©2008-2012 Roedy Green, Canadian Mind ProductsQuotations are selected from this pool (and other quotation pools) in a pseudorandom way every hour and inserted at the top and bottom of some of the major pages on this website. Feel free to copy any of these quotes and paste them for whatever purpose you please.
Our modern states are preparing for war without even knowing the future enemy.
~ Alfred Adler (born: 1870-02-07 died: 1937-05-28 at age: 67)
A great war leaves a country with three armies: an army of cripples, an army of mourners, and an army of thieves.
~ Anonymous
War does not determine who is right — only who is left.
~ Anonymous
When we approach the question of Iraq, we realize here is a country which has a resource. And it’s obvious, it’s oil. And it can bring in and does bring in a certain amount of revenue each year… $10, $15, even $18 billion… this is not a broke country.
~ Richard Armitage (born: 1945-04-26 age: 67) Deputy Secretary of State 2003-03, all but admitting the Republicans invaded Iraq as an in investment in oil, As of 2008-07 the cost of the Iraq war is about $3000 billion and climbing. It is a debt so large it can never be paid off. In that sense America is already bankrupt. Future generations will pay interest in perpetuity.
What has been reported is completely out of character for the man I know and love.
~ Carolyn Bales , wife of Robert Bales, the US soldier who confessed to murdering 16 civilians, 9 of them children, as they slept in Afghanistan.If the wife of any soldier in Afghanistan or Iraq truly knew what they had been up to, I am sure they too would claim it was out of character. Nobody in their right mind would knowingly marry a sadistic sociopath.
President George W. Bush’s speech on Iraq is significant mostly because it reveals that he long ago made a decision for war and has always viewed the inspection process as an impediment to war to be overcome rather than a means to avoid war.
~ Doug Bandow (born: 1957-04-15 age: 55) senior fellow with the Cato Institute, a conservative think tank.
Probably 99 percent of those people [Iraqi detainees] were guilty of absolutely nothing but the way we treated them, the way we abused them, turned them against the effort in Iraq forever.
~ Major General John Batiste (born: 1953 age: 58) 2006-09-26 insenate hearing testimony. Reported in Collateral Damage: America’s War Against Iraqi Civilians
Is it possible that a few rich men — a small class of men — have persuaded a million poor men to attack and attempt to destroy another million men as poor as they, so that the rich may be richer still?They told them that this brutal war was the destiny of the race. It was for the glory of the emperor; it was for the honour of the state; it was for their king and country. False - false as hell! They make war to capture markets by murder, raw materials by rape. They find it cheaper to steal than to exchange, easier to butcher than to buy. This is the secret of war. It is the secret of all wars: profit.
Business. Profit. Blood money.
Threaten a reduction on the profit of their money, and the beast in them awakens with a snarl. They become as ruthless as savages, brutal as madmen, remorseless as executioners.
~ Dr. Norman Bethune (born: 1890-03-04 died: 1939-11-12 at age: 49) 1939, from his essay Wounds
As we now know, Iraq had no tie to Osama, no role in 9/11, no nuclear program, no weapons of mass destruction, no plans to attack us. Its people did not threaten us and did not want war with us.
~ Pat Buchanan (born: 1938-11-02 age: 73) 2004-02-11
War, n: A time-tested political tactic guaranteed to raise a president’s popularity rating by at least 30 points. It is especially useful during election years and economic downturns.
~ Chaz Bufe
I found out why war is hell — army authority is absolute. You are defended and judged by the same kind of people who accuse and prosecute you.
~ Michael Caine (born: 1933-03-14 age: 79), Playboy, 1996
When a war breaks out, people say: “It’s too stupid, it can’t last long.” But though a war may be “too stupid,” that doesn’t prevent its lasting.
~ Albert Camus (born: 1913-11-07 died: 1960-01-04 at age: 46)
Terrorism : killing civilians with the intent of changing their political affiliation.
~ Caleb Carr (born: 1955-08-02 age: 56), military historianBy that definition, who are the terrorists?
Those who perpetrated 9/11. Pro-lifers who bomb abortion clinics. Palestinians killing Israeli civilians occupying their lands. The Israeli soldiers killing Palestinians. American soldiers in Afghanistan and Iraq killing civilians. American soldiers in the Gulf War killing Iraqi soldiers. P.O.W.s in Afghanistan and Iraq. Those killing occupying American soldiers in Afghanistan and Iraq. Palestinians killing Israeli soldiers occupying their lands.
War may sometimes be a necessary evil. But no matter how necessary, it is always an evil, never a good. We will not learn how to live together in peace by killing each other’s children.
~ President Jimmy Carter (born: 1924-10-01 age: 87) 39th president of the USA.
The cry has been that when war is declared, all opposition should be hushed. A sentiment more unworthy of a free country could hardly be propagated.
~ William Ellery Channing (born: 1780-04-07 died: 1842-10-02 at age: 62)
As the scale of the U.S. defeat in Iraq was becoming difficult to suppress, the government quietly conceded what had been clear all along. In 2007-2008, the administration officially announced that a final settlement must grant the U.S. military bases and the right of combat operations, and must privilege U.S. investors in the rich energy system — demands later reluctantly abandoned in the face of Iraqi resistance.
~ Noam Chomsky (born: 1928-12-07 age: 83) Hegemony and its Dilemmas 2012-02-14
If the Nuremberg laws were applied, then every post-war American president would have been hanged.
~ Noam Chomsky (born: 1928-12-07 age: 83)
We can, for example, be fairly confident that either there will be a world without war or there won’t be a world — at least, a world inhabited by creatures other than bacteria and beetles, with some scattering of others.
~ Noam Chomsky (born: 1928-12-07 age: 83)
One is left with the horrible feeling now that war settles nothing; that to win a war is as disastrous as to lose one.
~ Agatha Christie (born: 1890-09-05 died: 1976-01-12 at age: 85)
Never believe any war will be smooth and easy, or that anyone who embarks on the strange voyage can measure the tides and hurricanes he will encounter.
~ Winston Churchill (born: 1874-11-30 died: 1965-01-24 at age: 90)
The greatest crime since World War II has been US foreign policy.
~ William Ramsey Clark (born: 1927-12-18 age: 84), former attorney general of the USA.
CNN (Cable News Network) is one of the participants in the war. I have a fantasy where Ted Turner is elected president but refuses because he doesn’t want to give up power.
~ Arthur C. Clarke (born: 1917-12-16 died: 2008-03-19 at age: 90) First on the Moon 1970
These doomsday warriors look no more like soldiers than the soldiers of the Second World War looked like conquistadors. The more expert they become the more they look like lab assistants in small colleges.”
~ Alistair Cooke (born: 1908-11-20 died: 2004-03-30 at age: 95)
No nation ever had an army large enough to guarantee it against attack in time of peace, or ensure it of victory in time of war.
~ Calvin Coolidge (born: 1872-07-04 died: 1933-01-05 at age: 60)
Plus ça change, plus c’est la même chose
We have to wonder why the kings and nobles [of the Mayan civilisation] failed to recognize and solve those these seemingly obvious problems undermining their society [water shortage, deforestation, erosion, overpopulation]. Their attention was evidently focused on their short-term concerns of enriching themselves, waging wars, erecting monuments, competing with each other, and extracting enough food from the peasants to support all those activities. Like most leaders throughout human history, the Maya kings and nobles did not heed long-term problems.
~ Jared Diamond (born: 1937-09-10 age: 74) Collapse: How Societies Choose to Fail or Succeed page 177We are seeing this same reluctance today of politicians to pay any attention to long term problems like global warming, dwindling supplies of fossil fuels, overpopulation, clean water, farmland soil erosion, conservation of fish stocks…
Chant US young military taught to march
I went down to the market
Where all the people shop
I pulled out my machete
And I began to chop
I went down to the park
Where all the children play
I took out my machine gun
And I began to spray
~ DoD (born: 1947-07-26 age: 64)
You don’t get a statue in the park for anything but going to war.
~ Phil Donahue (born: 1935-12-21 age: 76)
The world will never have lasting peace so long as men reserve for war the finest human qualities. Peace, no less than war, requires idealism and self-sacrifice and a righteous and dynamic faith.
~ John Foster Dulles (born: 1888-02-25 died: 1959-05-24 at age: 71)
There is a probability of wars, including even nuclear wars, if temperatures rise 2.0°C (3.6°F) to 3.0°C (5.4°F) . Once that happens are hope of international co-operation to curb emissions and stop the warming goes out the window.
~ Gwynne Dyer (born: 1943-04-17 age: 69) Climate Wars
We must abolish war, or sooner or later it will abolish us.
~ Gwynne Dyer (born: 1943-04-17 age: 69)
There will one day spring from the brain of science a machine or force so fearful in its potentialities, so absolutely terrifying, that even man, the fighter, who will dare torture and death in order to inflict torture and death, will be appalled, and so abandon war forever.
~ Thomas Alva Edison (born: 1847-02-11 died: 1931-10-18 at age: 84)This claim was made for flame throwers, machine guns, poison gas, nuclear weapons, engineered plagues…. It looks like we are determined to escalate our weapons to the point of extinction.
How vile and despicable war seems to me! I would rather be hacked to pieces than take part in such an abominable business.
~ Albert Einstein (born: 1879-03-14 died: 1955-04-18 at age: 76)
I know not with what weapons World War III will be fought, but World War IV will be fought with sticks and stones.
~ Albert Einstein (born: 1879-03-14 died: 1955-04-18 at age: 76)
It is my conviction that killing under the cloak of war is nothing but an act of murder.
~ Albert Einstein (born: 1879-03-14 died: 1955-04-18 at age: 76)
Nothing will end war unless the people themselves refuse to go to war.
~ Albert Einstein (born: 1879-03-14 died: 1955-04-18 at age: 76)
You cannot prevent and prepare for war at the same time.
~ Albert Einstein (born: 1879-03-14 died: 1955-04-18 at age: 76)
Every gun that is made, every warship launched, every rocket fired, signifies in the final sense a theft from those who hunger and are not fed, those who are cold and are not clothed.
~ Dwight D. Eisenhower (born: 1890-10-14 died: 1969-03-28 at age: 78)
There is nothing that war has ever achieved we could not better achieve without it.
~ Havelock Ellis (born: 1859-02-02 died: 1939-07-08 at age: 80)
A prima facie case can be made that the United States is guilty of the supreme crime against humanity, that being an illegal war of aggression against a sovereign nation.
~ Benjamin Ferencz (born: 1920-03-01 age: 92) Chief Prosecutor for the United States in The Einsatzgruppen Case at the Nazi Nuremberg War Crimes Trials.
The IMT (International Military Tribunal) at Nuremberg held that aggression was “the supreme international crime” for which leading planners and perpetrators could be held accountable in an international court of law. The legal recognition in 1946 that war-making was not a national right, but an international crime, was the greatest achievement of the trial and the proudest accomplishment of Robert M. Jackson, the highly esteemed United States Supreme Court judge who served as Chief Prosecutor for the United States.
~ Benjamin Ferencz (born: 1920-03-01 age: 92) Chief Prosecutor for the United States in The Einsatzgruppen Case at the Nazi Nuremberg War Crimes Trials.
Estimates of civilians killed in the Iraq war reach as high as 600,000.
~ Charles Ferguson (born: 1955-03-24 age: 57), director of the documentary No End In Sight: Iraq’s Descent Into Chaos.And that does not include the 1 to 2 million killed in the 12 years of sanction bombings leading up to the Iraq war or those killed in the Gulf War.
Regimes that feel weak are the ones that start conflicts.
~ Niall Ferguson (born: 1964-04-18 age: 48), 2009-02-23, author of The War of the World: A New History of the 20th Century
War is the only horseman of the apocalypse that gets government funding.
~ Winnipeg Comedy Festival 2008
It is proverbial that generals always prepare for the last war.
~ James A. Field, Jr. History of United States Naval Operations: Korea
I am saddened that it is politically inconvenient to acknowledge what everyone knows: the Iraq war is largely about oil.
~ Alan Greenspan (born: 1926-03-06 age: 86)
Nobody in the USA in one bit safer because of the war in Afghanistan.
~ Robert Greenwald (born: 1945-08-28 age: 66) director of Rethinking Afghanistan
Badges? We ain’t got no badges. We don’t need no badges. I don’t have to show you any steenking badges.
~ Gold Hat played by Alfonso Bedoya (born: 1904-04-16 died: 1956-12-15 at age: 52) in The Treasure of the Sierra Madre.The United States has signed onto treaties committing it to the Geneva Conventions, the Nuremberg principles that aggressive (first strike war) is illegal, that all countries are obligated to arrest war criminals, the UN Charter etc. However, whenever it finds those treaties chafing, it pulls a Gold Hat and tells the world to go fuck itself. The American attitude is law does not apply to America because no one is both powerful enough and willing to prosecute the USA with is massive nuclear arsenal and history of illegal and capricious military actions. Oddly, nearly all Americans cheer this piratical, wild west outlaw, scofflaw attitude. If I were American, I would deeply ashamed that my country so rarely kept its word.
The US had, it appeared, manufactured new enemies to replace the Soviet Union. And it was using these new enemies to justify the invasion and occupation of nations in the Middle East and Central Asia and the building of large permanent military bases in those regions.
~ Richard Heinberg (born: 1950-10-21 age: 61) The Party’s Over: Oil, War and the Fate of Industrial Societies page 91.
In modern war… you will die like a dog for no good reason.
~ Ernest Hemingway (born: 1899-07-21 died: 1961-07-02 at age: 61)
Never think that war, no matter how necessary, nor how justified, is not a crime.
~ Ernest Hemingway (born: 1899-07-21 died: 1961-07-02 at age: 61)
The first panacea for a mismanaged nation is inflation of the currency; the second is war. Both bring a temporary prosperity; both bring a permanent ruin. But both are the refuge of political and economic opportunists.
~ Ernest Hemingway (born: 1899-07-21 died: 1961-07-02 at age: 61)
In peace, sons bury their fathers. In war, fathers bury their sons.
~ Herodotus (born: 484 BC died: 425 BC at age: 59)
Like everyone else of my generation, I can remember exactly where I was and what I was doing on the day the President John Fitzgerald Kennedy nearly killed me.
~ Christopher Hitchens (born: 1949-04-13 died: 2011-12-15 at age: 62)
Who wants to get bogged down in a world war over Danzig?
~ Adolf Hitler (born: 1889-04-20 died: 1945-04-30 at age: 56)It turns out Hitler himself did. The west did not back down again. The USA may be making the a similar mistake by provoking the entire Muslim world with resource wars in Afghanistan and Iraq.
Older men declare war. But it is the youth that must fight and die.
~ Herbert Hoover (born: 1874-08-10 died: 1964-10-20 at age: 90)
War should be made a crime, and those who instigate it should be punished as criminals, against attack in time of peace, or ensure it of victory in time of war.
~ Charles Evans Hughes (born: 1862-04-11 died: 1948-08-27 at age: 86)
What is absurd and monstrous about war is that men who have no personal quarrel should be trained to murder one another in cold blood.
~ Aldous Huxley (born: 1894-07-26 died: 1963-11-22 at age: 69)
Since the Second World War, the US has bombed China, Korea, Guatemala, Indonesia, Cuba, Guatemala (again), Peru, Laos, Vietnam, Cambodia, Guatemala (third time lucky), Grenada, Lebanon, Libya, El Salvador, Nicaragua, Iran, Panama, Iraq, Kuwait, Somalia, Bosnia, Afghanistan and Yugoslavia — in that order — and in not a single case did the bombing produce a democratic government as a direct result.
~ Terry Jones (born: 1942-02-01 age: 70)
150,000 American troops are bogged down in a quagmire in Iraq because the Bush administration misrepresented and distorted the intelligence to justify a war that America never should have fought.
~ Edward (Ted) Kennedy (born: 1932-02-22 died: 2009-08-25 at age: 77) 1994
Despite protestations to the contrary, the President and his senior aides began the march to war in Iraq in the earliest days of the Administration, long before the terrorists struck this nation on 9/11.
~ Edward (Ted) Kennedy (born: 1932-02-22 died: 2009-08-25 at age: 77) 2001-04-14
This administration manipulated and misused intelligence information that rushed us to war.
~ Edward (Ted) Kennedy (born: 1932-02-22 died: 2009-08-25 at age: 77) 2001-04-14
Never forget that everything Hitler did in Germany was legal.
~ Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. (born: 1929-01-15 died: 1968-04-04 at age: 39)This is particularly important to remember when Cheney argues the torture he ordered was legal, or Obama argues that suspensions of the constitution are valid in the name of fighting terrorism, or that Americans in general argue that roasting children alive is perfectly legal so long as Americans do it.
We are continuing this policy in bleeding America to the point of bankruptcy.
~ Osama bin Laden (born: 1957-03-10 died: 2011-05-02 at age: 54) 2004-11-01 sourceOddly, Americans have co-operated with bin Laden in his goal to bankrupt America with extravagant spending on the military, mercenaries, homeland security and massive tax cuts for billionaires.
Loud peace propaganda makes war seem imminent.
~ David Herbert Lawrence (born: 1885-09-11 died: 1930-03-02 at age: 44)
People always make war when they say they love peace.
~ David Herbert Lawrence (born: 1885-09-11 died: 1930-03-02 at age: 44)
The cost of the Iraq war will be a maximum of 1-2% of GNP (Gross National Product) (about $100-$200 billion US dollars).
~ Lawrence Lindsay (born: 1954-07-18 age: 57) White House economic advisor, 2002-09. MD Director Mitch Daniels subsequently discounted this estimate as “very, very high” and stated that the costs would be $50-$60 billion. As of 2008-08 is it about $3000 billion and climbing. It is a debt so large it can never be paid off. Future generations will pay interest in perpetuity.
If they turn on the radars we’re going to blow up their goddamn SAM (Senvice Atingebla Memoro) s (surface-to-air missiles). They know we own their country. We own their airspace… We dictate the way they live and talk. And that’s what’s great about America right now. It’s a Good Thing™, especially when there’s a lot of oil out there we need.
~ General William R. Looney III U.S. Brigadier General, Washington Post, 1999-08-30; referring, in reality, to the mass-murder of hundreds of civilian Iraqi men, women and children during 10,000 sanction bombing sorties in the first eight months of 1999.
No nation could preserve its freedom in the midst of continual warfare.
~ James Madison (born: 1751-03-16 died: 1836-06-28 at age: 85) 1795-04-20
Of all the enemies to the public liberty war is, perhaps, the most me be dreaded, because it comprises and develops the germ of every other. War is the parent of armies; from these proceed debts and taxes. And armies, and debt, and taxes are known instruments for bringing the many under the domination of the few.
~ James Madison (born: 1751-03-16 died: 1836-06-28 at age: 85) 1795-04-20
This [the Iraq war] is just an excuse to get Iraq’s oil.
~ Nelson Mandela (born: 1918-07-18 age: 93)
War is only a cowardly escape from the problems of peace.
~ Thomas Mann (born: 1875-06-06 died: 1955-08-12 at age: 80)
Every government has as much of a duty to avoid war as a ship’s captain has to avoid a shipwreck.
~ Guy de Maupassant (born: 1850-08-05 died: 1893-07-06 at age: 42)
Everyone’s a pacifist between wars. It’s like being a vegetarian between meals.
~ Colman McCarthy (born: 1938 age: 73)
I am sick and tired of old men dreaming up wars for young men to die in.
~ George McGovern (born: 1922-07-19 age: 89)
I want to say, and this is very important: at the end we lucked out. It was luck that prevented nuclear war.
~ Robert S. McNamara (born: 1916-06-09 died: 2009-07-06 at age: 93) Secretary of War from 1961 to 1968, during the Vietnam War, speaking about the Cuban missile crisis.
In that single night, we burned to death 100,000 Japanese civilians in Tokyo: men, women, and children.
~ Robert S. McNamara (born: 1916-06-09 died: 2009-07-06 at age: 93) Secretary of War from 1961 to 1968, during the Vietnam War.
The USA dropped two to three times as many bombs on Vietnam than were dropped by both sides on all of Europe.
~ Robert S. McNamara (born: 1916-06-09 died: 2009-07-06 at age: 93) Secretary of War from 1961 to 1968, during the Vietnam War
We all make mistakes.
~ Robert S. McNamara (born: 1916-06-09 died: 2009-07-06 at age: 93) Secretary of War from 1961 to 1968, during the Vietnam War, on the pointless Vietnam war that killed 58,000 Americans and 1,500,000 Vietnamese.
In war the heroes always outnumber the soldiers ten to one.
~ Henry Louis Mencken (born: 1880-09-12 died: 1956-01-29 at age: 75)
General, the worst peace is better than the best war.
~ Thomas Mifflin (born: 1744-01-10 died: 1800-01-20 at age: 56) spoken to George Washington
A rational army would run away.
~ Charles de Secondat, baron de Montesquieu (born: 1689-01-19 died: 1755-02-10 at age: 66)
It’s not a matter of whether the war is not real, or if it is, Victory is not possible. The war is not meant to be won, it is meant to be continuous. Hierarchical society is only possible on the basis of poverty and ignorance. This new version is the past and no different past can ever have existed. In principle the war effort is always planned to keep society on the brink of starvation. The war is waged by the ruling group against its own subjects and its object is not the victory over either Eurasia or Eastasia but to keep the very structure of society intact.
~ Michael Moore (born: 1954-04-23 age: 58) paraphrasing George Orwell’s 1984 chapter 9.
The motivation for war is simple. The U.S. government started the war with Iraq in order to make it easy for U.S. corporations to do business in other countries. They intend to use cheap labor in those countries, which will make Americans rich.
~ Michael Moore (born: 1954-04-23 age: 58)
I will continue the tradition established by Menachem Begin, who did not allow Iraq to develop such a nuclear threat against Israel, and by a daring and courageous act gave us two decades of tranquility, I believe that this is what Israel has to do in the face of the growing Iranian threat.
~ Binyamin Netanyahu (born: 1949-10-21 age: 62) former Prime Minister of Israel, reported in Maariv Daily 2005-12-05Israel is threatening a preemptive nuclear war against Iran. That makes them the most dangerous nation on earth. They likely could get away with it since Iran has no nuclear retaliation. Why are we encouraging them to start a nuclear war?
Al Qaeda killed nearly 3,000 people on that day.
~ Barack Obama (born: 1961-08-04 age: 50) speech in Egypt, 2009-06-04The head of German intelligence announced that Al Qaeda had nowhere near the capability to perpetrate 9-11. There is plenty of evidence it was a least partially an inside job. But those reservations aside, how does 9-11 justify attacking the Afghanistan and Iraq? They are not Al-Qaeda. The Americans I have debated with justify the wars on the ground all three are Muslims. This is like kicking the dog because the cat peed on the sofa, justifying the punishment because the both have fur. This is bald racism, justifying hanging one nigger for another’s crime.
Democracy cannot be imposed on any nation from the outside. Each society must search for its own path, and no path is perfect. Each country will pursue a path rooted in the culture of its people, and — in the past — America has too often been selective in its promotion of democracy.
~ Barack Obama (born: 1961-08-04 age: 50) speech to the UN General Assembly, 2009-09-23Obama claims he wants a US-friendly democracy in Afghanistan, yet he is using the same failed technique the USSR (Union of Soviet Socialist Republics) used, namely a brutal decade-long occupation. Obama’s so-called democracy excludes the most popular and powerful political group in the Afghanistan — the Taliban. Obama’s choice for Afghanistan’s leader is the American puppet (and traitor to his country), Hamid Karzai. Karzai is the planet’s biggest heroin lord controlling the flow of $1 trillion dollars a year of heroin, dwarfing all other countries combined. Obama is forcing this utterly corrupt heroin and war lord down the unwilling throats of the Afghans. The election in Afghanistan was so crooked that it made Chicago politicians look like Boy Scouts. Talk about giving democracy a bad name! And finally the US allowed its contractors and soldiers run amok, with drinking shots from each others butts, homosexual orgies, raping, pillaging… The pious Muslim Afghans understandably believe they under siege by the Great Satan. In their view, surrender would guarantee eternal torture in the afterlife.
All the war-propaganda, all the screaming and lies and hatred, comes invariably from people who are not fighting.
~ George Orwell (born: 1903-06-25 died: 1950-01-21 at age: 46)
Every war when it comes, or before it comes, is represented not as a war but as an act of self-defense against a homicidal maniac.
~ George Orwell (born: 1903-06-25 died: 1950-01-21 at age: 46)
War is peace. Freedom is slavery. Ignorance is strength.
~ George Orwell (born: 1903-06-25 died: 1950-01-21 at age: 46) (Ari Fleischer’s mentor)
Military action will not last more than a week.
~ Bill O’Reilly (born: 1949-10-10 age: 62) The O’Reilly Factor, 2003-01-23, on the Iraq war
Let’s return to the George Bush policy of we win they lose.
~ Sarah Palin (born: 1964-02-11 age: 48)Sarah Palin is an American celebro-politician with a voice like a squeaky fuel pump. There are a few problems with this attitude:
- Bush fought resource wars for all but the first year of his two terms, and made no progress whatsoever in winning either.
- Making war on people who did not attack you first makes enemies of all right-thinking people on the planet, plus all the friends of those you illegally attacked.
The object of war is not to die for your country but to make the other bastard die for his.
~ George S. Patton (born: 1885-11-11 died: 1945-12-21 at age: 60) , General
I think in this case international law stood in the way of doing the right thing.
~ Richard Perle (born: 1941-09-16 age: 70), 2003-11-20, Pentagon hawk, cat-stroking, Ernst Stavro Blofeld, James Bond villain pasty lookalike, admitting the Iraq war is illegal.
When war is declared, truth is the first casualty.
~ Arthur Ponsonby (born: 1871-02-16 died: 1946-03-23 at age: 75)
O peace! how many wars were waged in thy name.
~ Alexander Pope (born: 1688-05-21 died: 1744-05-30 at age: 56)
Make wars unprofitable and you make them impossible.
~ A. Philip Randolph (born: 1889-04-15 died: 1979-05-16 at age: 90)
I believe there can be only one policy for preserving our precious civilisation in this modern age: a nuclear war can never be won and must never be fought. The only value in possessing nuclear weapons is to make sure they can’t be used — ever. I know I speak for people everywhere when I say our dream is to see the day when nuclear weapons will be banished from the faith of the earth.
