News from the Wingnut Heartland! Brave Oklahoma is issuing a new license plate design:
Wouldn't that look perfect on the SUV decorated with yellow magnetic ribbons that you use to drive (alone) into work every day?
And how about Kansas? You know they're always going to be at the forefront of America's mad plunge backward. Now the Republican party in that fine state has decided they need loyalty oaths:
Over the weekend, Kansas Republican leaders formed what they're calling a "loyalty committee," a move that's ticking off moderates and conservatives alike.
It is never a sign of strength when your group, country or otherwise starts imposing loyalty oaths, or so I told Kansas Republican Party Chairman Kris Kobach over the phone on Tuesday.
Next step, I suspect, is to issue belt buckles saying "God is with us" and purifying the party structure in a Night of the Long Knives.
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Kansas sucks...so does Oklahoma...I'm sharpening a knife!
Wouldn't that look perfect on the SUV decorated with yellow magnetic ribbons that you use to drive (alone) into work every day... - making enough money to keep Johnny safely in college, away from those Army recruiters [not that he would sign up anyway].
Apparently Oklahoma is co-opting New York's loss. Rather shallow of them.
Also, this license plate is vapid and inane. "Global War on Terrorism"? No one issued special license plates for WW2, Korea, or Vietnam, which were much worse in almost every way one can count the costs of an actual war.
Ooh, can I get a War On Drugs license plate too? You know, with a picture of a cop beating up some hippie? The cop could have the head of a bald eagle, too!
Loyalty oaths sound perfectly Republican too. Reminds me of how they want to close the primaries here in Idaho in order to purge the RINOs. Times are getting tough, the crazies have gotta circle the wagons.
fuck...that's real?
i don't know where to start...
Shades of Catch-22!
(Yossarian Lives!)
Odd, given that Oklahoma City was ground zero in an attack by American terrorists.
There is some potential for amusement here. Maybe intelligent Oklahomans (I'm making the bold assumption that there must be at least a couple) should arm themselves with a paint marker or something similar, of a colour matching the background of the license plate, and cover up the T and the ISM in terrorism. Just an idea...
Gosh, and here I thought the World Trade Center was in New York. I'm all screwed up in my geography, apparently.
You mean like the 'Gottmituns' Nazi belt buckles that someone mentioned a couple weeks ago? I really liked that and made an image macro with Hitler and some mittens, and uh, kittens.
I liked this quote from the Kansas article:
"I helped lead tons of Bible-believing Christians into the Republican Party," Golba told me. "And what they're saying is they don't want us in the party anymore."
I'm from KS and the state is actually a place in the midwest where the tide is changing...hopefully.
And uncle bob...a knife won't do in those "neck of the woods." (spit).
... tons of Bible-believing Christians ...
That makes about 5 of them I think.
Shouldn't the Oklahoma war on terrorism license plate have the Murrah Federal Building on it? So much more relevant to Oklahomans than the WTC. And a good reminder that white men are dangerous and should all be rounded up and...oops, sorry. I started channelling Malkin there for a minute. Of course, most white men are just fine. However, because one can never tell, they should be subject to extra searches at airports and there should be strict restrictions on their ability to obtain firearms and bomb making ingredients. Oops, now I'm channelling the "moderate" Republican/Democratic position.
"I'm not convinced that faith can move mountains, but I've seen what it can do to skyscrapers." - William H. Gascoyne
Apparently Oklahoma is co-opting New York's loss. Rather shallow of them.
Not to mention insulting. I hate the fetishization of the WTC attacks, particularly when it is used as an excuse to justify further violence, but even when it isn't, even when it's just an excuse for people who have never met anyone who died in the WTC, never even been to NYC, and probably always hated what they thought of as NY culture, to cry crocodile tears and say how "traumatized" they were about it all, it's still an insult to the people who died and even moreso to the people who risked their lives to save those in the towers.
I may have posted this link before. I don't remember. Here is "Stick magnetic ribbons on your SUV" by the Asylum Street Spankers. It about sums it up.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KmsOIjzQ1V8
Reminds me of how they want to close the primaries here in Idaho in order to purge the RINOs.
As an Idahoan as well, I say more power to them. Such a system would only encourage the wackiest of the wacky to win the primary. Perhaps, just perhaps, they would finally get someone so batshit insane that the general public would not vote them in come November.
