All of this reminded me how perplexed I am these days when I hear Republicans whining and moaning about the cost of health care for American citizens while never uttering a word about free health care for Iraqis, new schools for Iraqis, roads for Iraqis, new hospitals for Iraqis, etc. etc. Do they ever stop to realize there would have been no need for rebuilding such a country without American bombs and guns destroying it in the first place, destroying it to satisfy the military industrial complex? I must also ask the right wing if they hate Americans. If they don't, then why not want the same for American citizens as Iraqi citizens? Don't the red, white and blue of our flag mean as much to them as the colors of the Iraqi flag?
Sunday, April 11, 2010
My Heroes of the Day: Jesse Ventura and Ron Paul
Former governor Jesse Ventura sat in for Larry King one night last week on the CNN talk show. During one segment, he asked his guests if President Obama is a radical. Each of them gave their opinions, then Jesse gave his. He said, and I'm paraphrasing, that he thought the last president, George W. Bush, was the radical. He then outlined his reasons for such thinking, including Bush's lying to get us into a war with no end. Guest Ron Paul added how America is bankrupting itself because of the war costs. (And I add how horrific it is that so many thousands of precious lives were lost for nothing, absolutely nothing.)
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3 comments:
Cassandra,
I'm glad you finally see the light when it comes to Ron Paul's support of individual liberty & a short leash on the federal government. Government, by its very nature, corrupts the people who "serve" in office. It's time to enact a law keeping the salary ceiling for all government employees at $100,000 -- from the POTUS on down.
"All of this reminded me how perplexed I am these days when I hear Republicans whining and moaning about the cost of health care for American citizens while never uttering a word about free health care for Iraqis, new schools for Iraqis, roads for Iraqis, new hospitals for Iraqis, etc. etc. Do they ever stop to realize there would have been no need for rebuilding such a country without American bombs and guns destroying it in the first place, destroying it to satisfy the military industrial complex?"
Cassandara, you're one serious dumbass, but I must say your whining and bitching are twice that funny.
You think Iraqis are now living in some paradise with free this, free that, and free everything? Iraq is a seriously divided, dysfunctional, corrupt, and poor country where most people still cannot get reliable electricity. Many still cannot get clean water. And terrorism still claims lives.
Many are still in Syria.
Secondly, you think US is building everything from scratch because it bombed everything? No, there wasn't much to destroy in the 2003 invasion because most of it had been destroyed already in the Gulf War. Also 10 yrs of sanctions had devastated the Iraqi economy. For most Iraqis, it was an utterly dysfunctional state.
Bush went in to get rid of Hussein and build a new Iraq. Indeed, the amount of damage caused by the invasion was limited. The real horrors followed with the sudden political vacuum. Iraqis began to loot everything since they were poor and desperate after 10 yrs of sanctions and Hussein's murderous rule. But much worse was to follow. Iraqis began to slaughter one another as Sunnis didn't want to lose their long held power to Shias and Kurds.
Bush and his team deserve blame for not forseeing this and for mishandling the crisis, but most of the violence of the Iraq War was due to internecine conflict among Iraqis, not because US bombed Iraq back to the stone age. US bombed Germany and Japan back to the stone age. North Korea, Laos, Cambodia, and North Vietnam too. But, US military destruction in Iraq was relatively limited. The real problem was US failed to realize how much bad blood existed among the various groups in Iraq. Hussein was a murderous fucktard but he at least kept the lid closed... like Stalin did in the USSR and Tito did in Yugoslavia.
But, how did US gain independence? Yrs and yrs of bloodshed. How did US finally get rid of slavery and avoid secession? Bloody war that devoured some 300,000 lives. Tragic but that's how history works.
Also, Cassandra, you dumbass, your 'two wrong make a right' argument is no argument at all. Just because the GOP was irresponsible with the budget during the Bush yrs doesn't mean we should have even more of it. GOP is for big government and Democratic Party is for bigger government. A Republitard is a big dummy but you're a bigger dummy. Dumbass.
Cassandra, you deserve praise for posting a comment you could easily have deleted for the condescension and vitriol. While I see you have the common misconception aobut "lying into war" -- when we were already at war and Saddam violated the terms of the ceasefire, when every nation around the world agreed he had WMD, when he'd thrown out the UN, when the mass graves and rape rooms were worse than we suspected, when we were told that by NOT taking out dictators we made the world hate us, when Saddam was training hijackers at Salman Pak, when he was paying the families of suicide bombers $25,000 a pop (and on and on and on, all you've heard) -- I would never call you names and think it undermines those who would.
The raspberries below look delicious.
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