~ Ronald Reagan (born: 1911-02-06 died: 2004-06-05 at age: 93) 1983-11-11 to the Japanese Diet (parliament)Reagan refused to acknowledge other nations stockpile nukes primarily as a deterrent against the American nuclear arsenal. They will never give them up until the USA does. Afghanistan did not have them and the USA invaded. Iraq did not have them and the USA invaded. Iran and North Korea might have had crude ones and the USA backed off even after Bush vowed the USA would annihilate (using nukes) these two countries as part of the axis of evil.
Nuclear weapons are totally irrational, totally inhumane, good for nothing but killing, possibly destructive of life on earth and civilisation. For the eight years I was president, I never let my dream of a nuclear-free world fade from my mind.
~ Ronald Reagan (born: 1911-02-06 died: 2004-06-05 at age: 93)Oddly, the way he expressed this belief was by intensifying the nuclear arms race, especially with his Star Wars program.
War consists of killing people and destroying property. That’s all there is to war.That’s all there is to war. Any honest soldier will tell you the same thing: His job is to kill people and destroy property. That’s true of all branches of the service.
~ Charley Reese (born: 1937-01-29 age: 75) Consequences of a War State
It is more dangerous to be a woman than a soldier in the Democratic Republic of Congo.
~ CARE staff report 2008-11-24, speaking about public gang rapes being used an a weapon of war in the DRC.
2400 years ago in his book The Art Of War, Sun Tsu explained “All war is deception”. Despite this ancient warning and despite militaries down the ages repeatedly getting caught deceiving both their enemies and their own people, Americans are still shocked when they catch the military lying yet again. Further, Americans are openly hostile to anyone who suggests the military may be deceiving the public on some particular issue. The business of militaries is bloody, violent and brutal. The public would never approve if they know what was really going on. So naturally the military lies. They believe these are necessary lies because they believe the lay public are too squeamish to permit hideous but necessary deeds.
~ Roedy (born: 1948-02-04 age: 64)
9/11 was the most successful terrorist attack of all time. It was not just the large number of casualties, it was the novelty, the graphic images that were replayed over and over thousands of times and the Bugs Bunny-like way the tiny band of terrorists armed only with box cutters allegedly outwitted the entire US military. It was also complicated, inviting endless analysis and speculation. Blowing up a market full of civilians, these days, barely makes the wire services. If you were a terrorist, what would you do for an encore? My own guess is to piggyback on some other disaster waiting to happen. Examples:
~ Roedy (born: 1948-02-04 age: 64)
- Trigger the Yellowstone caldera supervolcano to blow with a small nuke, wiping out the entire USA.
- Trigger the massive landslide poised in the Canary islands causing a tsunami that wipes out the entire east coast of the USA.
- Create a dozen simultaneous BP oil gushers. It could even be done without explosives. Just bribe/threaten BP employees who have already proven to have no consciences.
- Simultaneously blow up a number of oil refineries with SCUD missiles.
- Block the tiny shipping channel down the middle of the Straits of Hormuz. This would cut off most of the US oil supply.
- Destroy some crucial part of an ancient sewer system, effectively removing sewer services from a major city. It would help Americans understand what it was like for the Iraqis when Americans bombed to rubble all of Iraq’s sewage systems, water treatment plants, power plants, hospitals and schools in the sanction bombings leading up to the Iraq war. Between one and two million people died as a result, mostly of infectious diseases like cholera from contaminated water.
A Christian Republican is a contradiction in terms. For a Christian, war is supposed to be a last resort. For a Republican, it is the first priority.
~ Roedy (born: 1948-02-04 age: 64)
A competent bank robber is well aware of both the penalties for getting caught and the size of the take. Similarly a competent soldier should be aware that aiding and abetting an aggressive war (first strike, such as Iraq or Afghanistan) is a capital war crime. He should be sure the enjoyment he gets from the killing, raping, torturing and looting exceeds the potential for prosecution. He should be aware that sometimes the consequences are delayed. Some Nazis were not prosecuted until they were in their 90s. War crime prosecution depends on the changing political climate and balance of national powers.
~ Roedy (born: 1948-02-04 age: 64)
A Mafia hitman is more worthy of respect than a US soldier. How so? Both kill anyone their employer requests, in return for money, however, a Mafia hitman usually kills adult gangsters where a US soldier kills men, women and children equally, none of who were any threat to people living in the USA. Mafia hitmen usually kill cleanly and quickly. US soldiers use all manner of banned weapons that effectively torture to death.
~ Roedy (born: 1948-02-04 age: 64)
A man who has killed, raped or tortured children, or who has aided and abetted such crimes, no matter what the excuse, including being ordered to in the military, should never again be allowed near children, including his own.
~ Roedy (born: 1948-02-04 age: 64)
A modern government protects itself from nationals of countries it has attacked, ecoterrorists, anti-military saboteurs, whistle-blowers etc. by a number of means:
- tapping telephones.
- paid informants.
- tracking the flow of money and cash.
- tapping Internet communications
- terror: e.g. torture, ignoring legal rights, isolation.
All these methods are designed to catch people who work in groups. They are impotent against the lone wolf who refuses to share any of his plans or thoughts with anyone. He must amass his weapons by theft so there is no record of their acquisition. The American penchant for ensuring every home is equipped with weapons of massive destruction works in his favour.
~ Roedy (born: 1948-02-04 age: 64)
A nation that closes its eyes while its military pummels two nations for a decade who are no threat to the USA, fully deserves a president like Michele Bachmann, Rick Perry, Rick Santorum or Sarah Palin to dismantle their country.
~ Roedy (born: 1948-02-04 age: 64)
A sold-ier is someone who temporarily sells themselves into slavery. They sell their conscience and even their soul. They are sold propaganda to make it easier for them to kill those who were no threat to themselves or their families. I have noticed soldiers who write me often spell their profession solid-er, an unconscious denial of the shame of their chosen profession.
~ Roedy (born: 1948-02-04 age: 64)
A soldier is a professional who hunts and kills humans of all ages and sexes. He is employed by a government. He is motivated primarily by sadism. A hit man is a professional killer who executes primarily criminals and business owners who refuse to pay protection. He is employed by organised crime. He is motivated primarily by money. The soldier is the more odious because of his choice of victim.
~ Roedy (born: 1948-02-04 age: 64)
A soldier who serves in Iraq is considerably more likely to commit suicide than be killed in action. This was in no way true of WW II vets. This means that the people who really know what happened in Iraq know it was intensely shameful.
~ Roedy (born: 1948-02-04 age: 64)
A tiny country, Afghanistan, was able to defeat the Russians and later the Americans partly because Russians and Americans behaved so brutally that they convinced the Afghans that they had no choice but to defeat the invaders or be tortured to death.
~ Roedy (born: 1948-02-04 age: 64)
A tiny impoverished country, Afghanistan, was able to defeat the Russians and later the Americans partly because the bigotry of the invaders lead them to underestimate the Afghans.
~ Roedy (born: 1948-02-04 age: 64)
A US Military recruiting ad suggests that recruits will spend most of their time rescuing people from natural disasters. However, they do this so rarely, they had no footage for the spot, so they did it all with computer animation. If you want to rescue people, join the Coast Guard, become a firefighter or a policeman, or any one of many specialised rescue teams. The military’s primary job is killing people.
~ Roedy (born: 1948-02-04 age: 64)
According to Code Pink 10% of the casualties in WW II were civilians. In Iraq it is 90%. With Predator drones it is 99%. Further in Iraq, about 50% of civilians are under 15. So when you kill blindly with Predators American controlling them half a world away in Las Vegas are killing mostly children.
~ Roedy (born: 1948-02-04 age: 64)
Adolph Hitler was a nutty right-wing politician who rose to power by vilifying all Jews. Newt Gingrich is a nutty right-wing politician attempting to rise to power by vilifying all Muslims.
~ Roedy (born: 1948-02-04 age: 64)
Aficionados of murder mysteries will recognise the archetype America. She contrives flimsy excuses for murder based on self defence. She milks the role of victim with melodramatic zeal. She endeavours to make her kills look like natural causes.
~ Roedy (born: 1948-02-04 age: 64)
After studying the evidence for 10 years I have come to the conclusion that most likely Al Qaeda and Muslims had nothing to do with 9/11. It was a false flag operation cooked up by American radical Christian neo Conservatives designed to whip up hatred for all Muslims and thus justify invading, slaughtering Muslims and stealing oil. The head of German intelligence said Al Qaeda were completely incapable of such an operation. Al Qaeda has pulled off nothing comparable since, which confirms that assessment. Bush’s story is so full of holes it even violates Newton’s laws of motion.
~ Roedy (born: 1948-02-04 age: 64)
Al Qaeda has a presence in dozens of countries. They move from country to country. Where is the safest place for us for them to base? — as far away as possible, say on the other side of the earth in Afghanistan or Pakistan.
~ Roedy (born: 1948-02-04 age: 64)
Al Qaeda no longer needs to launch major attacks against the USA; they have outsourced it to BP.
~ Roedy (born: 1948-02-04 age: 64)
All North American radio stations, TV stations, newspapers a major magazines glorify the military. They never mention the fact the wars are illegal or pointless or that defence of North America is not an issue. They are silent about the fact these are aggressive resource wars. They never mention what truly motivates the soldiers. They make up excuses for their sadism. They behave exactly as the media did under Hitler. Why do they lie? They are in little danger. It is herd instinct and cowardice.
~ Roedy (born: 1948-02-04 age: 64)
Almost all Americans remember an incident on 2004-03-31 when Iraqis killed some American soldiers, burned their bodies, dragged them behind a truck and strung them up on a bridge. Almost no Americans know why the Iraqis singled these particular soldiers out for this extreme demonstration of disapproval. They had raped and killed a 14 year old Iraqi girl.
~ Roedy (born: 1948-02-04 age: 64)
Almost every American old enough watched the US Air force pummel the residential sections of Baghdad to rubble live on CNN on the opening day of the Iraq war 2003-03-20. Yet most Americans will claim either the USA almost never kills children or never does so intentionally. Who did they imagine was living in those apartment buildings? The denial is revolting. It reaches Nazi proportions. The Nazis have far more excuse. Hitler at least tried to hide his atrocities.
~ Roedy (born: 1948-02-04 age: 64)
America claims its goal is to spread democracy to the world. Yet what do they actually do? They overthrew democracies in Iran, Brazil, Guatemala, Argentina, Chile, Nicaragua, Haiti, Venezuela… and installed brutal dictatorships. They propped up dictators in Iraq, Indonesia, the Philippines, Saudi Arabia… So excuse me if I splutter when you tell me Bush wants democracy in Iraq. He wants what America always wants — puppet control of Iraq’s resources through a dictatorship.
~ Roedy (born: 1948-02-04 age: 64)
America contains a representative sample of all the world’s populations. So it is not some fundamental flaw in the American character that accounts for the country’s abominable behaviour — invading and exploiting smaller countries in the manner of ancient Rome. It is the result of too much concentrated privilege and power. Power corrupts.
~ Roedy (born: 1948-02-04 age: 64)
America does not recognise the authority of the World Court in the Hague. It flagrantly violates the Geneva Conventions and the Nuremberg principle that a country may not invade another without being attacked first. Similarly, Bonnie and Clyde did not recognise the authority of the US courts, however, that did not prevent the US justice system from eventually nailing them.
~ Roedy (born: 1948-02-04 age: 64)
America does some pretty dastardly things:
~ Roedy (born: 1948-02-04 age: 64)
- Start aggressive illegal wars to steal natural resources from tiny poor countries.
- Pump out enough greenhouse gas to cause serious global warming.
- Consume the lion’s share of the world’s resources.
- They periodically flagellate themselves in penance by voting Republican
America has a two tier military justice system, similar to the one they had in the days of segregation. It works like this:
If an American attacks another American unprovoked, that is a felony.
If an American injures an American attacker in the process of defending himself, that is not a felony.
However, if an American attacks an Afghan or Iraqi unprovoked, that is liberation a favour done for the Afghan/Iraqi, certainly not a felony, even though international law dating from the days of the Nuremberg Trials says it is.
If an Afghan or Iraqi harms an American in the process of defending himself, that is a felony. It also labels the offender a terrorist even if they never harmed any civilians.
~ Roedy (born: 1948-02-04 age: 64)
America has been butchering civilians in Iraq for 8 years and 5 months , claiming they are doing it to protect their freedoms. However, the Iraqis have killed exactly 0 American civilians in all that time. The only freedoms Americans have lost were those squelched by Cheney-Bush. The war is clearly a gigantic lie to cover up the cynical plundering of Iraq’s oil wealth.
~ Roedy (born: 1948-02-04 age: 64)
America has embraced the Republican philosophy of selfishness, greed, contempt for the environment and immediate gratification. It has voluntarily drunk the poison, and now must die with the consequences.
~ Roedy (born: 1948-02-04 age: 64)
America has spent more per capita killing, torturing and generally making life miserable for the people of Afghanistan and Iraq than even Hitler did attacking any country.
~ Roedy (born: 1948-02-04 age: 64)
America is cursed forever. It is already well along its decline into insignificance. It brought this on itself with barbaric, sadistic and totally unwarranted cruelty to the people of Afghanistan and Iraq. Almost no American made even a peep to object. Americans were even more compliant with evil than the citizens of Germany were under the Nazis. The entire population of America were tested and found wanting.
~ Roedy (born: 1948-02-04 age: 64)
America is on track for a new cold war with the rest of the planet with other countries complaining that America is aiding and abetting criminal activity by corporations. Americans have already embraced plutonics in favour of democracy with the Supreme Court decision permitting corporations to legally bribe politicians in unlimited amounts.
~ Roedy (born: 1948-02-04 age: 64)
America is turning democracy into a joke by forcing a war lord and drug lord as crooked as Hamid Karzai down the throats of the Afghan people, even after he was caught stuffing 20% of the ballots. It is not democracy unless the people governed make the decisions about who will lead them. The Taliban have won the hearts and minds of the majority of the Afghan people. It is not democracy when you exclude those you don’t like from the political process.
~ Roedy (born: 1948-02-04 age: 64)
America is using assassination with predator drones rather too casually as its main instrument of foreign policy. They have forgotten their own history of what happens when someone is assassinated — Abraham Lincoln, John F. Kennedy, Martin Luther King. Overnight, the victim turns into a saint and everything they ever said holy writ. Prior to his assassination, Kennedy was a hot-heated, womanising twit who just about started a nuclear war.
~ Roedy (born: 1948-02-04 age: 64)
America made a $60 billion arms deal with Saudi Arabia. What? Is that the same Saudi Arabia that provided the funding and suicide attackers on 9/11? Is that the same Saudi Arabia that is arch enemies with Israel? Is that the same Saudi Arabia that is the centre of Islamic extremism? Who benefits from this insanity? American arms dealers: Lockheed Martin, who make the F-35 fighter and McDonnell Douglas, who make the F-15 fighter. Americans are completely nuts. They arm Saudi Arabia, the country whose people attacked them on 9/11, and pound the bejesus out of two other countries, Afghanistan and Iraq, that had nothing to do with 9/11.
History may reveal Obama made a deal with Lockheed Martin and McDonnell Douglas. They would let him ramp down the Afghan/Iraq wars a notch in return for the Saudi contract, which is quite politically embarrassing to Obama. Obama will appear weak on terrorism at a time when he is in trouble in the polls. This just goes to show you the power of the defence industry. The sole purpose of Lockheed Martin and McDonnell Douglas is to make money for their shareholders. The only way they can do that is to foment wars wherever they can or drag out existing ones. How can Obama possibly broker peace in the middle east with these two gorillas from hell threatening to destroy him if he does not help perpetuate war? They sell to all sides.
~ Roedy (born: 1948-02-04 age: 64)
America spends almost as much on its military as the rest of the world put together. It spends just as much when it not at war as when it is. Why? The general population are paranoid, but that is because they have been manipulated. Part of the reason is simply bureaucratic bloat. Everything is secret so nothing can be questioned. The oversight of Pentagon spending is so lax a trillion dollars went “missing” presumably embezzled in the greatest heist of all time. It was reported only on the back pages of the New York Times. But the real reason is corruption. Consider that Cheney was accepting residuals from Halliburton, even while he was in office. George H. W. Bush was a major owner of the major defence contractor the Carlyle Group during the time his son was president. These companies were awarded no-bid contracts. They were able to charge ten times the going rate for goods and services. Other contractors gave contributions to senators and congressmen in return for votes for weapons are not needed, or too keep obsolete weapons systems funded. I find it peculiar that the American in the street imagines every penny of that expenditure is absolutely necessary for his survival. The average citizen is far more likely to die as a result of crumbling infrastructure, poisoned water supply, leaking sewage treatment, understaffed hospitals, contaminated food, dangerous materials recycling… than he would by a foreign invasion. Yet he won’t spend a dime protecting himself from domestic dangers.
~ Roedy (born: 1948-02-04 age: 64)
America spent over $1 trillion dollars killing people in Iraq, mostly civilians, and of them, mostly children. They spent $20 million dollars (1/50,000 as much) to compensate the families of the civilians they killed. It appears to me the compensation is just window dressing for the folks back home.
~ Roedy (born: 1948-02-04 age: 64)
American has great heroes, the 9/11 responders for one. They risked and literally gave their lives to save others. They are the complete opposite of those who volunteered to butcher children in Afghanistan and Iraq for their sadistic jollies, telling me they did it for the money, as if that were an excuse for serial child murder.
~ Roedy (born: 1948-02-04 age: 64)
American male politicians commonly brag they have committed a capital crime. The voters are duly impressed by this bloody-minded confession. I refer to aiding and abetting (aka serving in) an illegal aggressive (first strike) war such as Vietnam, Afghanistan or Iraq. This trumpeting is even more bizarre than a female politician bragging about how many abortions she has had.
~ Roedy (born: 1948-02-04 age: 64)
American media will discuss whether the Afghan and Iraq wars can be won and whether they are worth the cost but never if they are morally justified or legal.
~ Roedy (born: 1948-02-04 age: 64)
American soldiers complain that the Iraqi and Afghan resistance fight with IED (Improvised Explosive Device) . They consider this cheating since the attacker can attack from far away. These same soldier fail to notice Americans also fight from a distance with high altitude bombers, snipers who can pick people off from 4.83 km (3 miles) away, cluster bombs, land mines, predator drones…
~ Roedy (born: 1948-02-04 age: 64)
American soldiers illegally invaded Omar Khadr’s native country and tried to kill him. By all the ordinary rules of war, and self-defence, Khadr had every right to try to kill his attackers. Further he was a child soldier age 15. Americans convicted him of terrorism (which is absurd since he did not even allegedly hurt any civilians or try to change their political views by force), and tortured him for 10 years in Guantánamo as Canada did nothing to rescue him even though he was a Canadian citizen. He is a simple. Now Canada is preparing to hold him prisoner for a further 8 year sentence. This is an outrage. I hope he eventually sues his tormentors for billions of dollars. May those responsible be imprisoned and tortured themselves. What the hell did Americans expect of Khadr — sit there and be killed? Every American should wretch into the toilet in shame at how badly their country has behaved.
~ Roedy (born: 1948-02-04 age: 64)
American soldiers justify killing children in Afghanistan and Iraq in two main ways:I answer thusly:
- The children might be armed. It is thus necessary to kill them in pre-emptive self defence.
- The children will grow up to be terrorists. We must kill them while they are still easy to kill.
~ Roedy (born: 1948-02-04 age: 64)
- You put yourself in harm’s way by enlisting to kill people in Afghanistan and Iraq. You killed that child’s parents. You raped his sister. You tortured his brother. You showered his playmates in white phosphorus. Of course he wants to kill you. You deserve to be killed. You attacked him, not the reverse. He is legitimately defending himself against an illegal invader.
- People in Afghanistan and Iraq make less that $5 a month. Those peasants have no means to mount an attack on the USA. Even after a decade of war, they have not mounted even one attack. Those mounting domestic terrorist attacks are American citizens, not Afghan citizens, disgusted with their own country’s behaviour. If you want to discourage attacks, stop behaving like Nazis.
American soldiers justify shooting children or women on the grounds they were carrying weapons or might have hidden weapons. They consider this self defence. This is no more self defence than a bank robber shooting a guard. American soldiers have absolutely no business being in Iraq. Their very presence is a capital war crime.
~ Roedy (born: 1948-02-04 age: 64)
American soldiers returning from Iraq face dangers even greater than they did in combat. Every last one of them is an international war criminal, guilty of a capital (death penalty) crime, namely aiding and abetting an aggressive (first strike) war. They are technically guilty even if they just peeled potatoes in Iraq. Many of them violated the Geneva Conventions. Some of these Geneva violations are also capital crimes. Others used illegal banned weapons such as DU (Depleted Uranium), cluster bombs, napalm, white phosphorus and land mines. The USA uses its financial and military power to scoff at the World Court. However, the USA won’t won’t get away with this arrogance much longer. The USA won’t be the only superpower much longer. China has already eclipsed the USA is energy production. Russia has cornered the market on natural gas. The European Union is already more powerful than the USA by a number of measures. The USA is gripped by a severe recession that is shaking it to the core. Countries that respect the world court are treaty bound to arrest war criminals if they come onto their territory. American veterans might be wise to restrict foreign travel for the rest of their lives. Recall that some Nazis were not brought to justice for their aggressive war crimes until they were in their nineties. All the Nazis hanged were charged with the same crime, aiding and abetting an aggressive war.
~ Roedy (born: 1948-02-04 age: 64)
American talking heads, such as Pat Buchanan love to fulminate against the terrorists in Afghanistan and Iraq who have the temerity to fight back at American soldiers who illegally invaded and occupied their country unprovoked. They want to execute the P.O.W.s without civil trials because, as combatants, they are utterly wicked.
~ Roedy (born: 1948-02-04 age: 64)Terrorists are people who kill civilians. Insurgents are people who rebel against the established government. The resistance are people who fight against an occupying army. Americans refuse to call their victims by the proper term — the resistance. Americans refuse to offer their victims the usual Geneva Convention treatment offering the feeble excuse the Taliban don’t have uniforms. Could you imagine civil rights depending on owning a Brooks Brothers suit? What a ludicrous idea!
American turn everything into a contest, even inherently relaxing things like fishing, drinking, dancing, camping and cooking. The appeal is that for every winner there are dozens of losers. The audience actively enjoys focusing on the misery of each of the losers. They make it into an even bigger ritual than the winner.
~ Roedy (born: 1948-02-04 age: 64)
American vets (funded by the oil industry) have an ad campaign where they whine that the resistance in Iraq now have armour piercing weapons (where previously Americans could pick them off like fish in a barrel with almost no fear of reprisal). They refer to the Iraq resistance as “the enemy” and terrorists as if they had attacked the USA. They call for the US military to “protect America” from Iraqis as if the Iraq resistance had attacked America. America attacked Iraq unprovoked, and sold off the spoils to American and European corporations. This is a big lie worthy of Joseph Goebbels. The odd thing is all but the youngest Americans are fully aware it is a lie, yet pretend to believe it anyway. This is unforgivable.
~ Roedy (born: 1948-02-04 age: 64)
American vets of the Vietnam War, the Afghan war and the Iraq war did not serve their country, they shamed it, just as did the German vets of WW II.
~ Roedy (born: 1948-02-04 age: 64)
Americans admit that there are only at most 200 Al Qaeda in Afghanistan. That suggests their reason for spending billions each year to occupy the country has nothing to do with Al Qaeda.
~ Roedy (born: 1948-02-04 age: 64)
Americans almost to a man have a religious respect for the military. Even when Americans are upset about the US military killing children or civilians they never blame the soldiers, even ones who have brazenly committed capital war crimes. They don’t blame the generals or the president either. About the only outlet for their rage is recruiters who lie, bully and bribe to trick people into enlisting. They are becoming frequent murder victims on crime shows. They ignore war crimes much the same way American ignore sex crimes against children committed by the clergy.
~ Roedy (born: 1948-02-04 age: 64)
Americans are doing the exact same thing in Afghanistan and Iraq, naming waging aggressive (first strike) war that they hanged the Nazis for at the end of WW II.
~ Roedy (born: 1948-02-04 age: 64)
Americans are extremely proud of their family values:
~ Roedy (born: 1948-02-04 age: 64)
- They never attack anyone unprovoked, unless they have oil and a nasty dictator.
- They never torture or used banned weapons except in an emergency such as the enemy might not like us for attacking them and stealing their oil and might fight back effectively some day.
- They endorse harassing and persecuting gays as the national sport because bull baiting is cruel.
- They encourage the spread of Christianity, (whose primary values are child molesting and gay persecution) by making listening to its promotional material mandatory and by suppressing any science which contradicts it.
- They celebrate overconsumption of goods, services and food to punish the lazy poor of the world further with deprivation.
- Oil is the root of all evil, so they work feverishly to convert the remaining supplies into CO₂ greenhouse gas.
- Americans consider posterity a pack of deadbeats wanting a handout from the current generation who own everything. So they punish them with massive public debt and leave them with a hopelessly polluted world with no easy energy sources left.
Americans are funny. They tell me their weapons are best on the planet, the most efficient, the most lethal. They even have unmanned Predator drones to kill by remote control without endangering the killer. They tell me they have spend $4 trillion dollars pounding the rat shit out of Afghanistan and Iraq. They show me videos of US soldiers picking off people on the street like zombies in a video game. They show me videos of smart bombs sliding in a windows and killing everyone in the building. But when I show pictures of some of the casualties, they threaten my life and claim Americans hardly killed anyone. Huh? What were they doing then with all those bombers, predator drones, tanks, rocket launchers etc. They spent nearly all money. Surely the have nearly all the kills. Since they fight by remote control, most of those kills will be kids, simply because of the age distribution. Most of the people in Afghanistan are under 15. If you fire into a random building, you will kill mostly kids. This sort of random behaviour was broadcast live on CNN the day the USA invaded Baghdad. Americans watched but it did not dawn on them that those apartment buildings the Americans were blowing up were full of kids. I understood they were, because I watched with ex-patriate Iraqis who knew these neighborhoods and knew who lived in the buildings. Americans treated it like a fireworks show. A pox on them all! That a mindless idiot nation!
