tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3397167328061019765.post6934203217558087592..comments2024-01-16T03:55:26.266-05:00Comments on Welcome to Pottersville 2 (Blogging Against Fascism!): "Did we 'win' in Vietnam?"Cirzehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/07070125217972397204noreply@blogger.comBlogger2125tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3397167328061019765.post-83290168200399849172008-07-18T12:29:00.000-04:002008-07-18T12:29:00.000-04:00Thanks, Juan,Your blog is a breath of fresh air!An...Thanks, Juan,<BR/><BR/>Your blog is a breath of fresh air!<BR/><BR/>And amen, brother!<BR/><BR/><I>trying to explain to a fellow commenter that terrorism is not state aggression but a crime, and needs therefore to be fought like a crime, meaning with robust law enforcement and intelligence services, rather than with bombers and tanks.</I><BR/><BR/>I love you, Juan! Exactly! Wish there were more like you (and I).<BR/><BR/><I>McCain is at the end of the day nothing but an aged terrorist himself who without hesitation fire bombed scores of women and children in his hey days.</I><BR/><BR/>You are so D R O L L !!!!!<BR/><BR/><I>But then again, as they say, if elections could change anything, they'd be illegal.</I><BR/><BR/>SuzanCirzehttps://www.blogger.com/profile/07070125217972397204noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3397167328061019765.post-55401123660329023692008-07-18T06:22:00.000-04:002008-07-18T06:22:00.000-04:00Bingo. Both articles hit the nail on the head.Zinn...Bingo. Both articles hit the nail on the head.<BR/><BR/>Zinn's arguments re Afghanistan are most compelling. His question,<BR/><BR/><I>"Would we approve of a police chief, knowing there was a vicious criminal somewhere in a neighborhood, ordering that the entire neighborhood be bombed?"</I><BR/><BR/>goes right to the core of the issue. I used a similar example on another blog a few years ago when trying to explain to a fellow commenter that terrorism is not state aggression but a crime, and needs therefore to be fought like a crime, meaning with robust law enforcement and intelligence services, rather than with bombers and tanks.<BR/><BR/>Imagine the public outcry, if in a hostage situation, say a bank robbery gone wrong, the SWAT team simply blows up the entire bank, killing 2 of 3 gangsters, the last one escaped out the back door, but also 4 out of 13 hostages and wounding 2? In essence that is exactly whats happening in Afghanistan. AQ and its enablers took the Afghani people hostage in their own country, and the US went in and bombed the whole joint, killing thousands of innocent civilians. <BR/><BR/>Zinn quotes <I>"a civilian death toll in Afghanistan of more than 3,000"</I>, I believe it to be easily in <A HREF="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Civilian_casualties_of_the_War_in_Afghanistan_(2001%E2%80%93present)" REL="nofollow">excess of double that</A>. Simple equation:<BR/><BR/>3000 civilians killed by AQ Forces = terrorists<BR/>6000 civilians killed by US Forces = double the terrorists<BR/><BR/>Ted Rall's piece is a great read, and a timely reminder that McCain is at the end of the day nothing but an aged terrorist himself who without hesitation fire bombed scores of women and children in his hey days.<BR/><BR/>What really sucks tho is that Obama, the so called alternative to McShame, is just another dipshit in the long line of knuckleheads making decisions on <A HREF="http://www.uruknet.info/?p=m45753&hd=&size=1&l=e" REL="nofollow">war & peace</A>:<BR/>_____________________________<BR/><BR/><I>The starting point for seizing this golden opportunity, according to Obama, was to "have deployed the full force of American power to hunt down and destroy Osama bin Laden, Al Qaeda, the Taliban and all of the terrorists responsible for 9/11, while supporting real security in Afghanistan."<BR/><BR/>Instead, he charged, the Bush administration diverted these military resources into the war against Iraq, "a country that had absolutely nothing to do with the 9/11 attacks." He continued: "By any measure, our single-minded and open-ended focus on Iraq is not a sound strategy for keeping America safe."<BR/><BR/>This presentation is a gross and deliberate distortion of the motives underlying both the war in Afghanistan and the one in Iraq. Neither of them was launched with the aim of "keeping America safe," but rather to advance definite strategic interests of American imperialism.<BR/><BR/>The central aim of the war in Afghanistan—planned well before the attacks of 9/11—was to take advantage of the power vacuum in Central Asia created by the Soviet Union’s dissolution to assert US domination over a region containing the second largest proven reserves of petroleum and natural gas in the world.<BR/><BR/>As for the supposed targets of this operation—Osama bin Laden, Al Qaeda and the Taliban—all of them are, in the final analysis, the products of US imperialism’s own bloody history of intervention in the region, particularly in the 1980s, when Washington poured billions of dollars into funding the Mujahedin forces fighting the Soviet-backed government of Afghanistan and the Soviet army when it intervened there. Among these forces were bin Laden and those who went on to set up both Al Qaeda and the Taliban....</I><BR/>________________________<BR/><BR/>But then again, as they say, if elections could change anything, they'd be illegal.Juan Momenthttps://www.blogger.com/profile/00338411049307792839noreply@blogger.com