More violence is always the answer
All over the world people are in universal agreement that the solution to the endless, horrible wars in the middle east is to escalate the levels of violence. All the Republican presidential candidates, Hillary Clinton, leaders from both political parties, foreign leaders such as Putin, Presidents Cameron and Hollande, news media pundits and former generals are speaking in one voice.
Everyone, everywhere agrees that bringing more and greater destruction upon Syria, Iraq, and other nations is the ticket to peace and prosperity.
Which makes me wonder why, in 5,000 years of recorded ME history, no one has thought of this before?
Just kill more people! It's such a simple solution.
Just look at how this strategy has worked for us.
We've been bombing Iraq for 24 years and things have never been better in Iraq.
We've been bombing Afghanistan for 14 years and now their opium production is the envy of the world.
Just look at our success against al-Qaeda.
14 years ago they had an army of nearly 200 guys, and now they can barely field 20,000 militants.
However, the real brilliance of this winning strategy of ever increasing violence is when you bring it home.
Unlike every other first world nation, we still discourage murder by doing executions, and look how successful that has been.
Murders almost never happen in the United States anymore. This is especially true in the states with the highest execution rates, like Texas and Florida.
Let's not forget that we put people in prison at higher rates than apartheid South Africa and Stalin's Soviet Union, and look at how that has eliminated crime in the United States.
Plus, by making our prisons into violent Hell-holes we've ensured that recidivism is a thing of the past.
I just wonder why its taken 5,000 years for the world to figure out what every 4th grade bully in a playground knows - that using violence to get people to do what you want is always the right thing to do.
It's never a good time to talk to people you disagree with, because it is always Nuremberg in 1938. It's never, well, any other time or situation in history.
You should always threaten or use force, both between nations and between people, because that's the only thing that people who see things differently will understand.
What's more, bringing death and destruction to other nations, peoples, and communities is the humane thing to do because we are the good guys, and good guys kill in the name of good. Bad guys kill in the name of bad, and that's a totally different thing.
Personally, I'm thrilled that we've finally discovered the key to peace and prosperity, which is death and destruction, and we are so willing to share this discovery with the entire world.
Comments
This one is the biggest blunder yet.
Uncle Stupid just can't learn.
Take out Hussein — Iraq a failed state, terrorism takes deeper root.
Take out Gaddafi — Libya a failed state, terrorism takes deeper root.
Take out Assad? I wonder what will happen?
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(I read someplace that it's a good plan to void crowds on Thanksgiving day.)
Shared it on Facebook. Thanks.
A truth of the nuclear age/climate change: we can no longer have endless war and survive on this planet. Oh sh*t.
Planes diverted all over the US today.
Passengers on several flights — scared out of their wits by cowardly Republican leaders — hallucinated "ISIS terrorists" inside the aircraft at some point during their flights, today. The planes were diverted to various airports. The "ISIS terrorists" were led away, and flights resumed after a lengthy search of the planes.
Police investigate flights diverted for suspicious passengers, bomb threats
Today's hysteria-in-the-air resulted in costly delays today at many of the nation's airports.
Ugh!
I'm going to fly tomorrow. Hopefully I won't be flying with a bunch of pants-wetters.
It's deeply disturbing watching otherwise sane folks fall for it
First off, I'd like to say I've always been a big fan of your work at DK, gjohnsit. Thanks for your strong and clear-eyed criticism of Wall St, the economy, foreign policy and injustice, and always advocating strongly for the 99%.
Man, it's been insane this week. I've literally made an effort to pretty much entirely avoid all news (especially social media) about the Paris attacks. I have a close friend, a lawyer and father of a family of 5, who's taken to dispensing freely in our interactions with completely vile RW stuff, like "religious Nazis" and all sort of weak WWII analogies, when he's not offering up other classics, like demanding to know where the "good" Muslims are and accusing me of being an appeaser like Neville Chamberlin. It's like deja vu. After 9/11, one of the RW criticisms of liberal dissenters was accusing them of wanting to psychoanalyze the terrorists instead of bombing them. It's the same hysteria again.
To me most of this comes down to propaganda, and who controls the media, the Frank Luntz's of the world who crunch phrases in focus groups that they then send around as talking points (doesn't it always seem like these memes/slogans get out there right away?). Then, like you say, it's the history we either can't be bothered to get educated on or is purposefully rewritten or omitted from the state-sanctioned text books.
It's really disturbing.
It sure is a breeding ground for fascism right now. Today I flicked on the Jets game in the background with the sound off to get a little welcomed distraction from reading the news and writing a blog, and noticed the coaches were wearing camouflage-style caps. The NFL and all major sports have become recruitment and advertising arms of the military.
The two leading candidates of the major parties are setting the table for it too.
And to that possibility, I wrote this response to BBB's typically cheap fear-mongering of a President Trump if you won't vote for the Goldman Girl:
"If I should ever die, God forbid, let this be my epitaph:
THE ONLY PROOF HE NEEDED
FOR THE EXISTENCE OF GOD
WAS MUSIC"
- Kurt Vonnegut
Scary comment
I never even considered a situation that would elicit such a dramatic political recalibration for Hillary. At least not before she was inaugurated.
I was thinking the current hysteria would settle down by next year, and the Americans voters would drop back into the cognitive coma of Team Blue activism.
I am reminded that there was a terrorist attack right before the 2012 elections, in Benghazi. The very next day, Mitt was smirking and attacking the President over it. Perhaps that's why Rove was so convinced Romney would win.
Come to think of it, I always wondered how the Benghazi insurgents with the big guns found out that Chris Stevens was sneaking into Benghazi for one day only. Someone must have dropped the dime on his low-profile classified rendezvous at the abandoned Benghazi consulate.