~ Roedy (born: 1948-02-04 age: 64)
Americans are furious with me when I point out that aggressive war (attacking first, unprovoked) is a capital war crime, in particular the unprovoked invasions of Afghanistan and Iraq. They respond “But what about 9/11?” Even President Bush said that bin Laden, and his Saudi Al Qaeda henchmen, were responsible, not Afghans or Iraqis. On 2003-09-17, Bush and his administration explicitly stated Iraq had nothing to do with 9/11. Attacking Iraq is like attacking the USA for something Colombian criminals allegedly did, on the grounds both nations are nominally Christian. Americans have justified their carnage with a racist belief that the only good Muslim is a dead Muslim, blaming a billion people, including the children, for the 9/11 crimes of a handful.
~ Roedy (born: 1948-02-04 age: 64)
Americans are horrified hearing a story about someone who talked to an actual Islamic terrorist. Yet they think nothing of a story about someone who talked to an American soldier who dropped bombs on tens of thousands of children, killing far more people than the terrorist had.
~ Roedy (born: 1948-02-04 age: 64)
Americans are naïve to think they can attack two nations unprovoked, torture and butcher civilians all without any counter attacks. Americans are in such denial they insist on calling any counter attacks terrorism (even attacks on occupying American soldiers) and calling any POW (Prisoner Of War) s captured, “terrorists.” A terrorist is someone who kills or threatens civilians hoping to change their political opinions. By definition, killing a soldier is not terrorism. Americans are the main terrorists given how many civilians they have killed, mostly children, and how many soldiers and mercenaries they have hired to terrorise civilians.
~ Roedy (born: 1948-02-04 age: 64)
Americans are nowhere near as intelligent as dinosaurs. How so? Americans spend trillions fretting about 100 unarmed Al-Qaeda in Afghanistan who have vowed revenge for Americans killing millions of civilians in Afghanistan and Iraq. Yet Americans refuse to do anything about global warming which will utterly obliterate the USA by the end of this century. Dinosaurs ruled 159 million years and were wiped out by an asteroid, something they could no nothing about. Americans will rule at most 550 years and will die by their own premeditated suicidal acts to deliberately bring on global warming.
~ Roedy (born: 1948-02-04 age: 64)
Americans are quite concerned about civil rights abuses in Afghanistan and Iran, but tend to ignore them in Myanmar and China. Why the difference? The US is currently occupying Afghanistan to gain control of its massive lithium deposits. They are planning a war with Iran to gain control of its oil and uranium.
~ Roedy (born: 1948-02-04 age: 64)
Americans are shocked when I compare their unprovoked invasions of Afghanistan and Iraq with Hitler’s invasion of Poland, even though by some measures, Americans behaved even worse:
~ Roedy (born: 1948-02-04 age: 64)
- Routine torture of P.O.W.s.
- Use of banned weapons, e.g. napalm, white phosphorus, cluster bombs…
- Higher ratio of civilians to combatants killed.
- Total tonnage of explosives.
- Ignoring the Geneva conventions.
Americans are so fixated by the metaphor of war as football game that they imagine they can win the wars in Afghanistan and Iraq by offering a better pay contract to the other side’s playersto get them to switch teams. That is insane. If Nazis invaded your country and made such an offer what would you do? Take the money, infiltrate them and defeat the invaders from the inside!
~ Roedy (born: 1948-02-04 age: 64)
Americans are so in denial of their dark side, that they pretend they are desperately fighting to defend America from enslavement both by Iraq and Afghanistan, even though the USA attacked both tiny countries unprovoked and illegally because they were not sufficiently compliant in handing over their oil and oil pipeline corridors.
~ Roedy (born: 1948-02-04 age: 64)
Americans are so self-centred and conceited that they imagine they are justified in invading and occupying a country for 10 years and 7 months and plundering its resources simply on the grounds they thought a fugitive might be hiding there. (It turns out there were wrong, but they kept on and on occupying Afghanistan. What a nation of weasel-mouthed mirror-wankers!) Would they invade, occupy and plunder Mexico or Columbia with the same feeble excuse?
~ Roedy (born: 1948-02-04 age: 64)
Americans are truly weird. They pull back in horror when someone says “nation building” but have not the tiniest twinge of conscience at bombing a defenseless country for a decade for no apparent reason.
~ Roedy (born: 1948-02-04 age: 64)
Americans are utterly nuts. They deny themselves fire fighters, sewers, schools, police, jobs… so they can blow $3 billion a month — at least $30,000,000 per goat herd Al Qaeda in Afghanistan each month. (The money is really going for corruption.) How could a people be so stupid as to pay such a ridiculously high bill for such a trivial war?
~ Roedy (born: 1948-02-04 age: 64)
Americans are very concerned that in a war with Iran, Israel could be harmed. On 2002-01-29, in his SOTU (State Of The Union) speech, Bush vowed to annihilate Iran, presumably triggering Iran to develop nukes to deter that attack following the lead of North Korea which used that same strategy to successfully fend off a similar attack. Now America is talking about preemptively attacking Iran, starting a nasty war where Iran would block the Straits of Hormuz and with it most of the world’s oil. Iran is fully aware that if it used nukes, the USA would obliterate it with a rain of ICBM (Inter Continental Ballistic Missile) s. It sounds like the cure is far worse than the disease. It is hypocritical of the USA and Israel to arms themselves to the teeth with nukes, and expect those they threaten to disarm and roll over and welcome invasion and theft of their natural resources the way Iraq and Afghanistan did.
~ Roedy (born: 1948-02-04 age: 64)
Americans assure me that American soldiers are perfect gentlemen, and would never dream of abusing their power. Yet everyone knows how young Americans behave in fraternities when given even a tiny bit of power over the new pledges. Sadism boils up in even the most sanguine young man.
~ Roedy (born: 1948-02-04 age: 64)
Americans beat the crap out of tiny Afghanistan and Iraq, neither of which had anything at all to do with 9/11. Even Bush claims the culprits were Saudi. This is crime that will be remembered for millennia. There is no way America can indefinitely escape reprisal. The more Americans torture, rape, plunder and murder the worse the revenge will eventually be. The fools imagine the crueler they are, the safer they are. They are using the failed shock and awe strategy that Hitler attempted.
~ Roedy (born: 1948-02-04 age: 64)
Americans believe Iranians have an irrational hatred for Americans. Americans have conveniently forgotten two things they did to Iran:~ Roedy (born: 1948-02-04 age: 64)
- In 1953, during the Eisenhower administration, the USA deposed the government of popular Prime Minister, Mohammed Massadegh and imposed one of the most brutal dictators in history, Mohammad Reza Shah Pahlavi.
- On 1988-07-03, during the Reagan administration, the USS Vincennes entered Iranian water without permission then shot down Iranian Air Flight 655 killing all 290 passengers and crew aboard, including 66 children.
Americans believe that the Geneva Conventions do not apply to them, even though they signed a treaty that trumps the constitution saying they would abide by them. You might say then that Americans are a nation of outlaws.
~ Roedy (born: 1948-02-04 age: 64)
Americans believe, like Hitler, they may invade whomever they want, even though they have signed a treaty agreeing not to invade unless attacked. They justified attacking Afghanistan on the grounds bin Laden might have been hiding there, and kept up the attack even after they were quite sure he was no longer there. Oddly they did not similarly feel compelled to attack Pakistan when they located bin Laden living there. Why? Pakistan has nukes. Pakistan does not have a pipeline route. Pakistan does not have a $1 trillion a year heroin trade.
~ Roedy (born: 1948-02-04 age: 64)
Americans believe, they may invade whomever they want, even though they have signed a treaty that trumps the constitution agreeing not to invade unless attacked. You might say then that Americans are a nation of outlaws.
~ Roedy (born: 1948-02-04 age: 64)
Americans blame Islamic clerics for convincing terrorists to attack America. Have they forgotten that America illegally attacked and invaded two Islamic countries unprovoked, ignored the Geneva conventions, used all manner of banned weapons, used techniques of war that mainly killed civilians and children, and routinely tortured P.O.W.s and other detainees. It would seem natural to me that any young Islamic man would feel obligated to wage war on the USA. In fact it would seem natural that anyone but an oil executive or defence industry board member would feel obligated to try to stop the USA by some means, peaceful or violent. The most effective way for the USA to fight terrorism would be to stop participating in it and thus stop bringing retribution on its head.
~ Roedy (born: 1948-02-04 age: 64)
Americans blaming all Muslims for the crimes of Osama bin Laden (and all those who helped with 9/11) is just as ridiculous as blaming all Christians for the crimes of Timothy McVeigh.
~ Roedy (born: 1948-02-04 age: 64)
Americans bleat piteously that the Taliban treated them with less that welcoming arms. I wonder how the Americans would treat the Taliban if they invaded and occupied America, killed millions of people, used banned weapons, tortured, raped, dismissed the president, congress and senate and appointed an interim dictator they deemed appropriate.
~ Roedy (born: 1948-02-04 age: 64)
Americans bribed Iraq collaborators to betray their country with promises of American citizenship and jobs that pay well in US dollars. On pullout, the Americans reneged on those promises. The collaborators are now in hot water without the Americans to protect them from their fellow citizens. I have no sympathy for them. People should not sell out their countries to foreign plunderers, especially when they killed them for money.
~ Roedy (born: 1948-02-04 age: 64)
Americans call the Taliban extremists. What is extreme about fighting to end an occupation that has dragged on for 10 years and 7 months? If someone invaded and occupied your country, surely you would feel no compulsion about killing the invaders and the collaborators. Do you consider yourself an extremist?
~ Roedy (born: 1948-02-04 age: 64)
Americans claim they are dedicated to non-proliferation of nuclear weapons. What they mean is they want a world where no one has nukes but them. This is not going to fly.
~ Roedy (born: 1948-02-04 age: 64)
Americans claim they never target civilians, that they just kill children rarely as collateral damage. I know this to be a lie, because I saw them do it with my own eyes. Likely you saw it too, but it did not register just what you were seeing. On 2003-03-20, the opening day of the Iraq war, pretty well everyone was huddled around their TV sets watching live the invasion of Iraq. I was watching with some ex-patriate Iraqis who were naïve enough to think Bush was going to liberate Iraq. Instead we watched him bomb the residential neighbourhoods of Baghdad. My companions screamed in terror as they watched their family and friends back home crushed to death in the houses and apartments along familiar streets. They were crying and weeping inconsolably. They felt they had been massively betrayed. Each time the Americans announced they had assassinated a resistance leader, they announced they had simultaneously killed a number of children because of cowardly remote-control warfare they indulge in. They knew that would happen. They must take responsibility for intending to kill the children.
~ Roedy (born: 1948-02-04 age: 64)
Americans claim to be morally superior to suicide bombers because Americans kill with torture, drones, white phosphorus and napalm. Both use quite effective means of terror, intimidating the entire populations. It seems to me, that suicide bombing is more sincere. Americans usually kill by remote control, with the idle boredom of a modern-day Nero playing a video game.
~ Roedy (born: 1948-02-04 age: 64)
Americans claiming self defence as the motivation for occupying Iraq is like Shaq O’Neal claiming self defence for mugging Gary Coleman.
~ Roedy (born: 1948-02-04 age: 64)
Americans constantly glorify their soldiers and try to equate them to the soldiers who defended America in WW II. There is no comparison. The soldiers of WW II had no choice. They had to defend their country from attack. The American soldiers of today are much more akin to the war-criminal soldiers of Germany and Japan who engaged in first strike imperial wars. They gladly chose to butcher, torture and steal.
~ Roedy (born: 1948-02-04 age: 64)
Americans feel great sympathy for the soldier who butchered 9 children and 7 civilians. Americans imagine the soldiers are doing some extremely onerous but necessary job that often drives them insane. This is nonsense. Neither Afghanistan nor Iraq attacked the USA. The wars are purely optional. Their purpose is control of crucial natural resources. The soldiers enlisted not to defend the USA but for adventure and the sadistic pleasure of killing Muslims like fish in a barrel, using high tech weapons, all with little personal danger. There is nothing remotely honourable about what the soldiers are doing in Afghanistan and Iraq. Further, it is illegal.
~ Roedy (born: 1948-02-04 age: 64)
Americans have a strange belief that it is much more wicked to kill 40 people in a suicide bomb attack than to drop a bomb on them from a plane (at least if the pilot is American). They consider the first extremely wicked and the second perfectly acceptable. To the people blown up, it makes absolutely no difference.
~ Roedy (born: 1948-02-04 age: 64)
Americans have a superstition, backed by law, that the bodies of Americans killed in war or their coffins must not be photographed. Oddly, the superstition does not apply to those they have killed. I see this law as a way to deceive the American people about the human costs of illegal wars. As a Canadian, the law does not apply to me. I feel a duty to punch Americans in the gut with such photos to persuade them to stop treating war as a football game.
~ Roedy (born: 1948-02-04 age: 64)
Americans have been so addled and lied to by their media they can’t tell the difference between a war hero and a war criminal. Heroes defend and save lives. Criminals kill people for no reason. A case in point, Dakota Meyer of Kentucky who chose to go on an all expenses paid safari to Afghanistan where he bagged 8 Taliban. The Taliban had not attacked the USA. Further, they had no means to even get there much less attack. No Taliban were involved in 9/11. This was a straight forward aggressive (first strike) war. That is flat out illegal. Anyone who aids or abets in such a war has committed a capital crime. Dakota Meyer is an admitted war criminal. Legally he is on par with a confessed serial killer, mind you with lower probability of successful prosecution. Why did he do it? It certainly was not to defend the USA. The pay was terrible. The conditions appalling. Surely it was not just a way to escape loved ones. There are much easier ways to accomplish that. What’s left? He likes hunting humans the same way he likes hunting squirrels back home in Kentucky. He gets a quasi-sexual thrill watching their heads explode. The US military offered him immunity from prosecution for his future crimes that would have rated lethal injection back home. It is revolting seeing the president touching the hand of such a pervert, and trying to fob him off as a hero by awarding him the Medal of Honor, dishonouring all true recipients of the past.
~ Roedy (born: 1948-02-04 age: 64)
Americans have embarked on a campaign to kill Al Qaeda by making them die of derisive laughter. For example Ron Paul refused to deny an allegation he kidnapped a woman, forced her to take hits on bong and worship the god Aquabuddha. Ron Boehner announced by reducing taxes (the money the people pay to the government), government revenues will increase, even though these voodoo economics have been tried before and has never worked. Military spokesmen announce they despite spending $1 trillion on invading and occupying Afghanistan and Iraq they have hardly killed anyone.
~ Roedy (born: 1948-02-04 age: 64)
Americans have incredible cheek to complain about 9/11 that killed 3500 people when they attacked Iraq unprovoked, on false pretenses, stole all their oil resources and killed millions. Neither Iraq nor Afghanistan had any part in 9/11. Even Bush said it was Saudis. Yet Americans rained terror on them that made 9/11 look like a picnic.
~ Roedy (born: 1948-02-04 age: 64)
Americans have incredible gall to term their victims in Afghanistan and Iraq “terrorists” A terrorist is someone who kills civilians an attempt to bully them into changing their political opinions. The Americans killed about 200 times as many civilians. Further, America illegally invaded Afghanistan and Iraq, not the reverse.
~ Roedy (born: 1948-02-04 age: 64)
Americans have made such a habit of self deception that nearly all of them believe it is a noble enterprise to go on a safari to the other side of the world to hunt children, so long as they do it under the auspices of the US military.
~ Roedy (born: 1948-02-04 age: 64)
Americans have no more conscience than the ancient Romans. Like a black hole, America sucks the entire earth dry of natural resources, energy and food. The #1 health problem is gluttony. They send out their legions across the earth seeking more to consume (Afghanistan for minerals and Iraq for oil) and lie that they do it for altruistic motives. Unaware as piglets sucking at a sow, they offer no protest. There has not been a peep of resistance since the Vietnam war, and even that was motivated by a selfish (though eminently sensible) desire to avoid the draft.
~ Roedy (born: 1948-02-04 age: 64)
Americans have no right to complain the Pakistanis did not find bin Laden for them. After all, the Americans had high resolution satellite imagery and surveillance drone photos the Pakistanis did not have.
~ Roedy (born: 1948-02-04 age: 64)
Americans have no shame about the atrocious way their country treated the citizen of Iran, Cuba, Vietnam, Chile, Nicaragua, Afghanistan, Haiti, Venezuela, Iraq, Mexico… because they have one set of ethics about how they should treat Americans and another how they should treat non-Americans. How is that different from South Africa’s old apartheid system, India’s cast system or Europe’s class system?
~ Roedy (born: 1948-02-04 age: 64)
Americans have such cheek for blaming the Taliban for blocking the peace process. The Americans were the ones who illegally invaded and installed Hamid Karzai as puppet dictator. What the Americans really mean by “rejecting peace” is the Taliban refuse to unconditionally surrender and accept the incredibly corrupt narcostate (Hillary Clinton’s assessment) government the Americans chose for them. The Afghans further stubbornly refuse to hand over control of their natural resources, namely lithium, to the Americans. The Americans have absolutely no moral right to even be in Afghanistan, much less kill people there. Logically, since they are 100% in the wrong, they are the block to peace.
~ Roedy (born: 1948-02-04 age: 64)
Americans have the most peculiar sense of justice. You can anesthetize a child with chloroform, suffocate her with duct tape and leave her body to rot for a month in a car trunk and you get off. You can torture a child to death in Afghanistan who did nothing whatsoever to harm anyone using white phosphorus to make the death as painful and slow as possible and no one blinks an eye. If you kill enough kids, you will get a medal. But if you have a miscarriage, the law is down on you for murder.
~ Roedy (born: 1948-02-04 age: 64)
Americans make no distinction between the honour of soldiers who fought to defend the USA in WW II and those who attacked other nations unprovoked in the Afghanistan and Iraq wars to gain control of oil supplies.
~ Roedy (born: 1948-02-04 age: 64)
Americans often phone or email me to angrily complain that I am unfairly anti-American. I wonder on what grounds I could justify looking the other way when America illegally attacks small third world countries, unprovoked, to steal their natural resources, uses banned weapons (such as napalm, land mines, white phosphorus, depleted uranium and cluster bombs), kills mainly civilians and children with their high tech war by remote control and routinely tortures P.O.W.s. Why should it be OK for Americans to commit these war crimes, but for no one else? What is the matter with Americans that they are so cowed or so corrupt or so deeply in denial that they permit their government to behave worse than Nazis?
~ Roedy (born: 1948-02-04 age: 64)
Americans plan to seek revenge for 9/11 for at least another century, to avenge the deaths of 3500 innocent people. Why do Americans think that killing millions of innocent people in Afghanistan and Iraq will go unavenged by a people who are known to hold grudges for millennia. Americans hold the nutty idea the longer the war and crueler and barbaric they are to the Afghans and Iraqis, the sooner America will be forgiven.
~ Roedy (born: 1948-02-04 age: 64)
Americans refuse to ask themselves the most basic question about terrorism — Why are terrorists willing to commit suicide to hurt Americans? Hint: America illegally attacked two nations unprovoked and occupied them both to this day in Roman-style resource wars. Combined with the 12 years of sanction bombings between the Gulf war and the Iraq war, Americans have killed millions of Muslims, and routinely tortured everyone they could capture, even children. If you were a Muslim, would you not at least consider doing something drastic to try to stop the killing?
~ Roedy (born: 1948-02-04 age: 64)
Americans sling such bullshit! They claim they are pummeling Afghanistan and Iraq to defend American freedom. Yet in the 10 years and 7 months of Afghan war and the 9 years and 2 months of the Iraq war, neither country has launched even a single attack against the USA. And further, they made no attacks prior to the Americans illegally invading their countries. We all know the real reason for the war, but American pretend not to know. Obama auctioned off all of Iraq’s oil assets to American and European oil companies on the very day he announced the wind-down of the war.
~ Roedy (born: 1948-02-04 age: 64)
Americans spread violence in the third world by selling heat-seeking missiles for profit. It is poetic justice that these very missiles have found their way to the Taliban to shoot down American helicopters.
~ Roedy (born: 1948-02-04 age: 64)
Americans succumbed to the temptation to mass torture out of four motives:~ Roedy (born: 1948-02-04 age: 64)
fear
the motive of the naïve person in the street, as if Iraqi peasants had any conceivable means to harm them.sadism
Bush and Cheney’s motive.racism
the anaesthetic for conscience and common sense. Americans would never have tortured Caucasian Christians so casually. American Christians tortured brown-skinned Iraqi and Afghan Muslims with the same religious fervour that the Catholic Inquisition tortured the Albigensian heretics.conceit
Americans are in a position much like the waning days of the British Empire. Their insecurity makes them wish to punish anyone who tacitly refuses to acknowledge American privilege and superiority.
Americans tell me they are killing kids and torturing teenagers in Afghanistan and Iraq to protect American freedom. That is blithering nonsense. Why do I think so?
~ Roedy (born: 1948-02-04 age: 64)
- Clearly, occupying Afghanistan and Iraq, routinely torturing detainees, using banned weapons to terrorise, maim and kill civilians, raping and killing children interferes with the freedoms of the Afghans and Iraqis. Just what is the infringement of American liberty that justifies this? There isn’t one. Further, there is no infringement of any kind.
- The USA illegally attacked both these countries, not the reverse. Bush-43 wanted to control their natural resources — Afghan lithium and Iraqi oil.
- Neither Afghanistan nor Iraq has ever attacked the USA, and further neither have the means to. They have no airplanes, missiles, tanks, trucks, drones, submarines or ships. All them have are a few IEDs — roadside bombs made in kitchens.
- The US military brass are currently pulling out troops from both countries. Not a single general has expressed a concern this will lead to Afghanistan or Iraq attacking the USA. There is no threat to US freedom now, and there never was one in the past either.
- The bottom line. This business about protecting American freedoms is a total crock. There is no evidence for it, just mindless repeated assertion. The government invaded to gain resources. Individuals enlisted because they are psychopaths who enjoy killing or raping or bullying. Nobody was protecting anyone’s freedom. America will have as much trouble living this down as Germany had living down the actions of the Nazis.
Americans tell me they are killing people in Afghanistan because they want to terrorise the Muslims there into giving up Islam with its oppression of women, religious intolerance and harsh treatment of criminals. They also tell me they are fighting for freedom and to stamp out terrorism. Isn’t killing Muslims for refusing to convert to Christianity a rather blatant assault on religious freedom? Isn’t killing civilians to make them change religion the very definition of terrorism? How is it Americans never notice the irony?
~ Roedy (born: 1948-02-04 age: 64)
Americans tell me they are killing people in Iraq because if they don’t kill them there, they will have to fight them back in America. America attacked Iraq in the Gulf war, in the sanction bombings and in the Iraq war. Never in all that time did Iraqis attack American civilians, just the soldiers illegally invading their country. The Americans killed about 3 million Iraqis. Thus the Iraqis have plenty of justification for levelling the USA. Americans must take responsibility for creating that revenge motive through their unconscionable treatment of the Iraqis, including torture, rape, murder and deaths too hideous to describe. Americans attacked first, unprovoked and illegally. Even Bush said Iraq had nothing to do with 9/11. Americans use this phony fear excuse to cover for the real motive for the war, that everyone but the Americans acknowledges, theft of the Iraqi oil reserves. The American excuse is as preposterous as a mugger who stole money then beat his unarmed victims to a pulp killing them, then claiming self defence.
~ Roedy (born: 1948-02-04 age: 64)
Americans think the Taliban are evil for wanting control of their country back, for fighting to evict the American occupation, and for wanting America to fail all over the planet. Would you not want invaders of your country thrown out and to fall on their faces? What’s so terrible about that?
~ Roedy (born: 1948-02-04 age: 64)
Americans treat war the same way they treat professional sports. They just want to know what the score is. No other details are of interest. Why the war started is irrelevant. The cost of fighting the war is no object. What winning the war would accomplish has no relevance. Team spirit is sufficient justification for torture, child rape and genocide. As coach Henry Russell Sanders put it, “Winning isn’t everything; it’s the only thing.”
~ Roedy (born: 1948-02-04 age: 64)
Americans typically wage war by picking on a resource-rich country less than 1/10 its size and attacking illegally without provocation. They primarily drop noxious things from high altitude on the civilian populations and civilian targets such as hospitals, mosques and electric power stations, objects including bombs, banned weapons such as DU, white phosphorus, napalm and cluster bombs. The American rely on technology including armoured vehicles and Predator drones so rarely risk face-to-face combat. American spend without limit on a ceaseless torrent of the most advanced weapons, deluding themselves they need to do this to defend their homeland. Yet they see themselves as heroes in these battles, and wonder why they are tarred with epithets such as “The Great Satan“, and why even former allies look on in horror. They foolishly wonder why the civilian populations don’t greet them with garlands. The answer should be obvious. What if an alien super power ten times the size of the USA similarly attacked the USA? How would Americans react?
~ Roedy (born: 1948-02-04 age: 64)
Americans universally claimed the killing of bin Laden was triumph of justice. That is not justice, that is vigilantism. Justice would be an open trial, followed by execution after conviction. By preferring vengeance over justice, Americans lost big time.
~ Roedy (born: 1948-02-04 age: 64)
- We will never find out how/if bin Laden engineered 9/11 and who was complicit.
- bin Laden will become a martyr rather that a criminal with his deeds explored in open court.
- All bin Laden’s secrets about the Al Qaeda went with him to the grave.
Americans use the term enemies in an unusual way. They refer to Afghanistan, Iraq and Iran as enemies, even though these nations have not attacked the USA. The USA attacked them unprovoked to steal oil and other natural resources. That is a bit like a mugger calling his mark an enemy. Most people would call them victims, not enemies.
~ Roedy (born: 1948-02-04 age: 64)
Americans use the term the enemy differently from the rest of the world. Others use it to refer to a country attempting to invade or destroy their own, one with at least some chance of succeeding. Americans use the term more broadly to mean anyone who resists American will. It can refer to a rival, a victim who resists exploitation or even someone who hurls impotent insults like Chavez.
~ Roedy (born: 1948-02-04 age: 64)
Americans were very excited about the Afghan and Iraq war in the opening days, but soon lost stomach for them. Yet the leaders kept the wars percolating for years and years even though the majority of people wanted the wars stopped. Did you ever wonder why a politician would do that? Who was pulling his chain and why?
~ Roedy (born: 1948-02-04 age: 64)
Americans will never live down the shame that most of them went along with Bush killing and torturing kids to browbeat their parents into handing over their oil.