Although Sali is proving to be a major data point to the contrary.
Diane,
You are exactly correct in you characterization of people from the midwest. Many of my friends justify every criminal/inhumane/"patriotic" act offering the phrase..."have you forgotten 9/11." If the people weren't my parents good friends or grade school principles and high school teachers...I would have slapped them. But instead...I just informed them that New Yorkers (the liberals/gay/latte drinking hippies they love to despise) definitely have a more vivid memory of that day than they could possibly imagine.
Instead of the English "God is with us," I expect the buckles will say "Gott mit uns."
Loc: I hope I didn't come down too hard on midwesterners/southerners. I grew up in Texas and lived in Iowa for several years and agree with your statement: "If the people weren't my parents good friends or grade school principles and high school teachers...I would have slapped them." Yes, of course, many people in the midwest and south don't act or think that way (a college friend of mine used to claim that the most hard-core liberals are from Texas because anyone who comes out of Texas a liberal is sure of his or her beliefs, having faced much opposition to them already), but it still irks me to see people who have no frigging idea what its like to see, hear, and smell a skyscraper collapse uncontrolledly with people in it use the WTC attacks as an excuse to go do the same thing to other people. I opposed the war in Afghanistan from the first. Much as I'd like to see something very, very unpleasant happen to bin Laden and his cronies (my personal fantasy is to drop him in a predominantly Islamic part of NYC and let his co-religionists decide how grateful they are to him), I don't like the idea of bombs falling on anyone, anywhere, for any reason. I have far too vivid an idea of what that's like.
- That eagle looks more like a turkey.
- The British Gov. have stopped using the phrase "global war on terror' because (they say) it overemphasizes military over political means. See
http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/uk_news/politics/6558569.stm
As someone who every day rides a train around the crater/construction site that was the WTC, I find this sick.
More sick than the souvenir vendors on church and vessey streets- hey, they gotta eat too ya know? But not nearly as sick as the idiots who continue to believe the events of six years ago justify the continued bloodshed of innocents today.
Remember, the bald eagle is actually a kind of vulture.
You people are waaaay behind the times. Those of us in the progressive (cough, cough) state of Indiana already have a new license plate that professes our support of the mighty, invisible, sky faerie.
http://fauxrealtho.com/2007/03/22/in-god-indiana-trusts/
You're not required to use this license plate, but unlike other specialized plates, there is no extra charge for the "In God We Trust" plate. The goons that pushed this through the state legislature claim it's not a religious message because it's not specific about which god. They also claim that it doesn't violate the separation of church and state because no money is given to any group from the sale of the plates. Right. This is the only plate in Indiana that carries a specific message, but remains free of the added fee for specialized plates. I call it subsidized religious advertising and it turns my stomach.
It's bad enough that we have it on our currency, do I have to see that crap at every stoplight too?
OEJ
??? Bald eagles are genus Haliaeetus which is in the Accipitridae family of diurnal birds of prey. They're sea eagles, not vultures. New World vultures don't even belong to the same order, and while Old World vultures do, so do kites, hawks, and eagles, and all are different families.
Don't worry, Iowa has everything under control.
To be fair, they already have a plate honoring the OKC bombing. It has a teddy bear on it.
They also have one just for patriots (which poses a dilema: if you get the GWOT one instead, are you rejecting patriotism?) and 38 separate plates honoring our brave men serving in NASCAR.
I've had the pleasure of driving around south-central Kansas for a few days, while on a business trip. One of the more amazing things was that almost every small town, no matter how small, had a large anti-abortion billboard. This begs the questions:
1) Is abortion really that big of a problem in small-town Kansas?
2) If it is, are billboards really the way to address the serious issues that are causing unwanted pregnancies?
I think the heavy pixelation and clip-art-esque quality of the eagle/towers drive home the developmental level of the designers. Did someone really see that and say, "Wow! I'd like to see *that* on the back of cars all day!" It looks like something an 8th grader would make in his first graphics design class.
Isn't Kansas where that one abortion doctor who will do late-term abortions is located? I know that when a 14-yr old girl here in AZ wanted an abortion at 26 weeks, that's where she ended up going.
We have our own patriotic plate, but it's not really offensive. It's got a flag background and the word FREEDOM on it.
