact that the western world is acting and behaving as some of nastier elements of other societies when the twin towers had been brought down. Look at those newspaper headlines, tell our society is still based on a justice principle...

It's no joy that someone gets killed, even if that person is supposedly responsible for killing thousands of innocents. By definition of someone from a society that doesn't share the same viewpoints as the western world, the same could be said of many heads of state in the West.

What are we now? Persecutor, judge and executor in one? A society of brutes, that's how I view it.



Edited 1 time(s). Last edit at 05/03/2011 07:03PM by tliet.

Quote
tliet
What I really disliked about the whole 'Osama has been killed' thing, is the fact that the western world is acting and behaving as some of nastier elements of other societies when the twin towers had been brought down. Look at those newspaper headlines, tell our society is still based on a justice principle...

It's no joy that someone gets killed, even if that person is supposedly responsible for killing thousands of innocents. By definition of someone from a society that doesn't share the same viewpoints as the western world, the same could be said of many heads of state in the West.

What are we now? Persecutor, judge and executor in one? A society of brutes, that's how I view it.

Screw that. A man who killed thousands of innocent men, women, and children, and who thereby became a figurehead for others who believed that mass murder was the best way to draw attention to their cause was eliminated. I rejoice. The oldest standard of justice that we have is, "An eye for an eye, a tooth for a tooth." Murder will yet be committed in Osama's name, but we can be certain of one thing: Osama will not, himself, kill again.

How are we better than the folks who celebrated at the towers' fall? We celebrate the death of a military target, a leader and a figurehead who has murdered time and time again. They celebrated the death of thousands of innocents who had no direct involvement in any of their grievances.

I see your distinction, JW, but I couldn't "celebrate". I could feel a sense of relief if a dangerous and hateful person were no longer a factor. Hitler's dead? Phew. What I'd celebrate is and end to the war, but not a bullet in someone's brain.

This is in no way:
1. an attempt to make me seem holier/nicer/whatever than thou (not only because I'm sure you all know that's not true)
2. any sort of apologia for OBL, his lackeys, or their associated acts
3. any political criticism of the acts and decisions leading to OBL's death

... one of those "just sharing how I feel" guys,

ddt

"I've never wished a man dead, but I have read some obituaries with great pleasure." -- Mark Twain.

Personally though I prefer Stephen Colbert's take on it:

Quote

"I'm as giddy as a schoolgirl who just shot bin Laden in the eye," glowed Stephen Colbert on The Colbert Report, adding, "I hope I am never again this happy over someone's death."

My only regret is that OBL wasn't buried in pig skin like the Israelis do with the remains of suicide bombers.

The news last night had a segment where our local schools (some/all?) will have (available?) counselors to help explain to children why the adults are cheering for someone else's death.

None of that moral relativism - we are not brutes. We may be misguided sometimes, but the reason our government is allowed to fight these wars is because Americans really have good intentions, we believe we're helping. Though we may have brought it, most Americans do not wish death upon innocents.

Quote
El Jeffe
help explain to children why the adults are cheering for someone else's death.

Yeah, that's a problem with it. We have to be the adults, as were the professionals who executed him and gave him a better burial than he deserved. I was giddy for a little while. It's natural. Came back to grim satisfaction... this doesn't change much. We still live in a post-9/11 world, and a lot of people still hate us, including our TSA. In focusing in on our enemy and being on the right side of Arab democracy, Obama's gone a long way toward changing that. I'm most happy about that. The political fulcrum has shifted in the Middle East, and we're on the right side of it to leverage against Iran and the Palestinian state problem. I might even vote for him, if he can get the Patriot Act repealed.

Quote
Tony Leggett
"I've never wished a man dead, but I have read some obituaries with great pleasure." -- Mark Twain.

Meh. Mark Twain makes it sound classier.

Yup, I can follow his line of thought...

Quote
Noam Chomsky
We might ask ourselves how we would be reacting if Iraqi commandos landed at George W. Bush's compound, assassinated him, and dumped his body in the Atlantic.

Without the benefit of, you know, actually reading his whole article (which might have a different train of thought, such as "imagine this, now see that that isn't the case"), I'll just say that taken on face value, that is specious. We did not land at the palace of the leader of a sovereign country. There's more to it, but that's enough to deal with that.

Now, the rightwingnuts will take this as the official thinking and party line of progressives in 3... 2... 1... .

ddt

That said, I'm far from a "whoo-hoo, America fuck yeah!" dude (see my posts above).

But check out the legal concern and sanctioning: http://www.patheos.com/community/slacktivist/2011/05/07/moral-men-and-immoral-society-and-the-death-of-bin-laden/

ddt

tliet, are you under the impression that terrorists are not targeting American leadership due to their stong moral principles, rather than because they are damned well protected? If terrorists killed Bush, or Obama, or Clinton, I would actually think, "Well, at least they're targeting our leadership instead of innocent women and children." It's the same way I felt when they attacked the Cole. I wanted them dead, I wanted to avenge our casualties, but I also thought that attacking a military target was within the boundaries of what I consider legitimate warfare.

The main difference I can think of between the west and Al Qeada is that the west has never deliberately planned and carried out a military mission with the sole intention of killing innocent civilians. Sure, there have been massive fuck ups (*cough* Abu Graib *cough*), rogue individuals and way way more "collateral damage" than there should have been (it's sad I can no longer think of the phrase that euphemism replaced) BUT, unlike Al Qeada, there's never been an explicit order to kill civilians.

That's a big difference that the Noam Chomsky corduroy jacket brigade fail to grasp.

BTW can we come up with another name for "the west?" It's a bit generic. TAFY - Team America Fuck Yeah! ? Or not...