~ Roedy (born: 1948-02-04 age: 64)
Americans, especially enlistees, believe that soldiers bear no responsibility. The responsibility lies entirely with the leaders. The soldier’s job is just to follow orders and kill whom they are told to. Yet at the end of WW II, Americans excoriated the Nazi soldiers when they excused themselves saying “I was just following orders.” The Nazis had an excuse that no American has. Had they not killed, they would have been killed. In contrast, American soldiers choose to enlist and kill, maim, torture and rape innocent people.
~ Roedy (born: 1948-02-04 age: 64)
America’s war against Vietnam was its longest war, lasting from the Gulf of Tonkin incident on 1964-08-02 to the truce on 1973-01-27, a total of 8 years, 5 months and 25 days. The war against Afghanistan started on 2001-10-07 and has been waging 10 years, 7 months and 20 days 0. Will it beat Vietnam in the Guinness Book of Records of pointless wars?
~ Roedy (born: 1948-02-04 age: 64)
An impoverished country, Afghanistan, was able to defeat the Russians and later the Americans partly because Russians and Americans were so contemptuous of Islam that the Afghans considered defeating them as necessary as defeating Satan. Eternal souls were at stake, not just lives.
~ Roedy (born: 1948-02-04 age: 64)
An unusually sick serial killer might kill a dozen people in a lifetime. Yet a soldier in Iraq or Afghanistan could kill than many children in a few seconds and it would not be in the least remarkable. He would come home and be feted as a hero and trusted to be left alone with children.
~ Roedy (born: 1948-02-04 age: 64)
Anti-war folk such as myself are just trying to stop the killing and suffering, especially the killing and suffering of kids. Those who oppose us, for some reason, want more killing and suffering. The way I see it, they have to be mentally unbalanced. They often threaten to kill us, even though we are not interfering with their murders, other than trying to prick their consciences.
~ Roedy (born: 1948-02-04 age: 64)
Any soldier who has been to Afghanistan or Iraq knows without any doubt that the foe would utterly incapable of mounting an invasion against the USA. So why do they re-enlist? The conditions are appalling. It can’t be to defend the USA. Is it because they are addicted the drugs so freely available, they are addicted to bullying and killing whomever they please using whatever sick means they chose, they are addicted to raping children, they are addicted to torture, they are addicted to using banned weapons such as white phosphorus to kill their victims in the most slow and painful ways? All of the above? Power corrupts.
~ Roedy (born: 1948-02-04 age: 64)
Apologists for military sadists excuse them on the grounds they naïvely believe they are serving their country by protecting it from invasion. Yet when the troops get to Afghanistan or Iraq, surely it must be immediately obvious that America is the aggressor, and that neither Afghanistan nor Iraq has or ever had the means to attack the USA. Yet they re-enlist anyway. They do it because they so enjoy raping, torturing and killing.
~ Roedy (born: 1948-02-04 age: 64)
Apologists for torture argue the there should be no investigations and no prosecutions because the criminals to performed the torture felt justified in breaking the law. We should let bygones be bygones, “look forward”, and focus on the present. Their argument applies equally well to disbanding the entire criminal justice system. We prosecute, not just to punish past crimes, but to deter future crimes.
~ Roedy (born: 1948-02-04 age: 64)
Are the American military lying or are they really so naïve they believe the Iraqis will successfully fight a war for them they could not win in 9 years? Why would the Iraqis have any interest in fighting the enemies of a country that plundered them and killed millions of their relatives? If the Iraqis thought they could win, they would fight America too.
~ Roedy (born: 1948-02-04 age: 64)
As of 2010-04-11, the US military claims it has killed only 4000 Afghan civilians, all by mistake. This is absurd. When you drop bombs on cities you know that 50% of the victims will be children simply because 50% of the people in the buildings you blow up in Afghanistan are children. Half of the rest will be women. Only a small fraction will be combatants. There is nothing at all accidental about the killing. The military don’t count the over 1,000,000 civilians they starved and froze to death in the first winter of the war by cutting off all supplies including humanitarian aid. They also don’t count kills by special forces or contractors.
~ Roedy (born: 1948-02-04 age: 64)
As of 2011-06-30 Americans have spent $4 trillion dollars on the Afghanistan and Iraq wars, and that is not counting lifetime care for the injured vets. What do they have to show for that massive expenditure? A stalemate! The man they are backing in Afghanistan, Hamid Karzai, has proven himself to be one of the planet’s most crooked politicians and its biggest drug lord. Americans are panicking about the deficits, but oddly refuse to even consider reducing the massive military spending for optional, illegal, non-defensive wars.
~ Roedy (born: 1948-02-04 age: 64)
Ask people who were alive in 1939 how they felt about Hitler. They will tell you he was such an awful man that there was no possibility of surrender under any circumstances. I submit the people of Afghanistan and Iraq feel the same way about the Americans. Surrender is unthinkable. Why would they feel this way?
- Aiding and abetting such invasions is a capital offense.
- The war is illegal on many grounds in American law. Americans don’t even follow their own rules.
- Americans lied that Afghanistan and Iraq were behind 9/11 when there is no evidence to support that. Not even George W. Bush made that claim.
- Bush lied that Iraq had nukes and they knew precisely where they where. Even after the lie was exposed the Americans refused to with withdraw.
- Obama auctioned off all of Iraq’s oil reserves to American and European oil companies.
- Americans gave all of Iraq’s traditional seed genome to Monsanto who then introduced terminator genes and forced Iraqis to pay exorbitant prices for their own traditional seed.
- Americans invaded Afghanistan because the Taliban refused Unocal a free right of way for a pipeline.
- Americans invaded Afghanistan because they wanted the bulk of the world’s lithium hidden under Afgan soil to use in high-performance batteries.
- George W. Bush called the Geneva conventions quaint.
- Americans routinely torture all POWs.
- Americans drop bombs on homes from airplanes and drones. This kills mostly civilians and of those mostly children.
- Americans use banned weapons such as napalm, white phosphorus, cluster bombs (disguised as food packets) and land mines.
- American installed an ex-Unocal man, Hamid Karzai as puppet dictator. He is the most corrupt politician on the planet and the world’s biggest heroin drug lord.
- Americans have desecrated mosques and tried to convert the people away from Islam.
- Americans have occupied Afghanistan since 2001-10-27 for 10 years, 7 months and 20 days and Iraq since 2003-03-20 for 9 years, 2 months and 7 days . The Americans keep saying they are going to leave, but then make up yet another excuse to stay. They have constructed their buildings as if the occupation were to last at least 50 years. It looks pretty much as if they plan to stay until every last barrel of oil and gram of lithium is gone.
- The USA CIA (Central Intelligence Agency) trained Saddam and helped him to power. Prior to that Iraq was prosperous free country.
- The USA overthrew the democratic government in Iran and installed the Shah as dictator. He was one of the world’s top ten bad guys.
- Under American occupation, heroin exports went from zero to $1 trillion a year in Afghanistan — more than enough to keep the world’s junkies stoned. It is now used to make addictive products aimed at children such as cheese sold in Texas elementary schools.
- Americans have no sense of restraint in war. They are the only country have used nukes on civilians.
- Americans bombed Tokyo in WW II using napalm. This was the largest, most lethal, bombing of civilians in world history and their record stands to this day.
- Americans support the Israelis in their invasion and occupation of Palestine and the apartheid system they set up and in their illegal occupation of Arab territory.
If you live in the USA, you will probably disagree with some of the items on that list. But that is irrelevant. People outside the USA have a much dimmer view of America’s behaviour than Americans have of themselves. What counts is what the Afghans and Iraqis think in determining how likely they are to surrender. Hitler did some pretty nasty stuff, but his list is considerably shorter. No wonder the Afghans and Iraqis refuse to surrender! Further the victims of America’s invasions have been previously toughened by living under the domination of Saddam and the Russians. They have suffered far too much to give up now. As Napoléon said “How many things apparently impossible have nevertheless been performed by resolute men who had no alternative but death.”
~ Roedy (born: 1948-02-04 age: 64)
Astounding as it sounds, according to Salon.com and the New York Times, Obama issued an executive order allowing him to authorise the assassination of any American citizen, without trial, without evidence, far from any battle field. This is a throwback to the divine right of kings.
~ Roedy (born: 1948-02-04 age: 64)
At $9 billion, the Hadron Collider is the most expensive scientific experiment in history. Compare that with the approximately $1000 billion spent blowing up goat herders in Afghanistan and Iraq.
~ Roedy (born: 1948-02-04 age: 64)
At the end of WW II Americans laughed derisively at Nazi War criminals who pleaded, “I was just following orders. I would have been shot if I disobeyed.” The Americans hanged them anyway. Nuremberg settled the matter that soldiers are personally responsible for the crimes they commit, period. How different the attitude to the American war criminals in Afghanistan and Iraq. No matter what atrocities or war crimes they openly committed, to modern day Americans, they are still heroes, with zero personal responsibility for their crimes. To my eyes, the American soldiers have far less excuse than the hanged Nazis. American soldiers were not drafted, they chose to kill. American soldiers would not be shot for refusing to commit war crimes, merely jailed. They were far better informed that what they were doing was illegal than were the Nazis. Germany had not yet even signed a treaty outlawing aggressive (first strike) war back then.
~ Roedy (born: 1948-02-04 age: 64)
Attacking other countries unprovoked is illegal. That makes the USA, Canada and Britain a nation of war criminals. None of us had any right to invade Afghanistan or Iraq, much less occupy them for years, much less use banned weapons and torture. We are the bad guys. We are in an analogous position to the Germans in the time of Hitler who did nothing to stop him.
~ Roedy (born: 1948-02-04 age: 64)
Because of the atrocities of the Afghan and Iraq wars, America is the most hated country since Nazi Germany. How do the Americans react? By killing themselves off by refusing themselves health care and by arming lunatics and felons with the most advanced firearms.
~ Roedy (born: 1948-02-04 age: 64)
Belgian UN troops forced a young Somali to eat pork (extreme Islamic taboo), drink salt water, and then eat his own vomit. Others roasted a Somali boy over a flaming fire and urinated on a murdered Somali. These are Belgians, not Nazis, Russians or Americans. Belgians are the people who perfected chocolate and pommes frite. Why did these Belgian soldiers do this? Look at the glee on the face of the soldier on the left in the photo. These men are sadists. They enlisted for opportunities to humiliate and hurt people. There no possible motive of self defence. Belgium is not under attack, and if it were, the entire EU would race to its defence. This same sadism is the reason young Americans enlisted for the Afghan and Iraq wars. It is the same reason no sane young woman (or man) should consider marrying a soldier of any nationality.
~ Roedy (born: 1948-02-04 age: 64)
bin Laden is a martyr and hero to much of the world. When the USA kills him, it could well spark more violence against the USA than bin Laden himself could orchestrate in a lifetime.
~ Roedy (born: 1948-02-04 age: 64)
Blaming all the world’s Muslims for 9/11 is even sillier than blaming all the world’s Christians for Hitler.
~ Roedy (born: 1948-02-04 age: 64)
Blinded by patriotism, it never occurred to the Germans to look on the Nazi soldiers as criminals until after the war, according to Leni Riefenstahl, the young woman who made Hitler’s propaganda film Triumph of the Will. The same holds today for Americans.
~ Roedy (born: 1948-02-04 age: 64)
Boeing advertises its military aircraft “make our forces safer and stronger”What does that mean, really? It means they enable the military to bomb more civilians per dollar with fewer lost planes.
~ Roedy (born: 1948-02-04 age: 64)
Both humans and chimps make war on other groups. It would be instructive if somebody made a movie, cutting back and forth between scenes of human and chimp warfare, but playing the chip sound track to accompany the human warfare and vice versa to show how primitive, brutal and idiotic the whole business is.
~ Roedy (born: 1948-02-04 age: 64)
Both the USA and Israel are bullies. Both believe that might makes right. Both are arrogant. Both thumb their noses at international law. Both are unbelievably conceited claiming to be God’s chosen people/master race. The difference is the Israelis are brazen about their perfect selfishness where the Americans pretend their actions are motivated by pure beneficence.
~ Roedy (born: 1948-02-04 age: 64)
Bullies usually work in gangs. They pick on those much smaller than they are. They are relentless; the bullying of a particular victim goes on for years. Bullies steal from their victims. They jeer at the victim for some perceived difference, and use that (e.g. race, religion, sexual preference) to select victims. When challenged, they justify their bullying on the grounds of self defence. Bullies usually have a dominant sadistic leader with a number of sycophantic followers. Bullies have no sense of fair play in their fights. They enjoy concocting new ways to torment and terrify. Remind you of anyone? the USA and gang in its treatment of Afghanistan and Iraq for example?
~ Roedy (born: 1948-02-04 age: 64)
Bullies who attack other kids unprovoked, or steal their lunch money, should not be surprised if their victims resort to sneaky revenge. The same is true of nations.
~ Roedy (born: 1948-02-04 age: 64)
Bush and Cheney ordered torture, not to get information, but because they received pleasure from watching the videos. Nearly everyone has forgotten that Bush stonewalled Judge Hellerstein when he subpoenaed Bush’s child rape and torture videos. Nearly everyone has forgotten Bush’s history of personal sadism.
~ Roedy (born: 1948-02-04 age: 64)
Bush promised to annihilate North Korea and Iran in his axis of evil speech. What else but nukes could deter the USA?
~ Roedy (born: 1948-02-04 age: 64)
Bush, Cheney and Rumsfeld lied about Saddam having nukes. Further they lied that the intelligence people had erred. The triumvirate never had any credible evidence, but went ahead with the invasion anyway for totally different reasons. You know this is so for many reasons:
~ Roedy (born: 1948-02-04 age: 64)
- The USA never attacks a nation that has nukes.
- Ambassador Joe Wilson said so.
- The French said so.
- The Italians said so.
- The various arms inspectors said so.
- Curveball turned out to be an anonymous alcoholic paid tens of thousands of dollars each month to compose lurid tales without any corroboration.
- There never any nukes or nuke precursors found.
- Bush turned down Saddam’s offer to surrender. They wanted to invade and take the oil, not defang Saddam.
Canada has been butchering civilians in Afghanistan for 10 years , claiming we are doing it to protect our freedoms. However, the Afghans have killed exactly 0 Canadian civilians in all that time. The only freedoms Canadians have lost were those squelched by Steven Harper. The war is clearly a gigantic lie to cover up the cynical plundering of Afghanistan’s mineral wealth.
~ Roedy (born: 1948-02-04 age: 64)
Canada pulled out of Afghanistan in 2011, but that does not let them off the hook for their illegal occupation prior to that. All of the Canadian soldiers who aided or abetted that war are guilty of a capital war crime, namely aiding and abetting an aggressive war. May they all hang or rot the rest of their lives in prison!
~ Roedy (born: 1948-02-04 age: 64)
Canada, along with the USA and Britain, invaded Afghanistan in 2001. They installed the world’s biggest heroin drug lord, Hamid Karzai as puppet dictator. The Taliban had all but eliminated the heroin trade. Under Canadian rule, it soared to #1 in the world, $1 trillion a year, more than enough to satisfy all the junkies on earth. The Canadians did absolutely nothing to suppress the heroin trade. It would not have been hard to stop it. After all, the Taliban were able to without any technology. The Canadians had the advantages of satellite surveillance, martial law, easy to spot poppies, a desolate landscape, no need for search warrants and no environmental impact studies for mass herbicide use. The Canadians stand accused of being involved in the drug trade. They deny it. They claim, to a man, they are all Dudley Dorights. I find this implausible, because $1 trillion a year is enough to bribe every Canadian soldier in Afghanistan with $3.7 billion dollars a year. It seems the thankless job of being a Canadian soldier in Afghanistan might not me so thankless after all.
~ Roedy (born: 1948-02-04 age: 64)
Canadian Colonel Russell Williams confessed to 86 crimes including two murders and two sexual assaults, and photographed himself masturbating during them. What do you expect? The Canadian government trained Colonel Williams to have no regard for human life or compassion. He needed this to wage war against people who were no threat to Canada. It is only natural he would retain those same attitudes once he came home.
~ Roedy (born: 1948-02-04 age: 64)
Cheney is an admitted war criminal. He brazenly committed a number of capital war crimes. His goal is to persuade the people he had the right to violate the law because he thought it was a good idea. It one thing to lobby to change the law, and quite another to demand to be excused from it.
~ Roedy (born: 1948-02-04 age: 64)
Children rehearse adult roles. When I was a child, girls rehearsed child rearing and cooking. Boys rehearsed driving trucks and flying airplanes. Both sexes rehearsed illegal business practices playing Monopoly. Today video games allow children to rehearse killing without remorse or motive, rape, theft and torture. The training works exceedingly well.
~ Roedy (born: 1948-02-04 age: 64)
China, Iran, Saudi Arabia, North Korea, United States, Iraq, Vietnam. Why is the USA on this list of disreputable countries? The USA is #5 in executions, just behind North Korea. Executing this many people may satisfy a desire for revenge, but it clearly does not work to reduce murders.
~ Roedy (born: 1948-02-04 age: 64)
Circa 1960, when I was 12 years old, Canada installed a string of 1700 early warning nuclear attack sirens. They had a distinctive baleful sound that could not be confused with any other siren. The sirens had a dry run test one day while we were in school. The idea was we had at most 20 minutes to get home and die with our parents. I lived 4 km (2.49 miles) away. I asked what was the point where I died: at school, at home or somewhere in between. I got an irritated scowl, but no answer in response. One morning, about a year later, the sirens went off. We turned on the radio for news. It was dead. Cold war tensions were high at the time. I figured this was it. I made my bed, and went out to sit on a giant granite outcropping in the front yard. From there I could see the entire harbour and the entire city of Vancouver and its environs. I waited for the bombers to come. I was disgusted with my fellow man for creating weapons with such an idiotic purpose as killing us all. I waited and waited. Nothing happened. It turned out the radio not working had a perfectly ordinary explanation, and we were told the sirens had gone off because the damp (It rained half the year in West Van) had short circuited them. Ever since, I have been a strong anti-nuclear advocate.
~ Roedy (born: 1948-02-04 age: 64)
Clifford Olson is BC’s most notorious serial killer. Over a year, he raped and murdered 11 children. However, he is an amateur compared with US soldiers/serial killers in Afghanistan and Iraq. Some of them kill 100 children in a single afternoon.
~ Roedy (born: 1948-02-04 age: 64)
Clifford Olson, serial killer, the beast of BC, murdered 11 children. 9 child kills would be unremarkable for a Canadian or American soldier, and yet they are still celebrated as heroes.
~ Roedy (born: 1948-02-04 age: 64)
Colombian soldiers have been murdering civilians, then passing them off as dead rebel soldiers. Why? They get a few days off for each extra corpse they bring in, paid by the military as a killing incentive. Soldiers are the lowest form of life on the planet.
~ Roedy (born: 1948-02-04 age: 64)
Compare Osama bin Laden and Lee Harvey Oswald:
~ Roedy (born: 1948-02-04 age: 64)
- Both allegedly committed a historic crime.
- There was controversy about both questioning whether they could have committed the crime without inside help.
- The evidence for why we figure these two were the culprits was kept secret.
- Both were assassinated before they could be interrogated or testify.
- The government ordered the assassinations of both men, presumably to shut them up.
Consensus holds that the main block to American success in Afghanistan is the weak, corrupt and unpopular Karzai puppet government. Just how is several more years of killing Afghan children supposed to help that situation?
~ Roedy (born: 1948-02-04 age: 64)
Consider a Syrian soldier shooting on his own people. Chances are he shares the same politics they do. What is with this dildobrain? He just does what he is told, no matter how asinine, crazy or evil it is. This soldier has abdicated his personhood. I don’t consider him human. He is a zombie. His death no longer matters.
~ Roedy (born: 1948-02-04 age: 64)
Consider powerful, evil, mad leaders such as Caligula, Genghis Khan, King Henry VIII, Napoléon Bonaparte, Adolph Hitler, Adi Amin, Pol Pot, Robert Mugabe, Kim Jong Il, Dick Cheney, George W. Bush… Mankind has not developed an effective way to get rid of such leaders. The only way we have is for someone to assassinate them at terrible difficulty and risk to themselves, and quite possibly when the leader is innocent. Impeachment does not work since a powerful corrupt leader is willing to kill or ruin anyone who acts against him.
~ Roedy (born: 1948-02-04 age: 64)
Consider the major wars the USA has participated in during the last 70 years: World War II, the Korean War, the Vietnam War, Kosovo, Afghanistan and Iraq. Even though the USA spends more on the military than any other nation, it still managed to lose four of those six wars. Why? Because most of the time, it was in the wrong. It attacked other nations unprovoked. Defending the homeland inspires soldiers to fight. Thus the enemieswere inspired and the Americans were not.
~ Roedy (born: 1948-02-04 age: 64)
Consider the possibility that some wise North American shaman convinced his fellows that the only legitimate way to smoke tobacco was in a peace pipe. He literally made warriors long for peace.
~ Roedy (born: 1948-02-04 age: 64)
Consider the problem of sadism. Most ethical systems would say it is inappropriate for a sadist to torture someone to increase his pleasure, unless the person tortured is a consenting masochist. The US military has a quite a different moral view. They recruit young sadists and say “So long as you have the power to inflict your will, and restrict yourself to designated enemy men, women and children, have at it.” These enemies are not enemies in the usual sense of people who attack you. They would be better described as official victims.
~ Roedy (born: 1948-02-04 age: 64)
Consider what is happening when you corner a domestic cat. It hisses and spits at you. What is it thinking?
- Does it plan to steal your freedoms?
- Does it plan to make you take up a new religion?
- Does it plan to kill you?
Obviously, it is terrified of you, especially if you are carrying a club and threaten to pound the cat to pulp. It is merely trying to scare you off from attacking it. I contend the Iranians are very much like that cat:
- Bush announced in his axis-of-evil speech that he was going to annihilate Iran.
- Obama has not rescinded that national goal.
- The United states is many times larger, richer and has far more advanced weapons. It a fight, Iran would clearly come out no better than the cat.
- The USA has already pulverised two Muslim countries, routinely tortured, raped children and worse. The USA has a reputation of attacking others unprovoked. Its threats are credible.
If you were in Iran’s position, what would you do to protect yourself? Only nukes seem to deter the USA. It leaves North Korea and China alone. Neither Iraq nor Afghanistan had nukes.
~ Roedy (born: 1948-02-04 age: 64)
Convincing Americans that they are committing crimes with their aggressive (first strike) wars against Afghanistan and Iraq is just as difficult as it was convincing Germans their invasion of Poland was improper. Americans believe and Germans believed they were the master race. By definition, anything they do is virtuous. It is inconceivable to them that they could commit crimes. The herd mentality holds these delusions in place like cement.
~ Roedy (born: 1948-02-04 age: 64)
Could you imagine a situation where you would sign up for a suicide mission? Would you do it to save your family? To oust an invader plundering your country? To avenge the death of your first love? To pay back people who had anally raped you as a child? To destroy those who had tortured you? You would not do it casually. If we want to stop suicide attacks, we will have to investigate why attackers think such drastic measures are necessary.
~ Roedy (born: 1948-02-04 age: 64)
Countries start wars because they want something another country has. They will never admit this. Instead, they make up the silliest excuses imaginable for killing the other country’s children.
~ Roedy (born: 1948-02-04 age: 64)
David Russell Williams (born: 1963-03-07 age: 49) is a convicted murderer, rapist, and former Colonel in the Canadian Forces. The armed forces try to pretend that his behaviour was atypical and have disowned him. Don’t be silly. Raping, torturing, murdering and bullying are the norm for the Canadian armed forces once they get to Afghanistan. Williams just jumped the gun a bit because he got promoted and stuck in a desk job commanding the Trenton base.
~ Roedy (born: 1948-02-04 age: 64)
Democrats want other countries to take America’s prisoners of war currently held at Gitmo off their hands because keeping them in the USA would be too expensive and because of the danger of escapes. Why would it be any less expensive or dangerous for other countries to keep them?
~ Roedy (born: 1948-02-04 age: 64)
Dick Cheney has a weak heart so he will likely die peacefully in bed. This is too bad. He has publicly confessed to a number of capital war crimes, but, as a psychopath, he feels no remorse or guilt. He deserves a trial where he will no longer be able to deny his malice. Such a trial would also be important for ordinary Americans who are deluded that, as Americans, they are immune from international law.
~ Roedy (born: 1948-02-04 age: 64)
Dick Cheney is a wanted war criminal for trial at the Hague. He avoid trips to Europe to avoid prosecution. The USA harbours him. This is illegal. The USA is required by treaty obligations to hand him over.
~ Roedy (born: 1948-02-04 age: 64)
Dictators have always been keen on compulsory military service. It gives the state a chance to brainwash the recruits into mindlessly surrendering to arbitrary authority. It makes for a docile population. Right wingers who distrust democracy favour it too for the same reason.
~ Roedy (born: 1948-02-04 age: 64)
Did you ever notice how oddly inconsistent North Americans are about depicting crimes?
~ Roedy (born: 1948-02-04 age: 64)
- Murder is considered appropriate fare for novels, movies and stories aimed at extremely small children.
- TV News tries to capture footage of murders if it can.
- If there is a movie about a burglary, the burglars are usually the protagonists.
- Dead US soldiers or their coffins are never shown.
- US soldiers slaughtering people of other countries for no reason is popular entertainment.
- It is highly illegal to film someone being killed for entertainment.
- Sexual activity that is completely legal is not shown on TV but it may be simulated. The actual sex is available at extra cost on cable.
- It is illegal for pedophiles to look at photos of children in the Sears catalog, but not for anyone else.
- People who look at free photos of naked children on the Internet are punished almost as severely as those who rape them.
- Possession of male-male pornography is sufficient grounds for firing for certain jobs.
- It is completely legal to keep a fantasy journal about any crime except child molesting.
- Rape and sadistic murder are the themes of the most commonly aired shown on TV — Criminal Minds, CSI (Crime Scene Investigator) Miami, NCIS, Bones.
- Marijuana is a schedule 1 drug and cocaine a less serious schedule 2. Taking either drug is considered acceptable viewing in movies for children.