Kansas and Oklahoma . . don't forget Texas! They just added "One State Under God" to their pledge of allegiance. All schoolchildren must recite it after saying the national pledge every morning.
http://www.chron.com/disp/story.mpl/metropolitan/5020241.html
To get an idea about the macho chickenhawk bloggers, here is a short history of the 101st Fighting Keyboarders.
http://www.thewarofthewords.net/
They largely merit their place alongside chickenhawk showmen like O'Reilly, Hannity, Limbaugh, Beck, and commentators like Goldberg, Continetti, Bill "the Bloody" Kristol and so on.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gott_mit_uns for some relevance.
You know that the traditional sentiment on Oklahoma license plates was "Oklahoma is OK." They chose that because nobody at the plate office knew how to spell "mediocre."
Coragyps, I believe the expression "Oklahoma is OK" comes from Rogers and Hammerstein's "Oklahoma!", unless they stole it from somewhere.
Anyone get the feeling that these right wing types have to flaunt their (supposed) patriotism because they feel, deep down, that they've got a distinct lack of it? Kind of like someone like Ted Haggard decrying homosexuality :)
The only thing that license plate needs is tears rolling down the eagle's cheeks. That's a variation on the eagle/Towers theme I've seen.
You know it's some sad shit when eagles are crying.
Hate to point it out to Oklahomans, but the chance of Oklahoma being hit by international terrorists is about the same as Paris Hilton getting elected US president in 2016.. actually, probably less.
From the perspective of those wierd people such as myself who don't leve in the US (we do actually exist), America consists of New York City, California, Washington DC, Florida, Las Vegas and formerly New Orleans. There's a few bits of geography as well.. anywhere else dosen't stand a chance of getting bombed.
WAIT! Do you mean that the guy I know of in southern Illinois who has been absolutely convinced since 9/11 that his grain silo on the edge of town is a legitimate target is...wrong? LIES!
Sorry Wells, but while it is accurate to say that bald eagles scavenge a fair amount of their food (as do most predators), it is completely inaccurate to describe them as vultures. Vultures are still a taxonomically confusing group, particularly the New World vultures, but we can be quite certain that whatever the precise phylogenetic placement of New World vultures the bald eagle is not a member of their clade.
Loyalty is not a virtue.
The pixelation of the background is a "digital" camouflage pattern, as seen on the new Army Combat Uniform (although that uses a universal gray color, not a desert specific tans -- I guess OK wants to emphasize that terrorists live in deserts.)
"In God We Trust" is an option, a popular option in Indiana.
djlactin: We need Major __ de Coverley to come back and smack down the falsly patriotic petty bureaucrats.
In Texas, they just added "one state, under God" to the state pledge of allegiance. (yes, we have a [i]state[/i] pledge of allegiance, which all the school kids are made to say. Barf.)
http://www.chron.com/disp/story.mpl/front/5020241.html
Actually, 'universality' of the Army Combat Uniform (ACU) is a bit of a myth. These uniforms really only seem to work well in arid environments. In a temperate woodland environment and in lots of non-desert low-light situations (such as in buildings), people wearing ACUs tend to stand out like sore thumbs, making very inviting targets. It is actually pretty frightening how easy it is to spot someone in ACUs in thick temperate vegetation as compared to someone wearing woodland camo BDUs. Perhaps it is a bit telling as to how we define 'global war' that black is not a color in the patterning of the ACU right now and that the various boots being issued or being marketed for the ACU are essentially desert boots.
It's just more superficial patriotism, something this country is known for. Putting a China-made ribbon on your car supporting the troops isn't patriotic. And neither is waving an American flag. Unless people get up and do something (like recycle, donate bone marrow, volunteer), all of their supposedly patriotic symbols are purely superficial.
Here is a fundy blog that is highlighting the new athiest A. Baptists for Brownback 2008.
http://baptistsforbrown2008.wordpress.com/
Overheard from an outraged American tourist in British Columbia:
"What are all these American Eagles doing up here?!"
E-lad: I got a 36 on the Asperger's test. So I've got to ask, because I'm hopelessly humor impaired...That site you linked to was satire, wasn't it? Please don't tell me they were serious...
The legal statement sums it up. A lot of paquinading going on, but I think there are some that aren't getting it, which makes it rather amusing. I don't suppose Brownie would care for it much!
Could we focus on the legislators who did this and not insult the citizens? Oklahoma is just like every other region--we have brilliant progressives and idiot reactionaries and everyone in between. Don't paint us all with the same brush. If you post at at place like this, you should know better.
