31–40 of 58 posts
And at no point since this madness started has there ever been a declaration of what "victory" looks like.
But yeah, let's celebrate the troops! Hooray for our warriors who "keep America safe". Let's pour even more money into this madness and wave the flag, shall we?
The death squad sort of thing is part of why I believe Smith is an unreliable narrator in 1984. Real regimes don't mildly torture problematic people and then keep them around at length, as if they were boys[1] enforcing a boarding school hierarchy, instead they get rid of them shortly and cheaply, for instance by one-way helicopter rides. [1] although the very puerile "it's no fun ruling unless the ruled know you're…
What's with the ridiculous amount of "Smith is an unreliable narrator" narrative all of a sudden? Seems like every time 1984 is mentioned, you get a comment about "Smith and unreliable narrator"? > Real regimes don't mildly torture problematic people and then keep them around at length "Mildly torture"? Did we read the same book? The torture in 1984 was as systematic and torturous as possible. Of course it's fiction,…
> Wait! Before you go on about your day, ask yourself: How likely is it that the story you just read would have been produced by a different news outlet if The Intercept hadn’t done it? Gotta say this article goes above and beyond to document what happens in these pointless permawars used to justify (U.S) military spending.
And the media often is involved in the “coverup”.
In Indonesia the CIA orchestrated rebels and then a coup that resulted in the killing of over 3 million locals. And mainstream American media were involved in the cover up.
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/CIA_activities_in_Indonesia
https://www.workers.org/indonesia/chap2.html
https://www.theatlantic.com/international/archive/2017/10/th...
Other massacre examples that had coverups and denials:
It's a tough ugly war with no good options. I absolutely agree that this type of death squad summary execution crap is unacceptable. It's less reported now, but the taliban use the same type of tactics of fear to project control over the population. Leaving a power vacuum for the taliban will also lead to atrocities and medieval rules for the female population. I'm sure the military industrial complex has played some…
The US brought the practice of Bacha bazi[1] back into the mainstream with the tasset approval of the US military (basically US service members aren't permitted to interfere or discourage it). It was banned and severely punished under the Taliban. [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bacha_bazi
The war is not black and white; good versus evil. Almost nothing in the world is that simple and straightforward. Do you honestly think it would become a great place to live if the US just withdrew?
This is not a competition to count up who did more worse stuff. We as a country have been caught in a slippery slope with no easy completely morally correct way out. The fact is that we are in the war now and playing monday morning quarter back does nothing.
I'm sure that our country didn't think their actions of having americans in saudi arabia would have pissed off Osama and the countless other hijackers bad enough that they attacked us on 9/11. But the fact is they did, then the Taliban provided safe haven for them and our only option to try to avoid similar attacks in the future was to go in and get rid of the safe haven. If we leave now, the taliban will take over and it will be a safe haven again. If we stay, our fellow americans continue to die in an ugly horrible war.
Where was the easy right morally correct answer in any of that that was readily apparent at the time?
Earlier quoted context omitted.
There's corruption in our bureaucracies and most Americans are blissfully unaware of it. Whose responsibility is it to inform Americans on this point and why have they failed to do so?
What corruption? This is all intentional. America benefits greatly from mass murder & destruction of countries who are insufficiently deferential to the hegemony. Countries can't keep natural resources to themselves; American corporations must be let in to siphon wealth back to the imperial core. Don't like it? Enjoy having your economy destroyed & government overthrown. With a few generations' worth of atrocities ju…
> Wait! Before you go on about your day, ask yourself: How likely is it that the story you just read would have been produced by a different news outlet if The Intercept hadn’t done it? Gotta say this article goes above and beyond to document what happens in these pointless permawars used to justify (U.S) military spending.
They just censored Greenwald so much he quit so .. funny that
Greenwald and the intercept reached an irresolvable position regarding publishing standards, so they went their separate ways. Greenwald now publishes elsewhere.
You seem to be implying a publication exercising their editorial privilege is proof that they lack integrity. Maybe the intercept is in fact a corrupt publication, but that depends entirely on your judgement of their decision not to publish what Greenwald wanted to publish.
The USA does not promote peace nor democracy. This is not the result of good intentions gone awry. This is exactly what is intended. We really have learned nothing from Vietnam. There, too, unrestricted murder of children was justified as removing future enemies.
The death squad sort of thing is part of why I believe Smith is an unreliable narrator in 1984. Real regimes don't mildly torture problematic people and then keep them around at length, as if they were boys[1] enforcing a boarding school hierarchy, instead they get rid of them shortly and cheaply, for instance by one-way helicopter rides. [1] although the very puerile "it's no fun ruling unless the ruled know you're…
What's with the ridiculous amount of "Smith is an unreliable narrator" narrative all of a sudden? Seems like every time 1984 is mentioned, you get a comment about "Smith and unreliable narrator"? > Real regimes don't mildly torture problematic people and then keep them around at length "Mildly torture"? Did we read the same book? The torture in 1984 was as systematic and torturous as possible. Of course it's fiction,…