Did you ever wonder how people decide which side of a conflict has the moral correctness? Germans WW II believed the Nazis were the good guys. Americans believe America is 100% justified in its wars even though American attacked nations unprovoked such as Vietnam, Grenada, Afghanistan and Iraq, tore up the Geneva conventions, used banned weapons and used torture. They believe Americans are superior beings and any atrocity is justified to counter any threat, actual or potential. People are very primitive in how they decide. They do not analysis. They go with the home team, no matter how abominably it has behaved. Israelis think their invasion of Palestine and the apartheid police state they set up is fully justified. The Palestinians think that the suicide bombers are a legitimate tool to oust the invaders. Very rarely do you find someone who notices how badly their side is behaving. This even applied in the civil war where people picked sides mainly by geography.
Looked at objectively, America has behaved far worse that any terrorists. Terrorists kill in the 100s, sometimes 1000s. American kill and torture in the millions.
~ Roedy (born: 1948-02-04 age: 64)
Disgust is far too gentle a word I feel for the citizens of the USA, Canada and Britain who have been illegally bombing and occupying Afghanistan for 10 years, 7 months and 20 days. When the citizens debate whether to continue tormenting the Afghans who did nothing to harm the NATO (North Atlantic Treaty Organisation) countries, and further have no means to, the only issue citizens consider is Can we win? They almost never ask themselves deeper questions like:
- Why are we doing this?
- What do we hope to accomplish?
- How would things be different if we won or if we just came home?
- What are the benefits to us of this extended slaughter?
- What business have we in meddling in the internal affairs of a tiny impoverished country on the other side of the planet?
- What could possibly justify the cruelty we inflicted on the Afghan child burned in a NATO bombing in the photo to the right?
- Why are we willing to bankrupt our country in a pointless, endless war?
Since almost no one asks these questions and no politician ever answers them, I must presume the answers are shameful. What is it that motivates us?
~ Roedy (born: 1948-02-04 age: 64)
- We treat the war like an Olympic speed-skating event. We just can’t stand the shame of being held to a stalemate by a country much smaller and poorer than us, especially since we have the help of the largest and most advanced military on the planet. We we are butchering kids in the name of stubborn national pride.
- We want a share of the spoils — Afghanistan’s lithium and Iraq’s oil.
- We Canadians and Britons are cowards. We do it only because the Americans tell us to.
- In North America, we manufacture almost nothing but weapons, so the war is just a cynical make-work program to pay off arms makers who bribe politicians and to create make-work jobs that don’t actually need doing.
- We are bigots and sadists who love the idea of torturing Muslim children.
Ending war primarily requires convincing young men to forgo the selfish pleasure of killing.
~ Roedy (born: 1948-02-04 age: 64)
Evaluating America
When I was a kid I wanted to be American because Superman and the Lone Ranger were. I slept with my feet pointing south. Three of my partners have been Americans. However, since 9/11 I have come to hold a very dim view of the USA. They started two prolonged wars on the flimsiest of pretexts, but what burned me up is there was almost no protest. Americans affect the trappings of patriotism but refuse to defend the constitution with even token protest. They refuse to get off the pot with green house gas emissions, with the excuse “I don”t wanna. It might cost me some money.”. A people who refuse to make even the tiniest sacrifice for future generations have lost their way morally. They deserve extinction.
~ Roedy (born: 1948-02-04 age: 64)
Even 10 years later, Americans still act as if 9/11 were the worst catastrophe in history. They forget America obliterated two Japanese cities with atomic bombs. They forget nearly every European capital sustained worse damage in even a single night of WW II bombing. Americans have grossly overreacted, invading two nations who had nothing to do with 9/11 and abrogating the majority of their constitutional rights. They fully deserve the moniker The Excited States of America.
~ Roedy (born: 1948-02-04 age: 64)
Even Americans on the far left in American politics like Al Franken, Michael Moore and Rachel Maddow shed tears (have to pretend to shed tears?) for American soldiers who died in Iraq. They hold that the soldiers have no responsibility for their war crimes or their own deaths. The soldiers were good Nazis, just following orders. They pretend the soldiers were not fully aware the USA attacked Iraq, not the reverse. They pretend the soldiers did not know the aggressive (first strike) war was illegal, and that aiding and abetting it made them war criminals guilty of a capital crime. They pretend that the Nuremberg trials were a state secret. They pretend the soldiers innocently thought they were defending the USA, even when the soldiers were fully aware all the Iraqis had to defend themselves with were kitchen-made IEDs. To exculpate the beloved can-do-no-wrong must-support-at-all-costs troops, even Al Franken, Michael Moore and Rachel Maddow go along, or pretend to go along, with the Bush’s big lie that the Iraq war was to defend the USA rather than to steal oil despite all the evidence to the contrary that even they personally uncovered.
~ Roedy (born: 1948-02-04 age: 64)
Even president Obama pretends to be under the delusion it is legal for the USA to attack any country it pleases merely on the grounds that country or any small group of its citizens might attack at some point in the future, even when that country has never attacked and has no means to attack. It is as silly as pleading self defence for axe murdering your neighbour because, in your paranoid fantasies, he might someday attack you in your sleep with his lawnmower.
~ Roedy (born: 1948-02-04 age: 64)
Even something as innocent sounding as thirsting, withholding water for a few days, is unimaginably horrible. You long to die. I know from personal experience. According to Frontline, Americans used this technique routinely on every detainee in Iraq. Because so few people have ever experienced torture, it is easy for the exposed torturers to convince the public they were merely causing extreme discomfort.
~ Roedy (born: 1948-02-04 age: 64)
Even the most peaceful president kills hundreds of thousands of victims. Perhaps if presidents kept the heads of their victims pickled in jars, their deeds would be recognised as murder.
~ Roedy (born: 1948-02-04 age: 64)
Even the sadistic people who volunteer for the military don’t murder children easily. They need boot camp, which uses many of the techniques of brainwashing, to condition them to do it on command without hesitation.
~ Roedy (born: 1948-02-04 age: 64)
Even though bin Laden was assassinated, there still should be a trial to reveal the evidence for and against that he was behind 9/11. All we have is Bush’s word on it, which is worth nothing since the Bush very rarely told the truth.
~ Roedy (born: 1948-02-04 age: 64)
Even with just control of congress, the Republicans were able to destroy the nation’s credit rating, thus in the long term costing it additional billions in interest charges, and they were able to prolong the recession by blocking all attempts to create jobs. Al Qaeda in its wildest dreams could not have done that much damage. If the Republicans win the presidency, they will be able to finish the job as Jeb Bush bragged they would in his 1995 essay in Imprimis Magazine.
~ Roedy (born: 1948-02-04 age: 64)
Even with the combined might of Germany, Japan and Italy attacking, when defeat looked a distinct possibility, the USA did not resort to torture. Yet under Cheney-Bush, under the potential threat of but a tiny band of terrorists, the USA succumbed to the dark side. I don’t believe this was done for practical reasons. It was done for the sexual pleasure of the psychopathic president and vice president. They blocked Judge Hellerstein’s subpoena of the torture and rape tapes the sicko pair were viewing from Iraq.
~ Roedy (born: 1948-02-04 age: 64)
Every documentary about the US soldiers in Afghanistan or Iraq invariably makes a preposterous claim that the soldiers are sacrificing the lives to protect the citizens of the USA and their freedom. Neither Afghanistan nor Iraq has ever attacked the USA. Further they have no means to do so. However, the USA has attacked them and pounded them mercilessly. The motivations of the soldiers have nothing whatsoever to do with defending freedom. That’s just the public excuse. They are about such things as:
~ Roedy (born: 1948-02-04 age: 64)
- Enjoying killing people.
- Racist hatred of the people of the region.
- Sexual perversion. In a war zone soldiers can use force to get what they want without consequences.
- Enjoying the military life of dominance and submission.
- As a job you can land without effort.
- To bow to family pressure.
- As a way of escaping one’s wife and children.
Every generation invents weapons the previous considers too horrible. Those that create the weapons lie to themselves that the horror will end war. Right now we are creating armies of robots of all sizes to overwhelm any enemy/victim while we sit comfortably a continent a way and watch the slaughter on viewscreens. It is only a matter of time until this escalation ends, not war, but the human species, after an unusually short reign on earth.
~ Roedy (born: 1948-02-04 age: 64)
Every new weapon you invent will eventually be used against you.
~ Roedy (born: 1948-02-04 age: 64)
Every once in a while, the Saturday morning cartoons will air a Popeye or Bugs Bunny cartoon from the WW II era. These are embarrassingly racist, referring to the Japanese as Japs or Nips, portrayed like little rats with huge teeth and squinting eyes. This might be forgiven since Japan attacked the USA unprovoked. However, Americans do the same thing today with the nations they attacked unprovoked. They call the Taliban and the Iraqi resistance terrorists, extremists and insurgents. They blanket the Internet with bigoted and uninformed cracks about Islam. Ignorant Americans pass on urban myths about Islam, and almost no one has the balls to counter the disinformation.
~ Roedy (born: 1948-02-04 age: 64)
Every public figure gives lip service to the idea that the American solders in Afghanistan and Iraq is bravely protecting American freedom, even those firmly opposed to the war. These are not all morons. Most know perfectly well the USA was the aggressor in both wars. It is like the time of the Inquisition when people had to publicly support the Christian lies just to stay alive.
~ Roedy (born: 1948-02-04 age: 64)
Every time a criminal commits a crime, he leaves behind clues. These mistakes add up and make it possible to prosecute him. Countries too commit crimes. They cover them up with massive propaganda barrages. But with each crime, they betray more and more clues to their true hearts.
~ Roedy (born: 1948-02-04 age: 64)
Everyone has forgotten Gannongate. There was plenty of evidence Bush was into homosexual military kink. History may prove to us one of the reasons Bush started and prolonged the Afghan and Iraq wars was to ensure his supply of custom snuff kink child pornography. This is not just speculation. Bush refused to hand over his child rape and torture tapes to Judge Hellerstein. This would not be the first time a leader’s sadism lead his entire country astray.
~ Roedy (born: 1948-02-04 age: 64)
Everyone has heard about the 6 million Jews that Hitler executed. But how often you hear about his 12 million other victims — the homosexuals, the gypsies, the leftists, the disabled, the Jehovah’s Witnesses, the Serbs…? I suspect modern day Republicans quietly envy Hitler’s bloody minded treatment of these groups that they despise too.
~ Roedy (born: 1948-02-04 age: 64)
Everyone I know would go to great lengths to avoid killing someone. However, there is another class of person who seeks opportunities to murder others. These include criminals, soldiers, generals and high level politicians. They enjoy killing. They offer the most feeble and vague of excuses for doing it. Killing is an incredibly presumptuous thing to do. It says “my pleasure in killing trumps your right to enjoy the rest of your existence. I am willing to completely vaporise all your potential for a few moments of my personal pleasure.” Such people are infinitely self-centred and infinitely conceited. It is odd that we tolerate these people in society and treat them as if they were ordinary humans.
~ Roedy (born: 1948-02-04 age: 64)
Everyone on American TV, including newscasters, commentators and comedians conspires in a giant Nazi-like lie, a lie like the one used to deny the holocaust, to both deny that America did anything illegal in attacking Afghanistan and Iraq and to deny that the USA attacked both these nations without provocation. Ordinary American citizens are complicit by, to a man, parroting the lie even though they nearly all saw America attack Iraq on CNN with unprovoked bombing of the residential sections of Baghdad on the first day of the war. They sat around their TV sets, cheering, much as Nazis cheered the invasion of Poland, in a burst of misplaced team spirit.
~ Roedy (born: 1948-02-04 age: 64)
Evil is relative. Had Japan won WW II, we never would never have heard the end of Hiroshima and Nagasaki. It would have been played up even bigger than we play up the holocaust. We consider it evil for Iranians to have nukes but virtuous for America and Israel to have them. Environmentalists consider those that trash the environment evil, and corporations consider the environmentalists evil for interfering with their profits. Keep relativity in mind when someone tries to convince you to kill off evil doers. An evil person is someone who tries to harm or thwart you. Usually they are motivated because they believe you are trying to harm or thwart them. You can see why increasing your opposition often results in them becoming even more evil.
~ Roedy (born: 1948-02-04 age: 64)
Fights are easy to start. All it takes is a scowl or a shove. Fights are easy to keep going. All the blows received so far are sufficient justification to keep the fight going. Wars work the same way.
~ Roedy (born: 1948-02-04 age: 64)
For the longest time it was illegal it to display a photo of a coffin of a US soldier. Photos of soldiers of other countries was ok. Photos of non-soldiers was ok. Pictures of US soldier coffins, dead US soldiers, wounded US soldiers, even disabled US soldiers are extremely rare. If you post one, as I have done, you will get threats from US soldiers telling you they plan to beat you up or kill you. What’s this taboo all about?
~ Roedy (born: 1948-02-04 age: 64)
deception
If the public never sees the cost of the war, and sees only dead opponents, they are easily tricked into thinking the war is just about won, and should continue to be funded. The soldiers love their sadistic little game and want the taxpayers to continue funding it.denial
If coffins are taboo, everyone gets to pretend no one is getting killed. It is a way for soldiers and their families to deny the danger.respect
The soldiers claim their anger is about wanting respect for the dead. Get serious. The dead don’t care. What they really mean is respect for themselves. They are war criminals, sadistic serial killers, and sometimes child rapists and torturers. Secretly they feel sick at heart about this, and deny it with an exaggerated demand for respect. They don’t care if others respect their president, their sports team, their beer, their car manufacturer… just murdering civilians.
For the purpose of defence, nearly all of the US military is superfluous. No country has attacked the USA since it acquired nukes. They all know that if they attacked and did any serious damage, the USA would annihilate them in minutes with a rain of ICBMs. Only a diffuse, non-national, terrorist organisation dare attack. The military is primarily for foreign offensive wars to acquire natural resources. The nuclear umbrella allows the USA to pre-emptively and illegally attack other countries without risking counter attacks on its own soil.
~ Roedy (born: 1948-02-04 age: 64)
Generals can be counted on to make two mistakes:I will find it amusing when Americans find their own weapons turning against them in a future cyberwar.
- Preparing to refight the last war.
- Underestimating their adversaries.
~ Roedy (born: 1948-02-04 age: 64)
George W. Bush admitted in his autobiography Decision Points to authorising waterboarding, though not yet to torture like that of the Iraqi POW tortured by the Americans in the photo to the right or the much-photographed torture at Abu Ghraib under the command of the sadistic Janice Karpinski. This is illegal both by American and international law. Yet no one has yet had the balls to prosecute him. Even in WW II, Americans did not torture the Nazis, not even the SS, when surely there was much more justification. Iraq has never attacked the USA and had nothing whatsoever to do with 9/11. Even Bush admits this.
~ Roedy (born: 1948-02-04 age: 64)
George W. Bush illegally invaded Iraq on the grounds that Iraq has nuclear weapons. This was bogus on many grounds:
~ Roedy (born: 1948-02-04 age: 64)
- If possession of nukes is a valid excuse for preemptive invasion, then it would be justified for Iran to invade Israel or Russia the USA.
- Iraq had never tested a nuke.
- Ambassador Joe Wilson checked up on some of the evidence and found it was all counterfeit.
- The only evidence came from an anonymous alcoholic that officials of the USA never met or interviewed. They paid him $40,000 a month to make stuff up.
- The Italian intelligence warned the USA the evidence was bogus.
- UN Inspectors said there were no WMDs.
- After the invasion, there was no sign of nukes or any other weapon of mass destruction, for that matter. The Bush administration had boldly lied claiming to have solid proof of the presence of nukes, including their location.
- Bush would not touch North Korea with a 10-foot pole. He knew they had nukes. The Americans charged boldly into Iraq without any precautions for fall-out, much less a nuclear explosion. Obviously, they were not expecting any sort of nuclear defence.
- Even after it was proved where were no WMD (Weapon of Mass Destruction) s, the Americans continued their occupation to this day. The war obviously had nothing to do with WMD s all along.
George W. Bush, in his axis of evil speech on 2002-01-29, announced America’s plans to annihilate Iraq, Iran and North Korea. Reputedly, all three then sought to acquire nuclear weapons to defend themselves. Only North Korea succeeded. The USA indeed backed from down attacking North Korea after it demonstrated its ICBMs. What is the world to learn from this? If the USA threatens you, (perhaps only because you have oil or other valuable natural resources) your only hope is to acquire nukes. This is hardly a good American strategy for nuclear non-proliferation.
~ Roedy (born: 1948-02-04 age: 64)
George W. Bush’s conspiracy theory of what happened on 9/11 is one of the most preposterous offered.
~ Roedy (born: 1948-02-04 age: 64)
Given how many soldiers there are in the USA who have brazenly committed a capital war crime, and go unprosecuted, it is astounding how rarely vigilantes assassinate them. Gandhi and Martin Luther King have been successful in convincing the people who find these war crimes appalling that such vigilante action would only make matters worse.
~ Roedy (born: 1948-02-04 age: 64)
Given that a weapon capable of destroying a city will fit in a suitcase, I would think the best defence would be to avoid abusing as few people or countries as practical to the point of wanting to kill you.
~ Roedy (born: 1948-02-04 age: 64)
Given that all the vets of the Vietnam, Afghanistan and Iraq wars committed a capital war crime, namely aiding and abetting a aggressive (first strike, unprovoked) war, you could make an argument they don’t deserve free medical care. On the other hand, nearly every American citizen egged these moral and mental defectives on to commit that crime, and promised they would “support the troops”. Now they want to renege on that promise.
~ Roedy (born: 1948-02-04 age: 64)
Given that the Americans and Canadians have used just about every form of torture and illegal warfare in Afghanistan (and Iraq), it is a wonder they have not tried mass crucifixions as depicted in the movie Spartacus.
~ Roedy (born: 1948-02-04 age: 64)
Given that the Americans had a massive advantage in numbers, budget and military technology, but were unable to subdue Afghanistan in 10 years and 7 months or Iraq in 9 years and 1 month, (even when they cheated with routine torture, banned weapons and Geneva convention violations) Americans look pretty silly beating their breasts and shouting “We’re Number One”. At least in military strategy, both the Afghans and the Iraqis bested them. As a result, not even tiny Iran fears America any more. Americans are like the fat rich kid with the fancy hockey equipment. Pride and racism did them in. It made them underestimate their opponents.
~ Roedy (born: 1948-02-04 age: 64)
Had Hitler won WWII (World War II), I am pretty sure he would have tried to sweep the atrocities, the illegality and the immorality of his war under the rug, just as Obama is doing now with the Iraq war he inherited.
~ Roedy (born: 1948-02-04 age: 64)
Hamid Karzai is arguably the biggest drug dealer and most corrupt dictator on the planet. It madness to push such an unpopular man down the throats of the Afghans and claim he represents the gift of democracy. Much as we dislike the Taliban, they represent the current democratic choice of Afghans. We should trust the democratic process and trust the Afghans given the tools of democracy to bring in a more enlightened government, perhaps one we don’t like that much, but that is not what democracy is for.
~ Roedy (born: 1948-02-04 age: 64)
Hey asshole, yes, you the American. Why on earth do you tolerate the Afghan and Iraq wars? You know how much harm they have done. You know how much they cost. You know they have done no good at all. Why persist in the slaughter? Because you are a first class idiot, racist and jerk. You treat war like a football game. You fight purely out of pride. It bugs the hell out of you, that even with your trillions, you can squash little brown Muslims like bugs. You are a bully and a thug. You are a rotten excuse for a human. Psychologically, you are identical to the Germans who supported Hitler’s wars of aggression.
~ Roedy (born: 1948-02-04 age: 64)
Hillary Clinton believes America cannot leave Afghanistan until they can control what happens after they leave. For pity sake. America can’t even control what happens with an occupying force of 100,000.
~ Roedy (born: 1948-02-04 age: 64)
Hillary Clinton demanded the Egyptian authorities not interfere in any way with reporters covering the Egyptian revolution. Yet she is happy for US authorities to micromanage all coverage of the US invasions of Afghanistan and Iraq.
~ Roedy (born: 1948-02-04 age: 64)
Historically, all arms races ended in war or bankruptcy of one or both players. One problem with a nuclear arms race is it forces the losing player to skimp on safeguards in order to afford to keep up.
~ Roedy (born: 1948-02-04 age: 64)
History and historical documentaries study ancient battles from the point of view of a general, wondering how the mayhem could have been more effectively administered. I would like to study them from the point of view of studying the crash of an airliner. What failures of social structures made it impossible to avoid the war, with the end to preventing future crashes.
~ Roedy (born: 1948-02-04 age: 64)
History plays out like a bad boy movie with bluster, bullying and bloodshed.
~ Roedy (born: 1948-02-04 age: 64)
Hitler attacked other countries unprovoked, starved civilians to death many of them children, and executed over a million of them using the same gas the USA used for gas chambers. George W. Bush did all these things plus routine torture of P.O.W.s, plus use of banned weapons such as white phosphorus, cluster bombs, land mines and napalm to burn people alive and depleted uranium to deform their fetuses for generations to come. Bush collected kiddie rape videos. Bush declared the Geneva conventions "quaint" and destroyed electric, water and sewer plants to trigger epidemics of cholera and other water-born diseases. Yet in the popular estimation, Hitler was an unspeakable monster and Bush was merely misbehaved. America treats Bush as an indulgent mother treats her serial-murdering son.
~ Roedy (born: 1948-02-04 age: 64)
Hitler hid the facts from his people, and threatened with death or worse those that questioned his version of reality. In contrast, every American has access to the facts necessary to understand his country illegally invaded two countries on false pretenses. He knows his country deliberately sent the earth into an extinction event with global warming via extravagant greenhouse gas emissions. And, with very few exceptions, American citizens cheered their country on in its execrable ways. That is why I hold Americans in far greater contempt than I hold the Germans in Nazi Germany.
~ Roedy (born: 1948-02-04 age: 64)
Hitler invaded Poland, France… unprovoked. George W. Bush invaded both Afghanistan and Iraq unprovoked. What about 9/11? Bush himself told us the World Trade terrorists were Saudis — not an Afghan or Iraqi in the lot. Hitler refrained from using poison gas, having experienced it first hand in WW I. Bush used a variety of banned weapons including white phosphorus, napalm, cluster bombs and land mines. Hitler set up puppet provisional governments in his conquered territories and declared those who opposed them terrorists. Bush set up corrupt drug and war lords as his puppet dictators in both Afghanistan and Iraq and declared those who opposed them terrorists. The Nazis starved and worked their own Jewish citizens to death. The American routinely tortured their P.O.W.s. Germans built hidden rooms in their houses to shelter Jews. American teabaggers waved guns at rallies to intimidate immigrants. The Nazis were hanged using newly created laws against war crimes. Bush, Cheney and Obama have not even been charged with the capital war crimes that they are brazenly guilty of, namely aiding and abetting an aggressive war, not to mention scores of violations of the Geneva Conventions. Hitler lost his war. Bush/Obama could not possibly lose theirs (in the sense of America being invaded) with its unlimited budget and population 20 times that of the countries it attacked. Oddly, Americans consider Hitler unspeakably evil, and the American presidents 100% blameless even though in many respects the American crimes are more serious. Like a fungus, patriotism rots and deforms the mind
~ Roedy (born: 1948-02-04 age: 64)
Hitler justified destroying democracy, rule of law and constitutional protections by fanning paranoia about Jewish secret organisations. The US military does the same thing with Al-Qaeda.
~ Roedy (born: 1948-02-04 age: 64)
Hitler managed to con the German people into thinking Germans were the master race, and that when they invaded other countries, the Nazis were doing them a favour. In Hitler’s view, the invasions to subdue lesser races were Germany’s moral duty. We laugh at German gullibility. Yet dozens of US military people have, with a straight face, assured me they invaded then occupied Afghanistan then Iraq, killing hundreds of thousands of Afghans and Iraqis plundering their resources purely out of an altruistic desire to serve their victims.
~ Roedy (born: 1948-02-04 age: 64)
Hitler spent $270 billion attempting to conquer the world. The USA spend $324 billion trying to subdue Afghanistan. Yet Americans persist in claiming they harmed no civilians.
~ Roedy (born: 1948-02-04 age: 64)
How come almost nobody notices the inconsistency when a general excuses his slaughter of innocent civilians by claiming he did it to save the lives of innocent civilians?
~ Roedy (born: 1948-02-04 age: 64)
How dense can Americans be. They watch those whose countries they occupy committing suicide just to help throw the invaders out, and still Americans imagine their yoke beneficial, light and pleasant. They explain that when Hitler invaded unprovoked, and plundered nations for natural resources, it was very bad, but claim when Americans do exactly the same thing, it must, by definition, be saintly. American shit does not stink.
~ Roedy (born: 1948-02-04 age: 64)
How did Hitler convince his fellow Germans it was perfectly OK to invade Poland and other neighbours? He convinced them that Germans were the master race, and thus had right to confiscate lebensraum (living room). Hitler was not the only person to pull this filthy stunt. The Japanese military leaders convinced the Japanese they were superior to all other people’s and hence had a natural right to conquer other nations. Israeli Jews convinced themselves they were God’s chosen people and hence have a right confiscate by force the land of others. George Bush convinced Americans they were #1, and hence had a natural right to confiscate the oil and other resources of Afghanistan and Iraq. He even convinced them they had the right to torture children and use all manner of banned weapons on civilians and to treat the Geneva Conventions of war as quaint (Not even Hitler did that.) Bush turned his resource wars into religious crusades against Islam to intensify the we-vs-them brutality and self-righteous smugness.
~ Roedy (born: 1948-02-04 age: 64)
How do you win a medal? You insanely risk your life to kill large numbers of people. For bonus points, this act should also protect some people out hunting humans. People collect them like other serial killer memorabilia.
~ Roedy (born: 1948-02-04 age: 64)
How is it possible a terrorist could murder innocent women and children? I have two answers:
- Ask the American soldiers in Afghanistan and Iraq how they managed it.
- If someone kills your family, simply killing him might not feel like sufficient revenge. You might want to exterminate him, his family and everyone in his country in whose name he murdered your family.
Many of the American soldiers believe the lie that Afghans and Iraqis attacked on 9/11. That delusion steals them to butcher babies. Some do it out of ordinary psychopathology.