Seriously, can any American say that they agree with every decision made by their state government? Or even half of them?
as a south carolinian, i can tell you i disagree with almost every decision made by my state government. but then again, i'm also used to southern sterotypes.
Diane,
You're not hurting my feelings...but Xocolotle is right. I think generalizing is wrong. There are parts of KS (Lawrence) and of OK that have rational people. They are a diluted minority in a state filled with "patriotism."
Hephaestus,
I have been back the last two weekends from NYC for weddings and those signs have literally been there as long as I can remember. And, yea...a state that has a population of 2.4 million with an average income of over $40,000 (mind you...probably close to $60,000 in NY), abortion is the #1 issue. That and:
flag burning
homosexuality
immigration
national security
God in the Pledge of Allegiance
You know...the important stuff
There are two and only two reasons that the red state retards are interested in terrorism:
1) as a political tool to beat up democrats domestically, and,
2) as a justification to kill brown people.
Deep down, these folks are quite happy to see blue state residents get killed by crazed Islamists.
Yet, beginning next January, the state GOP will begin purging its leadership -- all the way down to the precinct level -- of any party official who actively supports non-Republicans for office.
Wow, PZ wasn't being sarcastic about the Night of Long Knives comment.
"Although Sali is proving to be a major data point to the contrary."
The prosecution rests.
I taught at University of Kansas from 1996 to 2000, and when I signed my contract, I had to sign a loyalty oath to the State of Kansas (which I of course did (I needed the job during grad school), but I wrote underneath my signature "signed under duress"). I did the same thing when I was asked to sign a loyalty oath to the State of California when I accepted my current position at one of the states fine (*cough*) CSU campuses.
Loyalty oaths are leftovers from the Cold War and need to be eliminated. But they are hardly new, and hardly unique to Red States (even red states with blue governors, like Kansas).
Ugh. We have the "worst newspaper in America" (the Oklahoman), two of the worst senators in the country, some of the worst bridges in the country (now that is really scary) and now this. But, as Xocolotl said, we also have brilliant progressives.
On the plus side, if you follow the story back a little you'll see that the programme was not a resounding success - apparently they had a hard time coming up with the minimum number of orders to get the plates issues.
My Gradnfather was the only surviving member of his family after the Nazis came to power. Though not jewish-my mom and dad and oma weren't jews either, I can only imagine this is how things started to take shape with the kyrstalnacht. I hope that we are not seeing shade of that happening here. I fear however, the worst is ahead.
OOOOOOOOOoooooooook! Lahoma
where the crap comes sweepin down the plain...
And I know whereof I speak, having done 6 years in Stillwater.
We're fightin em over there, see, so's we don't have to fight em over here, in Ponca City, so forth.
"You're not required to use this license plate, but unlike other specialized plates, there is no extra charge for the "In God We Trust" plate."
I have described the IGWT plate as "The state handing out free religious bumper stickers."
BTW, even though there is no extra charge for the plate, there have been reports that the IGWT plates have been sent by default without being requested, and those who got them have had to pay to replace them with standard plates.
Oklahoma is just like every other region--we have brilliant progressives
Excuse me, but as a former Texan I've got to do this...Name one brilliant progressive you have that's as good as Molly Ivins! So there! (Of course, I couldn't name a New York progressive that's as brilliant as Ivins was, but I won't mention that if you won't.)
Seriously, can any American say that they agree with every decision made by their state government? Or even half of them?
I find it hard to believe that any American, even GW Bush can say that they agree with every decision their government, state, local, or federal, makes. However, in principle, shouldn't the majority (>50%) of people agree with the majority of decisions? If they don't, doesn't that particular government fall at the next election? (Yes, yes, I know, sometimes people feel that the alternative is even worse, etc. But if the government isn't doing at least what it's citizens generallz want, how can it be called a representative system?)
What is that? A herring gull in front of two stacks of books?
It's possible that the republican party is shaking itself to death. It's no secret that it has been taken over by the christofascists of the theocracy movement. Who have driven out the old conservatives, moderates, libertarians, and secularists. The cultists are a minority in the US, the numbers I've seen vary all over the map but the range is 8-25%%.
This is common with extremist movements. They run purges a lot, and tend to split into various subcults who are often rather antagonistic.