Wait…. The US economic collapse "crisis moment" occurred just weeks before the 2008 election. McCain must have thought it was in-the-bag, because he cavalierly suspended his campaign. Looks like a pattern to me.
God only know what kind of crisis kabuki will hit right before the 2016 election.
What “burn the Reichstag” moment won't they think of next!
All together now: "I pledge my allegiance to the false flag…"
Journalistic malpractice
Hillary's Big Whoop
This is a great article on counterpunch about how since she is sure she is going to be president, she is throwing off her 'progressive" talking points.
This article talks about her hawkishness.
And we've seen her attack Bernie's single payer plans and scaring people about how he's going to raise taxes on everyone. What she leaves out that even if he does raise taxes 9%, there's all the money people would save by not having to pay the continuing rising premiums and the high deductibles people can't afford to meet before they can see a doctor.
One of her deluded supporters actually said that Hillary needs to put troops back in the Middle East to win 'hearts and minds'.
I wrote how that sounded like dick Cheney.
We have the opportunity to elect a candidate that upholds what the Democratic Party used to stand for, yet people are going to vote for the person who will continue Bush's 4th term.
Hardly any of them have a problem with either Obama's or Hillary's hawkishness or care that what they are doing is just as illegal now as it was when Bush did them.
How they don't care about how many innocent civilians are killed or left homeless, staggers me.
As for all the planes being diverted, I'm wondering if they are just stroking our fears like Bush did when he kept raising the terrorist alerts?
Keep people afraid and then watch them take away even more of our freedoms.
But people are gullible to the propaganda. And no one in the media are pointing out that the terrorists were Europeans, not Syrian refugees.
I'm starting to wonder into conspiracy theory territory with all the countries being on high alert.
B-b-but… we hardly knew the new Hillary-of-the-Left.
Really? Didn't she just put on the hair-shirt of human empathy — domestically, that is? And she already shrugged it off?
I just finished a piece for an investigative group on this topic:
[…from the latest warning by SVR intelligence and the JIC.] It's probably just CT, although their Paris warning was not.
I forgot to put in the link again
http://www.counterpunch.org/2015/11/20/hillarys-war-whoop/
If you’re one of the millions of Americans who think Hillary Clinton would make a lousy president, then pat yourself on the back because she pretty much proved it yesterday. In a presentation to the Council on Foreign Relations, Clinton made it clear that if she’s elected in 2016, she’s going to drag the country straight to war. Invoking the same imagery as her ideological twin, George W. Bush, Clinton fulminated for more than an hour and a half on Syria, war, terrorism, war, no-fly zones, war, radical jihadism, war, and “metastasizing threats”, whatever the heck those are. Oh, and did I mention war?
Seriously, while regretful Democrats can claim that they never thought Obama would turn out to be the disappointment he has been, the same can’t be said about Clinton. Madame Secretary has a long pedigree and the bold print on the warning label is easy to read. There’s simply no excuse for anyone to vote for a proven commodity like Hillary and then complain at some later date, that they didn’t know what a scheming and hard-boiled harridan she really was. Clinton’s hawkishness is part of the public record. It’s right there for everyone to see. She voted for Iraq, she supported the Libya fiasco, and now she’s gearing up for Syria. Her bloodthirsty foreign policy is just slightly to the left of John McCain and his looneybin sidekick, Lindsey Graham. Simply put: A vote for Clinton is a vote more-of-the-same death and destruction spread willy-nilly across the planet in the endless pursuit of imperial domination. It’s that simple. Here’s an excerpt from her speech:
This is why change cannot come from within.
There is no political mechanism that can stop the US international murder-sprees. And the very last hope, electing a new President, is a complete waste of time and money on the part of citizens. They cannot begin to compete with our Corporate Overlords and our Media Mind-sweepers. At the Federal level, both Parties are corrupt, and no plausible candidate reaches the general election unless they are vetted as a Neocon.
With half of all government revenues being poured down the black hole of so-called defense spending, social protections are going to be gutted anyway. The Supreme Court doesn't matter. They can give you all the gay wedding cake you can eat, but they will never restore your right to privacy no matter who is appointed. Without that, you're under the boot heel of a police state. The government has shifted its mandate from the protector of the the people to the prosecutor of the people. To save their sanity, Americans have gone blind, deaf, and dumb — and disposable.
Ask yourself: Is China becoming more liberal and free with more opportunity and social mobility overall? Is Russia? The people of both countries say this is true and are happy for it. They don't want to go back to what they had before.
Is the US becoming more liberal and free with more opportunity and social mobility overall? Americans will tell you "no" and they're not happy about it. They want to regain what they had before.
It's a new world order, alright.
Americans across the spectrum of politics shuddered at the prospect of the 2016 election coming down to Bush vs. Clinton. Why? Because it represents the undeniable proof that their political gestalt is a zombie construct. But, that's what they are getting, in the end. (Or, clones, thereof.)
Save your political money. You'll be glad you did.
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I hate that when one edits a comment, it moves to the top of the Comment List. But a bad typo mustn't stand ;-)
The Council on Foreign Relations, our imperialist nomenklatura
Neocons in the driver's seat and hogging the microphone, everywhere you look.
Where are the Left's think tanks? The Left's Council on Foreign Relations / Foreign Affairs magazine?
Decades ago, the Brookings Institution was considered on the liberal side of the spectrum — now it's just PNAC with a little Democratic Party garnish on top. Seriously: Robert Kagan is a Brookings scholar.
Kagan pushed regime change in Iraq, now says US must get over ‘trauma’ and do Syria
I think I'll just leave my sig line as my comment here....
"Our society is run by insane people for insane objectives. I think we're being run by maniacs for maniacal ends and I think I'm liable to be put away as insane for expressing that. That's what's insane about it."
-- John Lennon