~ Roedy (born: 1948-02-04 age: 64)
Human tribal loyalty is so strong that one nation will perceive an illegal act as a war crime and another will perceive it as noble and heroic service to one’s country. A case in point. America illegally invaded both Iraq and Afghanistan unprovoked using counterfeit evidence. This is the exact same crime Nazi Germany committed invading Poland. Americans see the those who participated in the first crime as national heroes protecting American freedom and the second as war criminals. The Germans see those who participated in the first as war criminals and the second as national heroes (at least, they did at the time).
~ Roedy (born: 1948-02-04 age: 64)
I am amazed that Americans don’t daily renounce their citizenship or commit suicide in shame at being American. American soldiers committed a crime — murdering unarmed men, children and those to ran to their aid, shooting at them on a Baghdad street from a helicopter, for sport. Army Pfc. Bradley Manning was the whistle-blower. Instead of praise, he has been locked in solitary confinement without trial ever since. Those who had the temerity to call his release were harassed by the government. All manner of American politicians called for his assassination for refusing to cover up for US military war crimes. These braindamaged twits equated whistleblowing with treason and espionage. This is the sort of thing you would expect from Nazi Germany, not the USA. What a stinking nation of cowards Americans are, standing idly by letting the criminals have their way!
~ Roedy (born: 1948-02-04 age: 64)
I am horrified at Americans who justify ripping children to pieces with explosives, and burning them to death with white phosphorus “because of 9/11”.~ Roedy (born: 1948-02-04 age: 64)
- Obviously, these children had nothing to do with 9/11. Many were not even born.
- President Bush said their countries, Iraq and Afghanistan, had nothing to do with it.
- The perpetrator, according to President Bush, is bin Laden, a Saudi. Bush gave up chasing him long ago.
- Most of the perpetrators of 9/11 are dead. They allegedly committed suicide in the attack. Killing random children is an insane way to seek revenge on those still alive. It makes so more sense that killing random Muslim American children.
I am pleased that prosecutions against Jack Straw for rendition and torture are proceeding. Even if it does not lead to Dick Cheney facing trial for the same crimes, it will make Mr. Cheney suffer with dread.
~ Roedy (born: 1948-02-04 age: 64)
I am sick of the maudlin ceremonies to mark the deaths of soldiers. To a man, they were admitted war criminals, who aided and abetted illegal aggressive (first strike) wars. Since Nuremberg, that has been a capital (hanging) offence. They got what they damn well deserved. Why did they volunteer to go half way around the world to kill people who were no threat to them or their families? Very simply because they were bullies. More than anything else they wanted to bully, rape and kill people. The military let them do that with minimal risk of prosecution. They lied to you that they were protecting their homeland, but they knew perfectly well their victims could not possibly mount an invasion of Canada or the USA. With modern war-by-remote-control weapons they were gleefully and sadistically shooting fish in a barrel. These people are the scum of the earth and we should be glad to be rid of them. When soldiers come home, they smile and pretend to be human, fooling friends and relatives, but they know what they did, and that is why so many of them go psychotic harming the families that spawned them or egged them on.
~ Roedy (born: 1948-02-04 age: 64)
I argue against illegal wars of aggression, illegal use of banned weapons, torture, and letting corporations run things unregulated. I push people to provide evidence for their religious beliefs. I ask people to preserve the planet they live on so it will continue to support them and their grandchildren. From where I stand, this is all motherhood, barely worth stating, hardly controversial, yet people routinely threaten to kill me for saying it. What sort of weirdos favour war, torture, being bullied by corporations, lies passed off as truth or destroying your own life support system? Apparently, the vast majority of Americans.
~ Roedy (born: 1948-02-04 age: 64)
I can understand it when wives kill their husbands who have beat them and abused their children. I can understand it when people whose families have been tortured and killed by soldiers go on a suicide mission to take revenge on their tormentors. What makes no sense is when a terrorist or soldier kills random civilians who had nothing whatsoever to do with his grievance. The terrorist mindlessly lumps everyone of the same religion, nationality or race into the same category. There is no true revenge, just a revenge spiral fueled by harming innocents.
~ Roedy (born: 1948-02-04 age: 64)
I don’t like the popularity of Captain America. It is part of the Nazification of the USA. Just as in Nazi Germany, there is a rise is considering a brutal conquering military as admirable. There is a rise in America uber alles sentiment.
~ Roedy (born: 1948-02-04 age: 64)
I enjoyed M*A*S*H (Mobile Army Surgical Hospital), especially the original Altman movie. However, it had a sinister side effect, making light of mindless murder and mayhem. The made it easier to sell the Afghan and Iraq wars. Yes, it damned war, but with the intensity one might damn those who let their dogs poo on your lawn.
~ Roedy (born: 1948-02-04 age: 64)
I feel more kindly toward fire ant queens than I do soldiers, male or female, who breed.
~ Roedy (born: 1948-02-04 age: 64)
I feel such fury and revulsion at Americans every time I watch the news. They are deliberately blind to the fact their wars in Afghanistan and Iraq are illegal, and hence all who participate are war criminals guilty of a capital crime. They blind themselves to the fact the people in Iraq and Afghanistan hate them with a passion because the Americans have occupied for so long after promising to liberate, imposed corrupt dictators, tortured, used banned weapons and killed their wives and children. Americans are so conceited they pretend to themselves they are loved as benefactors bringing the gift of democracy. It is not democracy if you shove it down somebody’s throat.
~ Roedy (born: 1948-02-04 age: 64)
I find it amazing that the majority of Americans will make excuses for killing children in pursuit of cheaper oil, of allowing priests to molest children, for attacking other nations unprovoked, for laughing at the Geneva conventions as quaint, for condemning fellow citizens to die because they could not afford expensive medical treatments, for detaining and torturing children and teens en masse, for using demonically cruel banned weapons such as white phosphorous and napalm on women and children. When I was younger, I thought only Nazis or ancient Romans were brutal enough to behave that way. The strange thing is Americans don’t see themselves as unusually barbaric. They imagine they are magnanimous and benign. Nazis, too, thought extremely highly of themselves.
~ Roedy (born: 1948-02-04 age: 64)
I find it bizarre that young mothers ecstatically welcome their serial child-killer soldier husbands home to babysit their kids.
~ Roedy (born: 1948-02-04 age: 64)
I find it deeply disturbing that the vast majority of Americans have no shame at all that they attacked Vietnam, Afghanistan, Iraq… unprovoked, slaughtered civilians and plundered. Alexander the Great was mad, sadistic and unbelievably brutal. He is the most revered of all monarchs. Perhaps this relishing in mindless conquest is just human nature.
~ Roedy (born: 1948-02-04 age: 64)
I find it hard to believe Americans are sincere when they tell me Afghans who bomb American invading soldiers are terrorists, but American soldiers invading Afghanistan who bomb women and children are not. It is merely regrettable collateral damage. Surely some of them know the definition of terrorism: killing civilians with the intent of changing their political affiliation.
~ Roedy (born: 1948-02-04 age: 64)
I find it odd that one cannot avoid military service for the following sensible reasons:
- The war in which you will serve is illegal.
- You don’t think it wise to kill people of all ages and sexes on the other side of the planet who are no threat to your country.
- You don’t want to be killed or maimed.
However, you can avoid it by claiming you believe an invisible, imaginary man up in the sky will torture you after you are dead if you participate.
~ Roedy (born: 1948-02-04 age: 64)
I find it odd that the world press consider a countries that cannot deliver a nuclear missile — North Korea and Iran far more dangerous than those that can — the USA, Russia, Britain, France, Israel, India and Pakistan. These nuclear countries have a long history of attacking other countries with minor or no provocation.
~ Roedy (born: 1948-02-04 age: 64)
I find it so odd that American mothers would entrust their children to soldiers, knowing full well they have butchered other people’s children.
~ Roedy (born: 1948-02-04 age: 64)
I get angry with the Remembrance day poppies and the endless lugubrious TV commercials glorifying soldiers. What are doing is Pavlovian conditioning. They are trying to transfer the worship of WW I and WW II vets to the war criminals of today involved in the illegal wars in Afghanistan and Iraq. The motivations of today’s soldiers are quite different from yesteryear. Today’s soldiers are mostly would be serial killers, bigots, sadists, rapists and child molesters who have calculated they can get away with their crimes and get paid for it if they just enlist.
~ Roedy (born: 1948-02-04 age: 64)
I get so angry with Americans and their bigoted nonsense about Muslims, their bogus quotations from the Qur’an, accusing Muslims of having an irrational hatred for the USA. They forget America illegally attacked Afghanistan and Iraq without provocation and killed millions, and stole their oil and lithium, not the reverse. They remind me of Nazis with their nutty vilification of the Jews, used to justify stealing their wealth and murdering them. A handful of people pulled off 9/11, most likely a false flag operation, and Americans have used that to justify taking out revenge on 1/6 of the planet, over and over and over, on people who had absolutely nothing to do with 9/11.
~ Roedy (born: 1948-02-04 age: 64)
I have the utmost contempt for Americans who justify the actions of the US military in Afghanistan and Iraq claiming the soldiers are torturing, violating the Geneva convention, killing civilians, supporting the drug and war lords, and generally behaving like Nazis, motivated by a desperate self defence. They pretend to forget the USA started both wars, attacking both Afghanistan and Iraq unprovoked, and under false pretenses to boot. Recall how Bush justified the attack on Iraq with fabricated WMD evidence. Americans are in Iraq because Americans desperately need oil, not because Iraq would or could invade the USA. This is claim is as ridiculous as mugging old ladies in “self defence”.
~ Roedy (born: 1948-02-04 age: 64)
I have to laugh at people who claim it is necessary to kill Afghans to protect our freedom. How are they supposed to invade us, in goatskin coracles? If they arrived on our beaches what chance would they have? Zero.
~ Roedy (born: 1948-02-04 age: 64)
I have to laugh at the naivety of the American military paying Taliban to switch sides. I could see Taliban signing up by the thousands, taking the money to buy rockets to blow up Americans, and acting as spies.
Only the must unscrupulous people cave to an occupying power. They may pretend to collaborate with the occupying force of course. Consider the Nazi occupation of France. Imagining the Taliban now love you after what you did to their children and their country just because you tossed them a few bucks is na�ve to the nth degree.
The military must be mentally ill, with monumental conceit, to imagine the Taliban could ever forgive them, must less join them.
~ Roedy (born: 1948-02-04 age: 64)
I have to laugh contemptuously at Americans who tell they invaded Iraq motivated out of self defence because the Iraqis dared to shoot back at Americans who invaded their country. This is like a mugger pleading self defence because his victim failed to hand over his wallet without a fight.
~ Roedy (born: 1948-02-04 age: 64)
I have yet to find a single American soldier who acknowledges that it is a capital (i.e. hanging) international war crime to aid and abet an aggressive war, namely one where your country strikes first, unprovoked. A few of them understand that it was illegal when Nazis did it, but for some reason they believe Americans are exempt from the law. They tell me, further, that they don’t care if it is illegal because they believe the US will protect them from any possible prosecution. Someone should remind them that is precisely what Nazi soldiers thought too.
~ Roedy (born: 1948-02-04 age: 64)
I have yet to hear a single plausible reason for continuing the Afghan war, much less a reason why it is the best way to spend those billions.
~ Roedy (born: 1948-02-04 age: 64)
I once worked with a mild mannered guy named Andy on a telecommunications controller that evolved from a Univac 1616 military mini used to control nuclear submarines. To my astonishment, Andy expressed a desire to write software for nuclear submarines. To him, they were just giant toys. It did not dawn on him in the least that the function of these submarines was to wipe out life on earth.
~ Roedy (born: 1948-02-04 age: 64)
I refuse to believe the same people who masterminded 9/11 trained the shoe and underpants bombers.
~ Roedy (born: 1948-02-04 age: 64)
I refuse to wear a red poppy. Damned if I will honour today’s war criminals fighting in illegal aggressive wars. Honouring them cheapens the sacrifice of those who truly did serve and defend their country.
~ Roedy (born: 1948-02-04 age: 64)
I suspect the Afghanistan and Iraq wars will only end once America starts a new war(s) at least as costly. Halliburton, Xe (Blackwater), Carlyle Group, General Electric and friends would not permit it any other way.
~ Roedy (born: 1948-02-04 age: 64)
I suspect we will discover that humans evolved complex social co-operation primarily because larger, better organised groups can more easily kill off neighbouring groups and take over their territory.
~ Roedy (born: 1948-02-04 age: 64)
I was born a few years after WW II wound up. All through my childhood and teen years people wanted to bend my ear with stories of their experiences during the war. They looked on it fondly as a grand adventure. Back then everyone was involved in some way. Today, in the Afghan and Iraq wars, only the most bellicose people who want to kill, maim, torture and risk death are involved. This makes the war more psychologically damaging and makes the veterans less eager to talk about it. Yesterday’s motivation was defence of home. Today’s motivation is theft of resources, racism and sadism.
~ Roedy (born: 1948-02-04 age: 64)
I was pleased to learn that even after all these years, American soldiers are continuing to come down with a nasty contagious disease called Melioidosis that they were exposed to long ago butchering peasants in the paddy fields of Vietnam. It presents like tuberculosis with skin ulcers. You could look on it as the result of bad karma for the soldiers and those that encouraged them.
~ Roedy (born: 1948-02-04 age: 64)
I was with some Iraqi ex-patriates the day the Iraq war started. They naively believed Bush was going to liberate the country from Saddam then leave. What we saw on the TV screen was Americans bombing the residential sections of Baghdad, the familiar neighbourhoods where their friends and families lived back home. They felt deeply betrayed. No doubt most of the people in Iraq felt the same way. After a betrayal like that, the deepest desire of every Iraqi would be to find some way to slit an American throat. Instead of liberating, Americans occupied and plundered. They might as well have been Nazis.
~ Roedy (born: 1948-02-04 age: 64)
I will never understand why American soldiers who close their eyes and drop bombs on random Iraqi homes filled mostly with children feel morally superior to suicide bombers who look their victims in the eye and sacrifice their own lives in order to commit their random murders.
~ Roedy (born: 1948-02-04 age: 64)
I wonder how often some teenager infected with the desire to fly joined the air force only to discover they had a much darker purpose in mind for him — randomly killing civilians in some country whose oil the USA coveted.
~ Roedy (born: 1948-02-04 age: 64)
I wonder if a soldier ever considers, even for a second, that, over his career, he created far more pain for others than he feels when his family is killed in an accident or war.
~ Roedy (born: 1948-02-04 age: 64)
I would have thought it would be much easier to talk Americans out of committing war crimes and atrocities than Nazis, since their information sources are much less tightly controlled, but they have proved equally resistant. Both are utterly convinced of their virtue. No evidence to the contrary has any effect. It is like religious mania. If Americans do it, by definition it must be good, even torture, even child rape, even child dismemberment.
~ Roedy (born: 1948-02-04 age: 64)
If Americans insist on routinely torturing every Muslim soldier and civilian they detain, and detaining Muslims indefinitely without charge or trial, Americans have no grounds to complain if Muslims throughout the world eventually start doing the same thing back.
~ Roedy (born: 1948-02-04 age: 64)
If an American president gets in political trouble, nothing helps his popularity like starting yet another war. The American public fall for it every time. You’d think by now they would realise wars are extremely expensive, mean higher taxes, bigger deficits, more debt, less government services and dead relatives. But the lure of smashing in the teeth of some tiny foreign country really turns the American crank. Americans are positively Roman in their attitude to war.
~ Roedy (born: 1948-02-04 age: 64)
If Bush was correct when he claimed that Al Qaeda pulled off 9/11, the most complex, brilliantly-organised terrorist attack in history, all without any inside help, why have all Al Qaeda attacks since been so pathetic in comparison and so embarrassingly incompetent? Reputedly, Al Qaeda is stronger and richer now from recruitment spurred by America’s illegal behaviours.
~ Roedy (born: 1948-02-04 age: 64)
If Hitler had not been quite so grandiose, and set out to conquer the world only a country at a time, today, we would consider him a great hero. The winners get to write the history books.
~ Roedy (born: 1948-02-04 age: 64)
If it was Al Qaeda that successfully pulled off 9/11, the most intricate terrorist attack of all time without any inside help, as George W. Bush asserts, why has every Al Qaeda attack since has been embarrassingly amateurish and incompetent? You’d think they would get better with practice.
~ Roedy (born: 1948-02-04 age: 64)
If Muammar Gadafi is tried at the international court in the Hague, it will bring us closer to the day when American war criminals are also prosecuted.
~ Roedy (born: 1948-02-04 age: 64)
If Obama had defended the Nazis a Nuremberg, his defence would go like this. “Come on, fellas. Let’s forgive and forget. Let’s Look Forward™, After all, all those accused were acting with the best of motives. Further, they were just following orders. We have an economy to rebuild. We can’t dwell on the past.”
~ Roedy (born: 1948-02-04 age: 64)
If people are shooting at you, take a second to ask yourself, “Did I start this fight by shooting at them first?” If so, there is no way they will stop shooting until you do. Surrender in those circumstances most of the time, to them, means death. They would be insane to stop fighting! When you are the attacker, only you can call off the fighting. Americans have said they are willing to keep the fighting going for a century or more in Afghanistan and Iraq, and they blame the Afghans and Iraqis for refusing to surrender and die. And American wonder why they are so hated and despised. Neither Afghanistan nor Iraq did anything to harm the USA or to attack them. They had no means to. They defend their country with kitchen-made bombs.
~ Roedy (born: 1948-02-04 age: 64)
If people were as stupid as armies, when they got mugged, they would decapitate a random dog.
~ Roedy (born: 1948-02-04 age: 64)
If somebody drives drunk and hits a pedestrian, it is really an accident? If a carload of drunks drive along the street firing randomly at pedenstrians (as happened to me three times in Portland), and kill one, was it is accident even if they were not aiming at particular pedestrians? Terrorists, when they set off a bomb in a market, don’t take moral responisibility. They tell themselves the people who were killed should have paid attention to the warning leaflets and stayed away from the market. Every week on so the Americans admit to “accidentally” killing a couple of dozen civilians or Pakistani troops. Well over a million civilians have been killed “accidentally” When Americans level a city with bombs like Baghdad or Fallujah, they know the buildings are cram full of civilians, half of them below age 15. They knew they are killing kids, but they still refuse to take moral responsibility. They claim it is an “accident” because their minds they were not targetting specific children, so the ones killed were “accidents” If you don’t take solid precautions to a avoid deaths as a side effect of your actions, you have no right to call those deaths “accidents”.
~ Roedy (born: 1948-02-04 age: 64)
If somebody hates you, most likely it is because something you have done, perhaps something you consider perfectly OK, but that they consider exceptionally wicked. The first question you should ask yourself is “Did I do something to harm them?” Americans have stolen natural resources and killed children by the millions. Either they don’t see that as harm or they close their eyes to it altogether. They are thus baffled that everyone does not love them, and see the problem that millions of others hate them as a problem of mental illness or religious delusion.
~ Roedy (born: 1948-02-04 age: 64)
If somebody volunteered to build homes for disabled Nazi war criminals, I doubt CNN would be fêting them as heroes. Yet when volunteers build homes for wounded American war criminals, it does.
~ Roedy (born: 1948-02-04 age: 64)
If someone mourns for over a decade for a loved one, builds multiple monuments and memorials, and makes semi-annual pilgrimages to the death site, we might say to them, “This is unhealthy. Get on with your life. Your dead loved ones would not want you obsessing like this.” Yet we encourage just this sort of behaviour with 9/11. I think what motivates some of those behind these memorials are racists who want to fan the flames of hatred for all Muslims.
~ Roedy (born: 1948-02-04 age: 64)
If someone wanted to destroy the USA, the approach least likely to succeed would be a military invasion. The approach with the greatest chance of success would be to see that a motley collection of nitwits, cranks and crazies were elected. They would disrupt government having no concept of how it worked and no loyalty to the big picture just to their crank theories. The Koch brothers are succeeding in just such a coup, and it does not occur to anyone to try them for treason. We have seen so many times before when a democracy becomes hamstrung by traitors, a dictator can easily walk in.
~ Roedy (born: 1948-02-04 age: 64)
If someone were going to sign up for space travel, or a couple of years in Antarctica, you’d think they would check it out with others who have done it before. Yet young sadists enlist for illegal wars every day without talking to even a single vet. All they consider are video games, movies, recruiting commercials and their secret fantasies. No wonder there are so many people coming back with lifelong PTSD (Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder) .
~ Roedy (born: 1948-02-04 age: 64)
If straight women ran the military, it would probably be more democratic and less hierarchical, and it would focus on defence not theft of resources of other countries.
~ Roedy (born: 1948-02-04 age: 64)
If the DOD (Department Of Defence) were truly about defence, you would expect to see the bulk of American weapons arrayed in a ring around the continental USA, but they aren’t. They are deployed over the entire globe. Why? Because they are for offence (including intimidation), not defence.
~ Roedy (born: 1948-02-04 age: 64)
If the Iraq war were truly about taking out Saddam and installing democracy, the US would have withdrawn as soon as Saddam was toppled, Saddam was captured or the first election. The war rolled on through all three events without so much as a hiccup.
~ Roedy (born: 1948-02-04 age: 64)
If the Muslim nations of the earth sent large armies into the Christian countries, slaughtered entire cities to the last man, woman and child, including Muslims living there who had been contaminated by contact with Christians, what would we call these armies? When we did it, we called them crusaders. To this day we use the word crusade for any noble, difficult, world-changing enterprise. Bush-43 also used it to characterise the invasion of Iraq.
~ Roedy (born: 1948-02-04 age: 64)
If the Nazis had won WW II, the post-war German politicians would have argued for “moving forward” and “avoiding a witchhunt” because too many powerful people were involved in the genocide of the Jews, just as today American politicians argue for “moving forward” and “avoiding a witchhunt” because so many Americans were involved in torture and other war crimes.
~ Roedy (born: 1948-02-04 age: 64)
If the true purpose of the Afghan war were to capture bin Laden, the occupation should have ended a few months after the invasion once it was clear bin Laden was not there. But the occupation continued unabated since 2001-10-07. Since then, the heroin trade has ballooned from negligible to #1 in the world, with $1 trillion a year in sales. Now, plans are being made to exploit Afghanistan’s four trillion dollars worth of minerals, especially lithium, needed for high performance batteries. It did not even end after bin Laden was assassinated in Pakistan. What does that tell you about the real purpose of the war?
~ Roedy (born: 1948-02-04 age: 64)
If the true purpose of the Iraq war were WMD s, the occupation should have ended a few months after the invasion on 2003-03-22 once the inspectors were certain there were no WMDs. It didn’t. Obama announced the war was winding down on the same day all of Iraq’s oil resources were auctioned off to American and European oil companies. What does that tell you about the real purpose of the war?
~ Roedy (born: 1948-02-04 age: 64)
If the true purpose of the Iraq were to depose Saddam Hussein, then it should have ended even before it started on 2003-03-19 when Saddam offered to surrender. If not then, it should have ended a few days after the invasion on 2003-03-22 when he was deposed. If not then, the occupation should have ended was Saddam was captured on 2003-12-24. It didn’t. Obama announced the war was winding down on the same day all of Iraq’s oil resources were auctioned off to American and European oil companies. What does that tell you about the real purpose of the war?
~ Roedy (born: 1948-02-04 age: 64)
If the US military truly believed Iraq had nukes, why did they take no precautions during the invasion? Why did they not also handle Iraq with kid gloves the way they treat North Korea?
~ Roedy (born: 1948-02-04 age: 64)
If you are a closeted pedophile, rapist or serial killer, and you not that particular about selecting your victims, your best bet is joining the military. They will give you ample opportunity, camaraderie from others who share your obsessions and shield you from prosecution from your crimes.
~ Roedy (born: 1948-02-04 age: 64)
If you are an American and you hold the citizens of Nazi Germany responsible for the holocaust, then you must also hold yourself even more responsible for the American genocide of Iraqis, since it is being done in the open.
~ Roedy (born: 1948-02-04 age: 64)
If you are an American, have a look at this picture . Through your taxes you paid American soldiers to torture this child to death with illegal chemical weapons in an illegal war. How should the soldiers who did this be punished? What would be a fair punishment for your part in the crime? This is just the tip of the iceberg. Your country has performed countless acts of extreme cruelty in the Afghanistan and Iraq wars — depravity that rivals the ancient Romans. How can you possibly claim to be proud of your country?
~ Roedy (born: 1948-02-04 age: 64)
If you ask an Iraqi why the USA is occupying their country, to a man, they will tell you “for the oil” They have almost no other wealth. No wonder they fight like a cornered mongoose to hold onto it. The one other major piece of wealth they had was a stock of seeds that could grow in high temperature and drought conditions, created over thousands of years. Monsanto stole it all with the help of the US military.
~ Roedy (born: 1948-02-04 age: 64)
If you go shooting rabbits in a field where kids are playing, and you kill twenty kids as “collateral damage”, you are still guilty of murder. Soldiers claim this reasoning does not apply to them.
~ Roedy (born: 1948-02-04 age: 64)
If you knew a guy were a serial murderer of men, women and children, and that he had dreamed of this occupation since childhood, would you leave him alone with your kids? Many women even marry such men to help perpetuate their killer genes.
~ Roedy (born: 1948-02-04 age: 64)
If you know someone dating or planning to marry a military man, you might be able to save them extreme misery by sending them to read my essay on why you should not marry a soldier.
~ Roedy (born: 1948-02-04 age: 64)
If you know someone planning to enlist in the military, you might be able to save them extreme misery by sending them to read my essay on why you should not enlist.
~ Roedy (born: 1948-02-04 age: 64)
If you listen to interviews of Germans to lived through WW II, you will discover they thought they were defending their homeland. Americans believe similar nonsense about their aggressive wars against Afghanistan and Iraq.
~ Roedy (born: 1948-02-04 age: 64)
If you lived in Nazi Germany, you could protest your country invading its neighbours by refusing to do business with any corporation that offered discounts to SS officers. Similarly, in the USA you can protest by refusing to do business with any corporation than offers special rates to people in the armed services or that produced commercials glorifying those war criminals who participate in your country’s illegal wars.
~ Roedy (born: 1948-02-04 age: 64)
If you look back on history, countries at war lie through their teeth about everything to do with the war: reasons for it, cost, casualties, atrocities, odds of winning…. Sun Tsu millennia ago observed “All war is deception.” Logically, Americans should expect no more truth from their leaders and media than the Germans got from Hitler, yet they naïvely treat every word as unimpeachable truth.