I'll leave this as a possibility. It would be too tempting to believe based on wishful thinking, common sense, and a feeling that the forces of light should prevail over the forces of darkness.
Next step, I suspect, is to issue belt buckles saying "God is with us" and purifying the party structure in a Night of the Long Knives.
Sorry to be pedantic, but "Gott mit uns" originated as the motto of the kings of Prussia in the 19th century, and became standard for the German army during or after World War I. The SS wore belt buckles that read "Meine Ehre heisst Treue" ("My honor is [called] loyalty").
Oh Aaaaaaallison, meine ehre heisst treue.
Sorry. I'll shut up now.
You have a point, Xocolotle, but ultimately it's the people of the state who put these dweebs in office, and as such, they bear responsibilty for those officials' actions. That's the flip side of the right to vote.
I'm pretty mad at the people of my own state for a lot of their decisions, including reelecting the Govenator--even after he showed his true colors toward the teachers, nurses, state employees, etc.
Todd O, re. the loyalty oaths:
All employees of the State of CA have to sign a loyalty oath to the state--it's not just teachers or CSU employees, if you had wondered. I had to sign one myself, and I have to admit it made me feel kind of creepy. It didn't bother me too much because the oath was to uphold the state constitution etc., not a blanket "I will show total loyalty" (however that's construed).
I hadn't thought about them being a holdover from the Cold War, but looking back on it that doesn't surprise me. I'd like to see them discontinued too...
ROTF! That's the funniest thing I've heard all day! That ranks right up there with "The 'N' on the Nebraska football team helmets stands for 'nowledge'." Thanks for giving me a chuckle.
I don't think he was being serious on this one...
Loyalty is not a virtue.
Loyalty *is* a virtue.
*Blind* loyalty is not.
Yes, that's more like it. Loyalty is generally a good thing, just not blind loyalty, as you say.
Firemanearl observes (#61):
Fascist America, in 10 easy steps:
I thought for sure the plate was a joke, but I verified at
http://www.tax.ok.gov/plates/sp145.html
I think I need to go lie down.
Last night, when I should have been sleeping, I watched the two sides of congress **completely** fail to grasp each others points. One side, quite rightly stated that the easiest way to get more people killed in *any* war zone we are in is to not have the specialists and experts on the *current* tactics and methods being used against us where they can tell the newbies how the hell to detect, undo or jam them. Duh!! The other sides basic stance was, "Screw the logistics, just let these poor people stay home a few more months, before sending them back." Umm. Duh again... The problem being, **neither** side seems to be able to get their head out of their asses long enough to figure out that both solutions are failures.
Now, I would opt, if I had to deal with this BS, to have more leave time, **but** have part of that time spent near a base where new people are being trained, or readied for redeployment, so that say, 1-2 days out of the week, at the *start* of their leave, the people that just got back can pass on the info they have to the people that need it. Umm, dare I say, "Duh!", again?
Of course, this was followed, without as near as I can tell any real resolution, by a talk with the governor of the Pakastani province closest to Afganistan, doing all but calling Bush and Co. idiots for not listening to him and others, when they tried to point out how pure military solutions won't work. His assessment... Start being more serious about fixing infrastructure issues, replanting something other than poppies, and generally giving people fewer reasons to join radical groups, while *still* keeping up the military involvement needed to stamp down on the real idiots that are using corruption, economic problems and other issues to radicalize the region.
He also pointed out, first thing, that the license plate above, and our Presidunce's BS babble have the words out of order. Who gives a shit about *local* freedom fighters, at least in the sense of the danger they pose to everyone else? Mostly you can't do much about those, without fixing what ever is "broken" internally in the country (and we don't even understand what is broken, let alone how to fix it most of the time). The real issue isn't a, "global war on terrorism", it is a, "war on global terrorism". Putting a stop to groups that have reach that extends past the borders of the nations they spend most of their time screwing up. How you deal with the two forms differs, as does what causes them.
The only thing I don't agree with in that, is that for some of them, the *reason* for their radicalization isn't about poverty, corruption, etc. Its some rich nut, or power hungry religious leader, who use the money and influence they have to recruit people that *do* have a problem with corruption, poverty, etc., to do their dirty deeds for them. I don't think you can *fight* those people that effectively by ending the things they use to help them recruit. If they are anything like our lunatics, they will just insist that every improvement is the will of Allah, and that every failure is a conspiracy of the infidel dogs. Same BS self promoting excuses, different words.
Basically, this just further confirms how *both* sides have their heads up their asses and want to ignore the few things their opposite numbers get *right*.
The "Baptists for Brownback" have written about "Pharyngula" and P.Z...
http://baptistsforbrown2008.wordpress.com/2007/08/03/scarlet-letter-cam…
Who gives a shit. Just becuase you would rather terrorists win this stalemate of a war, just so America can look bad does not have anything to do with a license plate. Who is this license plate hurting, terrorists are interenational criminals it doesn't matter if they are muslim, christian, or poltical. A global war on terror is a good idea, being it one the worlds most active problems today.
I TOTALLY agree RedF,
A Global WAR on anyting is good. Lets make a list:
So far...the "global war's" going swimmingly are:
Poverty
Terrorism
Drugs
We need to add:
Flag burning
Abortion
Deep sea mining
Subway surfing
Global Warming
Spiderman
Chuck Norris
Tile
Eppendorf centrifuges'
Mice
Kites
Mouse Pads
Lamp!!!!
Chicken
SIV
The word WEIRD
the color red
worms
chalk
baths
deer
railroads
and last but not least... INFORMATION!!
Good thinking Redf. Lets get together and compile are list.
Who is this license plate hurting
It's responsible for many lost brain cells.
From the Baptists for Brownback site.
"Like most liberal educators at America's secular colleges, Myers lives a life of luxury at taxpayers' expense--taking long vacations with his trophy wife, driving expensive foreign cars, dressing his children in exclusive fashions--all the while promoting his vengeful and deceitful ideology."
Wait a second! I'M a liberal educator at a secular college and I don't have all that stuff, not even the trophy wife (although I do think my wife is very attractive). What gives? PZ, what am I doing wrong to not have my children dresses in exclusive fashions like yours? Am I not militant enough in my crusade to take down America?
Hey Redf,
You can't have a global war on terror. Terror is a TACTIC. Much like spying to gain information or invading countries to strengthen your position in an area. Should we have a "War on Propaganda"? The War on Terror is a war on Peace. Also, to say that all of us would like America to loose this "war" so America will look bad is a pretty shameful statement. I did my time serving in the Marines. What have you done for your America? Begrudgingly not cheated alot on your taxes?
Anything to decrease their numbers. We can only hope that fine Oklahomans will get a glimpse of the "true republicans" and turn tail and run left.
Ok, Baptists for Brownback HAS to be satire.
I don't understand all this furor over the license plates. If you don't like the 'GWOT' one, just white out the 'T', 'I'. AND'M' in the last word and ink in a 'BUSH' in front of that word. If you object to the "IN GOD WE TRUST" version, just replace the 'D' with an 'RE'. Next problem?
Please, please, please!
Tell me that Baptists for Brownback is satire.
It is really good satire if so.
It is a crazy reflection on current US society whether it is or not!
So - it worries me either way.
Well fighting terrorists is better than letting them do thier crimes unpunished. Alright if you want to get all techinal you can't fight and idealology but you can fight the people using that idealology. This is not even about Iraq. The only language terrorists understand is violence as they have demonstrated over the three decades. DAHAN, How are we disrupting peace by fighting terrorists. Then that means terrorists are not disrupting peace by killing innocent people. Lives are lives, terrorists are people too i realize but they forfeit thier right to live as soon as they take someone elses. Or they should be jailed for life, but they won't come easily. They are not innocent people fighting for thier lives that statement describes their victims. So I think we should fight terrorism, and the UN won't do shit about anything. So countries need to physically join in and thwart the problem that will never stop. Perhaps terrorism can not be stopped becuase it is idealology but it can be suppressed. Governments of countries hate terrorism anyway, but more can be done.
Can Okies ask for a plate with "Global War on Stupidity"?
When you think about it, who are they at war with in the "global war on terrorism"? Why they are at war with religious fanatics. In other words, they seem to be promoting "global war on religion". I can live with that.