~ Roedy (born: 1948-02-04 age: 64)
If you mug someone, steal everything he possesses, set his wife on fire, torture his son, blow up his parents or rape his daughter, and he fights back with all his effort to stop you, he is not a “bad guy” Americans who support the Afghan and Iraq wars don’t understand this basic fact of morality.
~ Roedy (born: 1948-02-04 age: 64)
If you oppose the Afghanistan and/or Iraq war, there only a very few places in the USA where there is a candidate running who says he wants to end either war, even though almost half of Americans think that way. The reason is the defence industry has bought off, threatened or blackmailed nearly every politician, including president Obama. This is similar to the fate of a German living in Hitler’s Germany, where there was no one to vote for who did not favour world domination by war.
~ Roedy (born: 1948-02-04 age: 64)
If you point out on a TV network blog that the aggressive (first strike) Afghan or Iraq wars are illegal, or than aiding and abetting them is a capital war crime, your post will be pulled. Apparently those who control the TV networks want the public to support the wars and to believe they are both legal.
~ Roedy (born: 1948-02-04 age: 64)
If you read about someone who lived in Germany during WW II, and they claimed, “I think these world domination wars are a bad idea, but I support Hitler and fully support the troops in everything they do.” you might think this guy had a terminal case of denial. You would say, “You can’t support people prosecuting a war if you don’t agree with the war. This guy makes no sense.” However, this very stance describes the majority of Americans. They are all flipping nuts. This craziness seems to make sense to them only because they hear it over and over on TV.
~ Roedy (born: 1948-02-04 age: 64)
If you study colonial history you see some familiar patterns. A technologically advanced power starts by convincing itself the people inhabiting the target territory are subhuman. Then they slaughter them. They then take their resources. Then they enslave them. Then when the financial returns are not worth the bother, they leave, and a massive fight for power ensues. The Americans started the process by improperly referring to Iraqi or Afghan citizens as terrorists, even though they had not killed a single US civilian.
~ Roedy (born: 1948-02-04 age: 64)
If you were a person who wanted nothing to do with war, what could convince you to take up arms? Somebody could kill your wife and children hideously and painfully using banned weapons; they could imprison and torture you; they could occupy your country treating you as vermin and stripping it of its resources; they could spit on your religion. That just might do it. No wonder the Americans are so successful at encouraging terrorist attacks, which should more properly be called vendetta attacks. You’d think Americans were deliberately inviting attacks to provide obscene profits for the defence industry.
~ Roedy (born: 1948-02-04 age: 64)
If you “support the troops” then you support what the troops do, namely kill people to steal their natural resources. Americans never think this through.
~ Roedy (born: 1948-02-04 age: 64)
Imagine a future where wearing a uniform is no longer an excuse to murder.
~ Roedy (born: 1948-02-04 age: 64)
Imagine a gang of thugs invaded your home and occupied it for over a decade. They raped your daughters and sons. They shot your pets for amusement. They randomly detained your relatives and tortured them. They defiled the symbols of your religion. They deliberately ran over your children with trucks. They held sidewalk sales to sell off everything you owned of value. They doused you in radioactive, caustic and burning chemicals. Perhaps most galling was they claimed they did these things for your benefit and complained that you were not more grateful. When your grandson tried to resist, they took him away, never to be seen again, calling him a criminal and terrorist. That is what the Afghans and Iraqis have to put up with every day.
~ Roedy (born: 1948-02-04 age: 64)
Imagine a motorcycle gang beat you up every day of your life and stole whatever money you had. Then one day, after about a decade, they got bored and stopped. Would you?
- Run over to the motorcycle clubhouse and attack somebody at random to revive the fight?
- Thank your lucky stars and hope they forget about you permanently.
Oddly, most Americans presume (1). They justify attacking and continuing attacking both Afghanistan and Iraq on the grounds as soon as they stop attacking, the victims will attack the American homeland. This is such a sick rationalisation for bullying.
~ Roedy (born: 1948-02-04 age: 64)
Imagine Hitler had created a class of soldier recruited from prisons — violent criminals who were sent into war with no instructions, no code of conduct and no laws constraining them. They were free to kill, rape and torture as the spirit moved them. This probably would have seriously harmed Mr. Hitler’ reputation. Yet Americans cheered their country on when it did the same thing sending contractors into Iraq and Afghanistan.
~ Roedy (born: 1948-02-04 age: 64)
Imagine how rude and nutty it would be if the USA told Mexico, “You have three days to catch all the drug dealers in Mexico and hand them over to us in chains. We are not prepared to even give you a list of who we want or to present any evidence they committed crimes in the USA.”
That is what the USA did to Afghanistan, demanding they catch and hand over bin Laden and his Al Qaeda supporters. He turned out to be very hard to catch, even with the full power of the US military looking for him. What the US actually did was even nuttier, because the USA had no extradition treaty, it refused to negotiate one, and it refused Afghanistan’ offer hold an ad hoc extradition hearing to present evidence. It demanded Afghanistan violate international law to comply with American demands. On top of this, the US occupied the Afghanistan ever since, butchering hundreds of people daily, justifying this mayhem because Afghanistan did not and could not comply with that ridiculous demand. By the way, the USA has never shown anyone the evidence that bin Laden masterminded 9/11 without inside help.
~ Roedy (born: 1948-02-04 age: 64)
Imagine if Al Qaeda killed 30,000,000 American civilians, then bin Laden announced that none of those deaths counted since they all were collateral damage. Al Qaeda, as devout Muslims, did not intend to kill those people. The unfortunate folk just got in the way when Al Qaeda demolished buildings. Al Qaeda had after all warned those people to evacuate the cities. As proof of their good faith, they were building 50 schools to teach the word of Muhammad, Peace Be Upon Him. That is how silly American protestations of innocence sound outside the USA.
~ Roedy (born: 1948-02-04 age: 64)
Imagine if don’t ask don’t tell applied to blacks. They could serve in the military only if they bleached their skin and straightened their hair. Or Jews if they pretended to worship Jesus, or women if they taped their breasts and shaved their hair.
~ Roedy (born: 1948-02-04 age: 64)
Imagine one of those Charles Bronson revenge flics where the plot goes like this: Somebody kills Bronson’s wife. He can’t find the guy who did it, but he is pretty sure the guy was a Lutheran. He then sets outs to kill 100 Lutherans a day for at least 15 years. He starts out just mowing down entire congregations with a machine gun, but then he shifts to torturing them to death en masse in his secret dungeon and using terror weapons banned even in warfare including radioactive and biological weapons, attempting to violate every principle in the Geneva Conventions. Oddly, the news media fall in love with his romantic quest, and call him a hero fighting for justice. Bronson is a Vulcan compared with the over-the-top, insane revenge response to 9/11 that Americans are indulging in.
~ Roedy (born: 1948-02-04 age: 64)
Imagine that Afghanistan had attacked and occupied the USA for 10 years and 7 months . Imagine their excuse for the invasion was they wanted a criminal who might possibly be hiding in the USA. They wanted him handed over, without an extradition hearing, without negotiating an extradition treaty. The USA refused Afghanistan’ offer hold an ad hoc extradition hearing to present evidence. Nobody knew where bin Laden was. (He turned up eventually in Pakistan.) Bush demanded America to find and capture him or be invaded. Imagine they deposed president Obama and installed the world’s biggest heroin dealer as dictator. Imagine they bombed and desecrated churches and synagogues and their soldiers tried to convert people to Islam at gunpoint. Imagine if they converted the entire economy to produce illegal drugs. How would you judge this behaviour? Why do you judge it completely differently when it is your country (USA, Canada, Britain) that commits the crimes?
~ Roedy (born: 1948-02-04 age: 64)
Imagine the Russians developed some ultra-advanced military technology, and successfully invaded and occupied the USA. Why did they do it? The Russians said they had to take out a rogue American leader who was abusing the rights of non-Christians and who was stockpiling nukes, preparing for a surprise nuclear attack. American were fairly sure it had something to do with food since the Russians auctioned off all American farms and ranches to Russian corporations and their friends. They set up checkpoints where they shouted at people in Russian and shot them if they did not stop, or go where they wanted them too. To make matters worse, they used Russian hand signals, where the stop signal to Americans meant “come over here”. Sometimes the Russians would set up two checkpoints back-to-back. They would wave a car-full of Americans through. The Americans often did not notice it was actually two checkpoints and drove through, presuming they had been cleared. This mistake called for immediate execution of all the car occupants by machine gun. The Russians were terrified of the American resistance they called the insurgents, since they considered themselves the new legitimate government of the USA. They spent most of their time driving about in convoys. The drivers were ordered never to stop for any reason. If an American child got in the way, they ran over her. If a car got in the way, they shot the driver. They were terrified of ambush if they even slowed down a little.
They had some rather impolite racist terms they used for all Americans. They considered the lives of Americans completely without value. They believed they had the right to kill any American, even a child, an elderly person, a woman, or someone proven unarmed, simply on the grounds that Americans sometimes resisted the invasion. The Russians considered this merely pre-emptive self defence. They would routinely round up random Americans and torture them. They justified this again on the grounds of self defence. The people they tortured might know something about planned attacks. Even though this practice almost never produced useful information, they continued it, mainly because they hated their victims.
Obviously, the Russian behaviour is illegal, but is it honourable? Most Americans think it is, because they excuse themselves from doing the exact same thing in their invasions of Afghanistan and Iraq.
~ Roedy (born: 1948-02-04 age: 64)
Imagine you had a criminal mind. You fantasised endlessly about bullying, raping, torturing and/or killing. You may focus on some particular gender or age of victim, or your desire to mayhem may be diffuse. You have to keep this secret and your urges bottled up. If you let them out you have to be extremely careful that the combined global police forces don’t track you down and lock you up. What can you do? The obvious solution is to join the US military. You will be paid to do your favourite things. You won’s be punished and you will be, strangely, highly respected by your fellow citizens.
~ Roedy (born: 1948-02-04 age: 64)
In 1938, Britain broke its treaty promise to Czechoslovakia to defend it against Germany. Had it kept its promise, it is possible WW II could have been averted. It would have poured cold water on the Hitler’s and Germany’s breast beating.
~ Roedy (born: 1948-02-04 age: 64)
In 1948 anti-Semitism was rampant all over the globe, not just in Nazi Germany. Religious fanatic Jews who called themselves Zionists yearned for their own country, a theocracy, where they could feel safe. They decided to invade Palestine, a country prominent in Jewish history millennia ago. None of these people’s ancestors had ever lived there, but Zionists convinced themselves they had holy title to the entire country, and the Palestinians were squatting on it. Major powers like the USA and Britain egged the Zionists on, because they wanted a way to get rid of their Jewish citizens. The Zionists won their war, and effectively enslaved the Palestinians and set up an apartheid state. Over the years, Israel spend lavishly buying and threatening the politicians of the world so that most people on earth saw the Jews as the persecuted party. The Palestinians and their Arab neighbours wanted to oust the Zionist invaders entirely, but did not have the military might to do it. So they decided try for a compromise, where the Palestinians would be given back a small piece of their original land to run as their own country. Israel is run by extreme right wing politicians who reject the partition, and promote genocide of the Palestinians as the only viable long-term solution. What bothers me most is the Jews who live in Israel are convinced they did absolutely nothing at all to harm the Palestinians. Jews are 100% blameless. They believe the Palestinians are to a man insane, and attack Jews for utterly no reason. Such is the power of state propaganda.
~ Roedy (born: 1948-02-04 age: 64)
In 2009-01 Israel invaded Gaza and bombed and killed over 2000 random people. Hamas killed 4 Israelis. Such is the power of propaganda that most North Americans see Hamas as the more blood thirsty.
~ Roedy (born: 1948-02-04 age: 64)
In a war, a soldier can be said to have succeeded if he manages to kill at least two soldiers before being killed himself. (Actually, maiming them sufficiently so they can no longer participate in the war also counts.) In a non-violent confrontation, a participant can be said to have succeeded if he, or his team, manages to persuade even one person to give up his erroneous views.
~ Roedy (born: 1948-02-04 age: 64)
In a war, both sides imagine they are in the right and a deity is on their side. The worse they behave, the more they have to convince themselves of the justness of their cause to justify their atrocities. Note, for example, how Americans fancy themselves as the saviours of the planet. They are also the only nation to routinely use banned weapons, torture, target primarily civilians and to attack unprovoked.
~ Roedy (born: 1948-02-04 age: 64)
In a war, sadists lose their fear and reveal their sick fantasies. They are emboldened to bullying others into realising them. The kind of man who openly creates a bomb disguised as a toy is the same sort of puke who secretly poisons kids’ candy on Halloween.
~ Roedy (born: 1948-02-04 age: 64)
In America, the Coast Guard and the National Guard have the lowest status. Yet they are the ones who save lives and defend the country. It is other services involved in war crimes, stealing resources, torture, killing and raping children. This suggests Americans worship the brute who steals, cheats, tortures and kills for pleasure. America has bought the old caveman ethic of might makes right.
~ Roedy (born: 1948-02-04 age: 64)
In terms of depravity (child rape) and total numbers tortured, Bush and Cheney surpassed most of the Roman emperors. Part of the reason is they got their jollies indirectly through written reports and video tape (which judge Hellerstein unsuccessfully tried to subpoena). They rarely got the opportunity to enjoy hands-on sessions. This second hand mayhem was unsatisfying for them, which lead to extreme escalation, much the way Hitler went off the deep end.
~ Roedy (born: 1948-02-04 age: 64)
In the 1700s, war was fought by gentlemanly rules, almost as a sport, sparing civilians. It had the salutary effect of reducing the population and reducing domestic violence by attracting violent young men to their Darwinian deaths. Today, we have ruined war for this purpose by directing it primarily at civilians and by making it too safe for the combatants.
~ Roedy (born: 1948-02-04 age: 64)
In the 1960s there was a civil war in Vietnam. Had the USA lets things be, the majority would most likely have prevailed. However, Kennedy decided he knew better than the people of Vietnam what was good for them. He wanted to tip the scales in favour of the less popular dictator, Diem and sent advisors This was a violation of the democratic principle of letting others choose their own leaders. It was a disaster for everyone.
~ Roedy (born: 1948-02-04 age: 64)
In the aftermath of Robert Bales confessing to butchering 9 Afghan children and 7 adult civilians as they slept, Americans are eager to forgive their troops for any atrocities they committed. They want to put the blame 100% on the politicians. This is much like Nazi soldiers excusing themselves after WWII by claiming “I vas chust following zee orders”. Nuremberg settled the matter once and for all that this excuse does not wash. Further the American soldiers volunteered with eyes wide open to go kill Afghan and Iraqi children. They were not drafted. They knew full well what they would be “ordered” to do. They were eager to kill. They knew full well neither Afghanistan nor Iraq attacked the USA and had to means to do so. They knew the USA was the aggressor. They might not have fully understood that attack was illegal, or that aiding an abetting either war was a capital offence, but ignorance of the law is no excuse.
~ Roedy (born: 1948-02-04 age: 64)
In the Canadian leadership debate on 2011-04-12, Liberal leader Michael Ignatieff and Conservative Leader Stephen Harper both told two mega lies:
- The Afghans like being occupied, and would be disappointed if we left.
- We are in Afghanistan to bring democracy.
If the majority of Afghans welcomed the invasion, then the war would have been over in months. How could a minority of Afghans have prevailed for 10 years and 8 months against the combined might of the majority of Afghans, the USA, Canada, Britain…?
We have imposed dictator Hamid Karzai on the Afghans. He is the biggest drug lord on the planet. He is the world’ most corrupt politician. He imposes draconian Shari’a law, (e.g. whipping women), the same as the original Taliban government did. There is no way you can characterise that as bringing democracy.
~ Roedy (born: 1948-02-04 age: 64)
In the nuclear arms race, the Americans not only have insisted on having more destructive power than everyone else put together, they have insisted on overkill, more than enough ability to wipe out all life on earth several times over. This grossly excess capacity has no practical use as a deterrent, and it greatly adds to the risk of accidental or terrorist-induced nuclear war.
~ Roedy (born: 1948-02-04 age: 64)
~ Roedy (born: 1948-02-04 age: 64)
- In the sanction bombings between the Gulf war and the Iraq war, the USA killed 1.5 million Iraqis, mostly children. Thumbing their noses at the Geneva conventions, they destroyed water treatment, sewage and electric plants and hospitals. The Iraqis were forced to drink sewage and they died of cholera.
- In the first winter of the Afghan war, the USA starved to death 1 million Afghans, mostly children by blockading all food and fuel imports into the country in an extremely bitter winter.
- In the atomic bomb attacks on Hiroshima and Nagasaki, the USA killed 246,000 Japanese civilians.
- The 2004 tsunami killed 230,000 people.
- In the blitz bombings of WW II, Nazis killed 40,000 British civilians.
- The Tōhoku tsunami killed 14,416 people with 11,889 people still missing, presumably dead.
- In the 9/11 attacks, 3,500 Americans were killed. President Bush said Saudi suicide terrorists did it. Most Americans erroneously believe 9/11 was the largest distaste in recorded history. They believe it justifies ignoring the constitution and international law to extract revenge. They also believe it justifies attacking nations that had nothing to do with 9/11, if they have resources American wants. Since it was badly hurt, America feels it has a right to hurt others a hundredfold, even if they had nothing to do with 9/11.
- When Japan attacked Pearl Harbor, it killed 2,395 Americans.
In the time of Lyndon Johnson, Americans protested en masse against the pointless Vietnam war. In the time of George W. Bush, Americans grumbled, but quietly acquiesced as Bush started two illegal aggressive wars, mocked the world court, laughed at the Geneva conventions, abrogated the constitution and routinely tortured P.O.W.s. Electing Obama no more wipes that shame from America than the death of Hitler wipes the stain from Nazi Germany. Further, though Obama is gradually shutting down one unwinnable war, he is escalating the other.
~ Roedy (born: 1948-02-04 age: 64)
In the United States, if someone threatens to kill your child, you are permitted to murder him, and claim self defence. You can do this even if it is someone else’s child. But if the person threatening is a US soldier, and the child is in Afghanistan, you will be shot on the spot as a terrorist. There is a good chance you will be killed even if you merely try to shield the child with your body.
~ Roedy (born: 1948-02-04 age: 64)
In what universe does participating in an illegal war to kill innocent men women and children one the other side of the world who pose no threat count as serving your country? It counts as self-serving sadism. It counts as serving Xe, (née Blackdown), Carlyle, Halliburton, BAE, Lockheed Martin, Boeing, Northrop Grumman, General Dynamics, Raytheon, General Electric… but it does not serve the country. If that is serving your country, then the Nazis who manned the gas ovens at Auschwitz also served their country. The lie has been repeated so often, most Americans believe it.
~ Roedy (born: 1948-02-04 age: 64)
In World War II, German, Japanese and Italian soldiers were fully enthusiastic about killing even though they knew their countries had started the wars motivated by imperialistic expansion, in other words to steal the resources of other countries. It is thus no surprise that modern American soldiers kill, rape and torture with the same lack of guilt in their theft of Iraq’s oil (Auctioned off to American and European oil interests on same day Obama announced the troop withdrawal).
~ Roedy (born: 1948-02-04 age: 64)
In WW I, the soldiers who volunteered were not that keen on fighting because of mustard gas, pointless battles over tiny plots of land with massive casualties, deadly flu epidemics, unsanitary conditions… The civilians back home, however were gung ho, whipped to frenzy with newspaper pro-war propaganda.
In Afghanistan and Iraq, the soldiers who volunteered are quite keen on fighting. Their enemy has only primitive arms and they can enjoy torturing, killing, raping people of any age/gender with very little chance of being hurt or prosecuted themselves. The people back home are not as keen since they get stuck with the trillion dollars bills for the man toys and they don’t feel all that threatened by desert goat herders.
~ Roedy (born: 1948-02-04 age: 64)
In WW II, no journalist would dream of going behind enemy lines and expecting to live to tell the tale. Yet American, British and Canadian journalists act offended when they are not welcomed with open arms in Afghanistan and Iraq. They seem oblivious to the fact coalition of the coerced have killed millions of civilians, mostly kids, tortured routinely and used banned weapons.
~ Roedy (born: 1948-02-04 age: 64)
In WWII, the dreadful things soldiers did and saw were offset by the knowledge they were protecting their country.
In the case of the Afghan war, that was not so. Soldiers who signed up for a little adventure or bullying found themselves trapped in endless rounds of combat, unlike WW II where men were sensibly spelled off.
The problems with mental illness and suicide are much worse now. The men are deeply ashamed of what they did, but they are not permitted to admit it. Even the CBC (Canadian Broadcasting Corporation) maintains the fiction the Afghan war is legal. Harper maintains the lie that this brutal assault on Afghanistan is for their own good, and won’t let any soldier say otherwise. He is like some twisted Savonarola.~ Roedy (born: 1948-02-04 age: 64)
India tested an Agni V (god of fire) 5000 km radius nuclear ICBM on 2012-04-18, capable of reaching China. Israel can easily nuke its neighbours including Iran. The United States can effortlessly land a nuke on any spot on the globe. These countries have all been sabre rattling. They each could, on their own, start a nuclear war. Perhaps we should pay more attention to them than North Korea and Iran, which still cannot. Even if our friends start the nuclear war, it is no more endurable for us. There was once a time when the submarine, the machine gun, poison gas and white phosphorus were considered too awful to even contemplate for use in war. It is thus only a matter of time until these nuclear nations become completely comfortable with the idea of using nukes for first strike (or what they euphemistically call pre-emptive strikes).
~ Roedy (born: 1948-02-04 age: 64)
Inside Nazi Germany, had you asked anyone, they would have assured you that Hitler was the best thing since sliced bread. Outside, you would have heard more of the dark side. History, judges him as one of the worst fiends of all time. In like manner, inside the USA the Iraq war is a noble enterprise to spread democracy and defend freedom (albeit whose freedom is a bit vague). Outside, people feel freer to be less enthusiastic. History will condemn what America did with much the same vigour as it now condemns the holocaust.
~ Roedy (born: 1948-02-04 age: 64)
Is it not somewhat hypocritical to assassinate bin Laden without a trial even a trial in absentia, all in the name of preserving constitutional freedom?
~ Roedy (born: 1948-02-04 age: 64)
Israel wants to attack Iran. Life is not exciting enough? Now, they have to go pick fights with countries much bigger than they are. Attacking Iran is not like bullying a little unarmed country like Lebanon or Gaza. Iran has rockets, planes, missiles, bombs and maybe even nukes. Iran has friends — Russia and China. Its sunburn missiles can sink a destroyer with one shot. It can block the Straits of Hormuz thus strangling most of the world’s oil supply. Obama does not need yet another war, especially one that jacks up gas prices, in the middle of his re-election campaign. He will cancel Israel’ $4 billion a year allowance if they pull this meshugge stunt.
~ Roedy (born: 1948-02-04 age: 64)
It has been 10 years and 8 months since 9/11. According the George W. Bush, Al Qaeda pulled of the most intricate terrorist attack in history. There are still hundreds of unanswered questions about how Al Qaeda could possibly have defeated the entire US military, without inside help, armed only with box cutters, and how they managed to bring down the three steel frame buildings (the first in history) with relatively small fires. Perhaps, the oddest thing is the way Al Qaeda has not managed to pull off anything more impressive than the guy who set his shoes on fire ever since. I would have expected them to attempt to pull off something even more spectacular, especially since the US attacked both Afghanistan and Iraq, not like Cinderella’s pumpkin, turn into utterly inept amateurs.
~ Roedy (born: 1948-02-04 age: 64)
It has taken 70 years for Americans to reflect on how much of the bombing in WW II had a military purpose. Much of the bombing intended only emotional terrorising civilians. It did not help reduce Germany or Japan’s ability to wage war. How many more decades will it take for Americans to admit their wars in Vietnam, Afghanistan and Iraq were motivated largely by racist and religious hatred and corporate greed, certainly nothing at all to do with defending America.
~ Roedy (born: 1948-02-04 age: 64)
It is a bit of a joke to compare someone to the Nazis simply because they share one attribute in common e.g. massive lying, or wearing brown shirts, however, in a number of way the Americans have behaved even worse than Nazis in their Afghanistan and Iraq wars:
- Use of illegal chemical weapons: white phosphorus and napalm.
- Routine torture of all detainees
- Dragging war on endlessly: 10 years and 7 months for Afghanistan and 9 years and 2 months for Iraq.
- Use of illegal cluster bombs
The two are similar in that they:
~ Roedy (born: 1948-02-04 age: 64)
- Attacked other nations unprovoked.
- Targeted civilians with bombs.
- Bamboozled their people to supports such bad behaviour with massive propaganda.
It is a capital war crime to aid and abet the invasion or occupation of a foreign country in an aggressive war, (a war in which your side attacks first unprovoked.) That makes every Jew in Israel a capital criminal. It is highly unlikely they will ever be tried, much less executed, but they would be if the same law applied to hang all the Nazi at the end of WW II were applied to the Jews in Israel too. If Jews were aware of that, they might have a tad more humility about their superiority over the Palestinians.
~ Roedy (born: 1948-02-04 age: 64)
It is a triumph of propaganda and the power of language that most citizens of the USA have no problem when a large powerful group, such as themselves, attacks and kills the civilians of some weaker group, but scream terrorist when the weaker group retaliates by attacking and killing soldiers or civilians of the powerful group. Surely killing civilians is terrorism no matter who does it, and killing combatants is war no matter who does it.
~ Roedy (born: 1948-02-04 age: 64)
It is amazing how comfortable some people feel near soldiers, even knowing they are brainwashed to kill innocent people for no reason.
~ Roedy (born: 1948-02-04 age: 64)
It is amazing how many otherwise sane and decent Americans subscribe to the monstrous lie that the Afghan and Iraq wars are about defending the freedom of Americans. Not a single Afghan or Iraqi ever did anything to impair American freedoms. Even Bush admitted Afghanistan and Iraq had nothing to do with 9/11. America attacked Afghanistan and Iraq, not the reverse. Americans are seriously interfering with the freedom of the Afghan and Iraqi people, not the reverse. The real reasons for the illegal wars are:
~ Roedy (born: 1948-02-04 age: 64)
- To gain a free right of way for a pipeline through Afghanistan.