Redf
Yes, I do want to get technical about the "war on terror" because it is vital that we do so. Details matter in these cases. You make some better arguments here. Of course we have to go after terrorists. The problem is, this "war on terror" is actually breeding terrorists. That's why it's a war on peace. Our actions are creating more sympathy for terrorists, which is exactly the wrong thing for us to be doing, obviously. If you want to keep terrorism in check (the use of terror has been around for as long as humans have existed, and will continue to) you have to get rid of its popularity among a populace. You can't just say "Screw em, I don't care what others think, I'm gonna take care of me". It doesn't do any good if you set up a government that is democratically chosen and they choose to elect terrorists as their leaders because you've done such a fucked up job in foreign diplomacy, public relations, etc that they feel using those methods is justified. Think Palestine. The UN is weak, no doubts there. But they are also necessary and, perhaps most importantly, a tool to use. We loose credibility throughout the world when we ignore it. That matters. The old saw about "The only language terrorists understand is violence" doesn't really mean anything. If you want more stability in the world, you have to win the "hearts and minds" of the people in the countries where they live, not win over the terrorists. No insurgency, once started (and they are notoriously hard to start), was ever been put down by force in the 20th century. It's not going to be any different this century.
Redf, Dahan has it about right in his last post. This "War on Terror" that the President keeps talking about is his adventure in Iraq, and very little else. Iraq had nothing to do with 9/11--we went into Iraq because the neocons thought we could have an easy victory and everybody would love us (which might have happened if we had handled post-combat Iraq competently).
Think about it--if the Administration were really interested in punishing those responsible and seeing that it would never happen again, wouldn't they be going all-out trying to find bin Laden? You seem to be a guy who cares about his country--if you had been president on 9/11, would you have let the military do anything outside Afghanistan & Pakistan until it had caught bin Laden? Would you have lost interest in finding him, as our president said he had back in 2002 (http://www.truthout.org/docs_04/101504W.shtml)?
The thing is, you've been lied to. There are bad people out there who would like to hurt us, and this administration is telling us they're going after those people, when in fact they're doing something else entirely. They're pursuing their own agenda, using the terrorists as a cover to let them do it.
Leon is correct. The War of Terror is incidental to the central neoconservative agenda, which is to promote American interests abroad, without necessarily using military force as a last resort. It's very Machiavellian, and all the bungling in the world can't completely conceal how intentional the policy decisions have been.
Oops, nice Freudian slip there: I meant the War on Terror.
lol! That was a bit Freudian. I think I might have to start using that expression--it's so appropriate for this whole charade. It reminds me of something I wrote when all this began, An Aconymic Explanation of US Iraq Policy, which began by announcing the start of Operation Iraqi Liberty...
All these things you are all saying are very true. I going to remeber stuff you guys said. It's true we should concentrate on aiming the world populace to also discourage terrorism and fight it(not with weapons with diplomacy). But for now we are going to be in Iraq until the next election, and then even a year after. Becuase to physically bring every troop home will take a little over a year. The enemy is a not the usual enemy nor is this the usual war. I think the best we can all do is support the troops as much as we can. It's not like the marines and soldiers go around shooting everything up. The rules of engagement are very strict: you can not fire upon an enemy unless he is firing at you, that among other rules. I hate it how the war has increased terrorist numbers in Iraq becuase of our presence. But its not entirely our fault, the terrorists and thier fundamentalists ways are crazy. Peace sells but who's buying? (Megadeth(band) said that).
Redf, thanks for being willing to listen instead of simply making a counterargument like some people would. You're right that bringing the troops home is at least a several-month process, even if we determined to bring them home immediately.
I think you'd find that most of the people on this blog agree with you that we should support our troops. But we see it a little differently than the Administration does. When we look at Iraq, we see a situation where our troops have been sent into harm's way without a compelling reason (though Afghanistan was compelling), they're stretched too thin and being forced to return over and over for repeated tours, and those that return injured aren't looked after properly once they're released from their initial hospital visit. And when people on this side of the aisle point any of it out, we're angrily accused of not supporting the troops. That's where some of the anger is coming from.
The United States is heavily invested in the Middle East because of our dependence on petroleum. We've used our usual international tactics of supporting authoritarian dictators who are friendly to us (e.g., the Shah, the Saud family, and Saddam himself, before Desert Shield). The people of those countries know we're doing that and they hate us for it. We'd have a thing or two to say to a foreign country forcing some b*stard dictator on us too.
There's also the Israel thing, but that's a little different, more specific and localized. But if we were to support genuine homegrown democratic governments, or at least just stay out of these people's way, it would go a long way to restoring our goodwill in the area. It would certainly cut down on the appeal of suicidal fundamentalism.