- To profit from the $1 trillion a year Afghan heroin trade.
- To pay off bribes from military contractors.
- To gain control of Afghanistan’s lithium (needed for high performance car and computer batteries).
- To steal Iraq’s oil.
It is amazing how many people refuse to acknowledge that rape is an integral part of war, including ones waged by the USA. Consider:
~ Roedy (born: 1948-02-04 age: 64)
- Young horny men have no other sexual outlet than each other which is highly frowned on.
- The soldiers are trained to disdain the people they kill to make it easy to kill them. That same attitude makes it easy to rape them.
- In war, there are almost never any legal consequences for rape, even pedophilic rape.
- The women are terrified of the soldiers and meekly comply.
- Read your history. Rape is considered one of the spoils of war.
- Soldiers are paid hit men. They enjoy violence, struggle, fighting, bullying, threatening and killing. Rape is part of that constellation of behaviours.
It is amusing how Americans are all fully aware of how illegal Japan’s strike on Pearl Harbour was ditto Hitler’s invasion of Poland, but they pretend not to notice their first strike attacks such as Afghanistan and Iraq are also illegal.
~ Roedy (born: 1948-02-04 age: 64)
It is amusing that Americans imagine they are better informed on what is happening in Iraq and Afghanistan than the people who live there, especially when their only source is FOX News, a company that freely admits it manufactures the news for maximum entertainment value. Americans defend their ignorance by considering it traitorous to even ask an ex-pat Afghan or Iraqi what is going on back home.
~ Roedy (born: 1948-02-04 age: 64)
It is amusing to watch how supporters of the Bush view of what happened on 9/11 have changed their attacks over time on those who do not trust their story:
- Conspiracy theorists only have evidence for holes in the official theory. They don’t have a consistent theory of what did happen.
- Conspiracy theorists have changed what they had to say as new evidence came to light.
- Conspiracy theorists have no interest in the evidence.
- Conspiracy theorists are dogged and never change their minds. They think they know everything and nobody else knows anything.
- Conspiracy theorists believe in all manner of nutty conspiracies. Anyone who believes in any conspiracy is crazy.
- Conspiracy theorists conspired and made everything up because they hate George Bush.
You can see most of these attacks in the History Channel documentary 102 Minutes that Changed America / Witness to 9/11 that mocks the conspiracy theorists.
~ Roedy (born: 1948-02-04 age: 64)
It is astounding how many Americans believe the lie that US soldiers are defending America in the wars in Afghanistan and Iraq. They know that the USA attacked both those countries unprovoked. They know that first strikes are illegal. They know those countries have no navy, air force or weapons with which to attack the USA. They know the USA routinely tortures POWs. They know the USA considers the Geneva conventions quaint. If they read the foreign press, they also know the USA uses banned weapons that even Hitler did not use. These Americans are no better than Nazis patriotically pretending Germany’s war crimes were justified.
~ Roedy (born: 1948-02-04 age: 64)
It is considered back luck to speak ill of the dead, but I will take the risk to spit on soldiers killed in Afghanistan and Iraq who went half way round the world to hunt (and/or rape) children for sport. I only wish they had been slowly tortured to death. I don’t hold soldiers who went to hunt/rape adults in much higher regard.
~ Roedy (born: 1948-02-04 age: 64)
It is curious that people consider betraying one’s country such a serious crime. Would betraying Nazi Germany have been a crime? There is no a priori reason to believe that your country invariably has the moral right on its side. You have to examine on a case by case basis. Oddly, most Americans consider it treason to fail to cover up for war crimes committed by Americans, though they would not approve of the same behaviour from other nationals.
~ Roedy (born: 1948-02-04 age: 64)
It is distressing watching my planet marching toward nuclear war and irreversible climate change that Environment Canada says will be almost as destructive. What is much more depressing is knowing we are doing this primarily for the trivial motive of increased corporate profit. We are like monkeys trapped by greed, unable to let go of the banana. We would sooner die than give up a little profit. Those that run the defence industries and oil companies are clearly insane and should be treated accordingly.
~ Roedy (born: 1948-02-04 age: 64)
It is interesting how speech patterns divide the USA into political groups. For example, pro-war people pronounce Iraq as eye’rak. People opposed to the war pronounce it eer-rak’. Similarly Italian as eye’talian by imperialists or ih-tal’ian for internationalists.
~ Roedy (born: 1948-02-04 age: 64)
It is interesting to compare American and British TV coverage of a bombing in Iraq. From the American report you would get the impression the bombing was a random killing of ordinary civilians. From the British report, you see it was an attack on the buildings and employees of the puppet collaborator government. Americans like to project the notion their foes are irrational. It makes genocide seem more like pest control.
~ Roedy (born: 1948-02-04 age: 64)
It is most strange that ostensibly sane people claim that the best thing to do help a trouble spot on the globe is to send in the military to shoot people at random and drop bombs on children. That makes so little sense, surely they must have some ulterior motive.
~ Roedy (born: 1948-02-04 age: 64)
It is naïve of Americans to expect the Afghans to believe the lie that the USA is there to help them when has been so much killing, torture, violence against children and desecration of Islam. The Afghans never asked for help. The Taliban continue to this day to be the most popular political faction in Afghanistan. If that were not so, the Taliban would have utterly no chance against the combined might of the Afghan people, the USA, Britain, France and Canada.
~ Roedy (born: 1948-02-04 age: 64)
It is one thing to shoot a child between the eyes or drop a bomb on them, but killing them by slow torture by burning them alive with napalm or white phosphorus is an order of magnitude more serious crime. The only punishment I can think of that would be remotely severe enough, would be skinning the soldiers alive and dousing them in just enough napalm and white phosphorus that it takes them at least a week to die in excruciating agony.
~ Roedy (born: 1948-02-04 age: 64)
It is possible there were no Americans involved (possibly coerced) in the planning and execution of 9/11 but some Americans certainly knew it was going to happen. How else can you explain Rudy Giuliani accidentally announcing the plane hit on the Pentagon before it happened? How do you explain the phone call from an undisclosed source warning Willy Brown to cancel his plane flight? How do you explain the investors (whose names have been kept secret to this day) who made a killing selling short on American Airlines stock? How do you explain why so many people stayed home from work at the Twin Towers on 9/11 after receiving warnings? Finally, even the Bush administration admits some of its anti-terrorist people passed on warnings that got stuck in the bureaucracy. If you were one of them, would you have not passed on the warning to those dear to you in harm’s way despite the official secrets act? If you were one of those people notified, could you help yourself from warning a few others, no matter what the consequences for passing on a state secret? Knowing how much Cheney and others in the government and military enjoy torturing people in secret prisons, would you ever talk publicly about this?
~ Roedy (born: 1948-02-04 age: 64)
It is so odd that Americans feel affronted and astonished when Muslims make even token attacks against them. Why would Americans expect Muslims to meekly accept a decade of pounding and the routine torture of P.O.W.s and the butchery and of millions of their civilians? An attack almost always invites a counter attack. Americans are so conceited and so clueless that they imagine the terrorist attacks are just madness, without rational motive. They conveniently forget all their trespasses against the Muslims of the Middle East, including two illegal, first-strike, unprovoked wars.
~ Roedy (born: 1948-02-04 age: 64)
It is so part of the consensus assumption, that you have probably forgotten that you have yet to see any evidence that bin Laden pulled off 9/11, much less pulled it off without inside help. You just trusted Bush when he told you the evidence was solid but classified (the same as his solid but classified evidence for WMDs in Iraq).
~ Roedy (born: 1948-02-04 age: 64)
It is too bad that Dick Cheney will probably die before facing trial for his war crimes and subversion of the constitution. Known for his heartless condoning of torture, he now literally has no heart. He had it replaced with a temporary blood pump.
~ Roedy (born: 1948-02-04 age: 64)
It seems almost every night there is a photo of a guy who looks like an extra from Deliverance on the TV news. He has been killed in Afghanistan or Iraq, perhaps in an accident, perhaps by a bomb. This guy was obviously a utter loser who felt the only way his life could have meaning was by hunting people on the other side of the world for sport. He could at least feel superior to them. He could at least lord it over them with the help of superior US military technology. He preferred to kill children and women, because they are easier to kill, and they make more of a show dying. I rejoice at his elimination from the gene pool.
~ Roedy (born: 1948-02-04 age: 64)
It took 180 years for ordinary Americans to become aware of how badly their government had treated the Cherokee Indians of Georgia. How many more years will they hide from the truth about what their government did to the Afghan and Iraqi people?
~ Roedy (born: 1948-02-04 age: 64)
It was always obvious to me that random violence against random victims, such as Americans bombing houses in Afghanistan and Iraq was pointless and self-defeating. But I have wondered what the effect of a more directed violence would be, e.g. targeting only those who order deaths, who shape pro-war opinions, who profit from war or environmental degradation. The Taliban seem to be experimenting with this approach targeting corrupt and turncoat politicians. Americans tend to assume the Taliban are stupid foolish people, but that is obviously not true, since they have managed to hold the Americans and cohorts with their unlimited war budget at bay for a decade. War is a like a magic trick. The soldiers are a distraction to make those attacked mistake who is really attacking them.
~ Roedy (born: 1948-02-04 age: 64)
It was not until WW II was over did it dawn on the average German that they were the bad guys. In a similar way, it may take 40 years after the Afghan and Iraq wars end before Americans clue in they were the villains and the wars they fought were illegal and fought for shameful motives.
~ Roedy (born: 1948-02-04 age: 64)
It would be fitting if Dick Cheney were water boarded to get him to confess to his war crimes.
~ Roedy (born: 1948-02-04 age: 64)
It’s been 72 years since the Nazis invaded Poland. It does not look as though we are going to forget about it any time soon. So how long do you think the Afghans and Iraqis will remember what the Americans did to them, dousing them in white phosphorus, burning them to death with napalm, hunting their children like rats, poisoning them with DU, blowing the limbs off their children with cluster bombs disguised as food packets, depriving them of water in the desert sun, starving them to death, blowing up their hospitals, electric plants, and water sanitation facilities, levelling their cities, spitting on their religion and the endless indignities of military occupation.
~ Roedy (born: 1948-02-04 age: 64)
Just as peer pressure persuaded Germans to avoid noticing the atrocities of the Nazis, modern day Americans do the same thing to avoid noticing their nation is the #1 terrorist nation on earth and that American soldiers are guilty of a capital war crimes, namely first strike attacks on other nations.
~ Roedy (born: 1948-02-04 age: 64)
Just because Americans believe that ignoring the Geneva conventions, torturing and using banned weapons (such as depleted uranium, cluster bombs, land mines, white phosphorus and napalm) is perfectly acceptable, at least when Americans do them, does not make them legal, any more than Nazis claiming exterminating Jews was a noble deed made it so.
~ Roedy (born: 1948-02-04 age: 64)
Just because the US and Canadian governments and most of their citizens refuse to acknowledge that the Afghan and Iraq wars are illegal and aggressive (first strike), does not make them legal, any more that Nazis approving of their own actions made them legal.
~ Roedy (born: 1948-02-04 age: 64)
Just like the Germans in WW II, the Americans don’t realise they are the villains in the Afghan and Iraq wars.
~ Roedy (born: 1948-02-04 age: 64)
Kennedy fired up the Vietnam war by sending 12,000 ”advisors”. Obama postponed ending the Iraq war by leaving 50,000 advisors behind.
~ Roedy (born: 1948-02-04 age: 64)
Let’s review. President Bush told us that he had absolutely no idea that 9/11 was coming, but within hours was 100% certain Osama bin Laden, a Saudi, was responsible. Later he announced that Mahmud Ahmad, the Pakistani ISI (Inter-Services Intelligence) head of security, bankrolled it. He presented no evidence, presumably because he was concerned such information might be valuable to terrorists. He announced that Saddam Hussein, the leader of Iraq, though a wicked man, had no ties to 9/11. Then he invaded, not Saudi Arabia, not Pakistan, but Afghanistan and later Iraq and set up puppet governments. He explained that Saudi Arabia and Pakistan were still staunch allies. Stephen Harper, on 2009-04-04 explained that Canada did not actually invade Afghanistan, but had been invited by the Afghan government to help with security. That reminds me of the sorts of lies the Soviet Union used to tell about its suppression of Hungary and Czechoslovakia. Harper is vague. He could be claiming the Taliban invited Canada in, or that the Karzai puppet government was in power at the time of the invasion. Either claim is preposterous. To cap it off, the bulk of the publicly accessible evidence points to 9/11 being an inside job. According to the head of German security, bin Laden and his motley band were nowhere near capable of pulling off such a dramatic feat. But the really astounding thing is most Americans see nothing at all odd in any of this.
~ Roedy (born: 1948-02-04 age: 64)
Let’s say somebody blew the legs off a 5 year old in your extended family, or blew your grandmother’s head with a high-powered rifle, or turned your brother-in-law to splatter with a cluster bomb. It not just the victims that suffer. The relatives carry the pain the rest of their lives. That violence creates spiral of revenge and hate. President Obama is reputed to be an unusually intelligent man, but he is a nitwit when it comes to war. He thinks he need an excuse to put an end to it.
~ Roedy (born: 1948-02-04 age: 64)
Like Nazis and Israelis, Americans believe they are exempt from International Law. They believe the law forbidding preemptive attacks doesn’t apply to them.
~ Roedy (born: 1948-02-04 age: 64)
Like Nazis and Israelis, Americans believe have a holy right to attack others unprovoked, on the grounds they guess the other county might, in future, develop the ability to attack them. This is like pleading self defence for feeding your neighbour to a wood chipper because you thought he might next summer buy some archery gear and threaten you with it.
~ Roedy (born: 1948-02-04 age: 64)
Listen to vets telling their war stories. Vets of WW I and II are grim; their stories are about fear. Those of Afghanistan or the two Iraq wars are joyful, as though recounting a hockey or video game triumph.
~ Roedy (born: 1948-02-04 age: 64)
Listening to President Obama speak about his valiant fight in Afghanistan for freedom, God, Democracy and all that is sacred, you’d think it was the Taliban who had attacked on 9/11, not Al-Qaeda Saudis. Think back. The official reason for the invasion was America’s impossible-to-comply-with demand that Afghanistan capture bin Laden for America, hand him over without an extradition treaty, or an extradition hearing and without presenting any evidence of his guilt. The USA refused Afghanistan’ offer hold an ad hoc extradition hearing to present evidence. The real reason for the invasion of course was of course was the Taliban refused to give Unocal a free right of way for its oil pipeline. That is why Bush appointed mostly ex-Unocal people, including Karzai himself, to the puppet government.
~ Roedy (born: 1948-02-04 age: 64)
Listening to President Obama speak about his valiant fight in Afghanistan against drugs, you’d never guess it was the USA and its corrupt Karzai puppet government that saw the drug trafficking jump from almost zero to the #1 supplier of heroin in the world, producing over $1 trillion worth a year — more than the entire planet consumes.
~ Roedy (born: 1948-02-04 age: 64)
Male politicians bragging about serving (killing innocent people) in illegal wars such as Vietnam, Afghanistan or Iraq is as sick as a female politician bragging about how many abortions she has had.
~ Roedy (born: 1948-02-04 age: 64)
Many Americans are now aware of how dishonourable the Iraq war is. It was an illegal, unprovoked first strike. The evidence to justify it was either counterfeit or made up out of whole cloth. It was actually an oil heist, now complete. On the very day Obama announced the Iraq troop withdrawals there was a giant auction of all of Iraq’s oil reserves to American and European oil companies.
However, very few Americans are aware that between the Gulf War and Iraq wars, in the Sanction Bombings, the USA bombed Iraq every day, destroying nearly all of Iraq’s sewage plants, electric plants, water treatment plants, schools, hospitals… all in flagrant violation of the Geneva conventions. America claimed self defence as justification even though no American planes were ever hit, and no soldiers were ever killed or injured. Between one and two million Iraqis died as a result, many as a result of water borne illness such as cholera. You could argue this was a form of bio-warfare.
Even fewer Americans are aware of the Glaspie incident in 1990. Kuwait and Iraq were having a dispute. They were each slant-drilling into the other’s territory and siphoning off the oil. Iraq asked America’s ambassador Glaspie would it would do if Iraq attacked Kuwait. Glaspie said it would be considered an internal Arab matter and America would not intervene. As we know, she lied. As soon as Iraq attacked Kuwait, the USA rushed to its aid and has been pounding the shit out of Iraq ever since. It appears then that Bush-41 tricked Iraq to give it an excuse to attack Iraq and gain control of its oil. If I were an American, I would be ashamed of my country for such treachery. If Bush-41 had been honest and said it would rush to Kuwait’s aid, the Gulf war would have been completely avoided.
~ Roedy (born: 1948-02-04 age: 64)
Many Americans are willing to keep the Afghan and Iraq wars going indefinitely because the military wants to. They don’t even request any reasons for it. This is a bit like asking a Ford dealer if you should buy a new car.
~ Roedy (born: 1948-02-04 age: 64)
Many people are outrage at my disdain for soldiers and my assertion they are motivated by sadism and they lie convincingly about their motives. My contention will seem obvious if you watch the movie The Last King of Scotland. The events it describes are historic fact.
~ Roedy (born: 1948-02-04 age: 64)
Many species of animals, including humans will kill each other in territorial disputes. The catch is humans keep developing ever more destructive weapons. If we don’t either on top of our urge to escalate the lethality of weapons or our ant-like territoriality, we are doomed.
~ Roedy (born: 1948-02-04 age: 64)
Memorial Day in the USA, and Remembrance Day in Canada should be called National Hypocrisy day. All the vets of Vietnam, Afghanistan and Iraq are war criminals guilty of a capital crime namely aiding and abetting an aggressive (illegal, first strike) war. The military pretend the fallen died defending their country. They did no such thing. They died stealing the natural resources of other countries. They deserve no more honour than the Nazis hanged at Nuremberg for this exact same crime.
~ Roedy (born: 1948-02-04 age: 64)
Men like killing for the sexual pleasure of it. They make up the most preposterous childish silly excuses for it. Excuses have included self defence (even when the killers attacked first unprovoked), my religion is better than yours, we need more room, God gave us title to your land, your leader ran off with our leader’s wife, we need to teach you to treat women more chivalrously, my economic system is better than yours, you would rather not be part of our country any more.
~ Roedy (born: 1948-02-04 age: 64)
Military contractors are remarkably immoral people. Consider some of the things they do routinely:~ Roedy (born: 1948-02-04 age: 64)
- They sell arms to both sides in a fight.
- They sell banned weapons to terrorists or any other party with the money.
- They bribe and threaten politicians into buying arms not needed. They push the USA into buying almost as many arms as the rest of the world combined.
- They foment and extend wars just to increase sales.
- They constantly research new more painful and efficient ways to kill people, especially civilians.
- They sell to dictators of countries that cannot afford arms. They figuratively snatch food out of the mouths of the starving.
Military men submit completely to their superiors. They behave with exaggerated subservience. They seek out and voluntarily give up their freedom. They are willing slaves. They will even kill children for no more reason than a superior told them to. This is the penultimate in wimpitude, yet oddly these man are considered hyper masculine. They are psychologically sick, suffering from sadomasochism. It is similar to homosexual leather kink. I have nothing but contempt for someone who relinquishes his moral compass to become the slave of a revered other. It is similar to what cult members do surrendering to the cult leader.
~ Roedy (born: 1948-02-04 age: 64)
Millions of ignorant Americans claim that in revenge for the deaths of 3500 Americans on 9/11, they have the right to invade, occupy, torture, incarcerate, rape, plunder, burn, poison, bomb and kill hundreds of thousands of Afghan and Iraqi men, women and children. Setting aside how out-of-proportion that response is, recall that President Bush said that Osama bin Laden (a Saudi) and a gang of hijackers (Saudi) pulled it off. According to president Bush, there were no, nada, zero Afghans or Iraqis involved. Racism makes many Americans conflate all brown-skinned people and all Muslims together for group punishment. America’s unprovoked attacks are even more shameful than lynching a random black person for an unsolved crime. Both wars are as illegal as Hitler’s invasion of Poland. This makes anyone aiding or abetting those wars guilty of a capital crime . It is not just me saying this. All the secretaries-general of the UN, who ought to know have said so as has the lead Nuremberg prosecutor for the Einsatgruppen prosecution. In theory, every American in the military could hang. That will not happen but it does not change the fact they are all openly guilty of a hanging offence and should be treated with contempt.
~ Roedy (born: 1948-02-04 age: 64)
Modern warfare is executed largely by remote control. Most of the Al Qaeda leaders were killed with Predator drones. Snipers can kill from a safe distance of 3 km (1.86 miles). Soldiers are protected by kevlar and tootle about in armoured vehicles. And even when an American soldier is injured, modern field medicine does miracles to keep him alive, even when he is brain-damaged or missing body parts. The net result is a much greater percentage of soldiers are coming back alive. And they are coming back much more psychologically damaged, maimed, violent and dangerous than when they left.In centuries past, hot-blooded teens ran off to war and quickly removed themselves from the gene pool before they could cause too much trouble for their societies. Those that came back were usually largely undamaged. Now soldiers are largely coming back as both a burden to care for physically and psychologically and a source of violence. War is losing its primary benefit.
~ Roedy (born: 1948-02-04 age: 64)
Morality 101
~ Roedy (born: 1948-02-04 age: 64)
- It is not ok to kill civilians especially children. Doing so to try to change people’s political affiliation is terrorism, even when soldiers do it.
- It is not ok to invade other people’s country unless they attack yours first.
- It is perfectly ok to kill soldiers invading or occupying your country, even when those soldiers are American. You don’ need to be a soldier and you don’t need a uniform. Of course the invading soldiers will improperly call you a terrorist even when they are the true terrorists.
Most Americans accept the official story that Muslim suicide bombers attacked on 9/11. Yet no Americans have the tiniest bit of curiosity about what motivated them to sacrifice their lives in such an attack. Even if Americans think the motive was a naïve bid to get laid in the afterlife, why would the attackers think Allah would reward such violence?
~ Roedy (born: 1948-02-04 age: 64)
Most Americans and I have a strong disagreement. I think they should not kill people who are no threat to them (the Afghans and Iraqis) and they think they should. But the odd thing is these hawkish Americans often threaten to beat me up or kill me. Why are they afraid of me?
~ Roedy (born: 1948-02-04 age: 64)
Most Americans know that the official story of 9/11 is that the Saudi terrorists were killed in the suicide attacks. Most Americans know that the USA attacked Iraq under false pretenses, unprovoked. Most Americans know that American attacked Afghanistan unprovoked. Yet nearly all Americans also believe they are fighting wars of self defence. This is utter nonsense, and if any American stopped to question in for 5 seconds, they would realise it is nonsense because neither Afghanistan nor Iraq had anything to do with 9/11! Even Bush said so. Yet most Americans believe this lie because most other Americans believe it, like genetically modified sheep. They are so firmly convinced that Americans are the good guys that have created a transparently delusional story to cover up American wrongdoing. It fools nobody but Americans. Nobody else believes Americans are incapable of atrocities. Even in the face of evidence that Americans routinely torture, they cling to the notion that American soldiers are perfect boy scouts.
~ Roedy (born: 1948-02-04 age: 64)
Most educated people know the ancient Romans tortured and killed people for their amusement. The know of the cruelties of Alexander the Great, Genghis Khan, the Spanish Inquisition and Vlad the Impaler. They know how the Germans and Japanese treated prisoners in WW II. They know how ordinary Germans persecuted Jews in WW II. They know about Das Experiment, The Standford Prison Experiment conducted in 1971 that discovered ordinary American college students would turn sadistic if given power over another group of students. They know Rwandans slaughtered each other for no reason other than the victim belonged to the other tribe. Americans know their president authorised torture, secret torture dungeons, the use of various banned weapons such as DU, white phosphorus, napalm, cluster bombs and land mines. Americans know their military stockpiles a wide assortment of plagues to use as biological weapons including genetically enhanced ones to make them more horrible. Given the widespread flowering of cruelty in the human race, it should be clear it an essential feature of humanity. No group is immune, in particular soldiers. Yet Americans have a sort of religious reference for soldiers and refuse to even admit the possibility they could behave in a sadistic way, no matter how much evidence piles up.
~ Roedy (born: 1948-02-04 age: 64)
Most people when they think of Nazis think of German accents, goose stepping and swastikas. These are just the symbols of one particular flowering of Naziism. The heart of Naziism is unrepentant lying, scapegoating, extreme nationalism, claiming to be #1 in God’s eyes, total lack of compassion for the weak, ruthlessness and sadism. You have seen it flower again recently, this time with a Texas accent.
~ Roedy (born: 1948-02-04 age: 64)
Most people would be more upset if their son dismembered a child than if some stranger across down did it. For the same reason, I get more upset when Canadian, American and British soldiers dismember children than when people from countries I have never visited do it.
~ Roedy (born: 1948-02-04 age: 64)
MSNBC hosts wonder aloud how anyone could possibly want to attack America in a terrorist attack. How could they have forgotten America is at war? America invaded Afghanistan, Iraq and Pakistan torturing and/or killing over a million people to steal their oil and seedstocks. When you hurt people’s kids and relatives that way they have a tendency to want to get back at you.
~ Roedy (born: 1948-02-04 age: 64)
Murder is such an arrogant crime, especially in war. One person judges another on some narrow criteria, and blocks them from ever after having another experience. Often the person killed did nothing wrong at all. They were just in the way because the knew something, owned something or blocked the murderer from getting something he had no right to.
~ Roedy (born: 1948-02-04 age: 64)
Muslims are much more patient about getting revenge than we North Americans are. Americans committed an unforgivable crime on Afghanistan and Iraq. The revenge for it may come even 100 years from now. I would not be surprised if a decade or so from now vets of Afghanistan and Iraq will start to come down with mysterious diseases and cancers that rot the face. Americans are a boastful people, which tends to make them underestimate their enemies. Over time, the general public will find out the perverted things American soldiers were doing, they will become like lepers. They won’t be able to deny to themselves what they did. Confronting it will drive many of them mad via drugs and alcohol.
~ Roedy (born: 1948-02-04 age: 64)
My parents used to go to the movie theatre. They would watch Hitler screaming and shouting in German. The audience would roll with laughter. We have new lunatics that seem equally funny: Glenn Beck, Newt Gingrich, Rand Paul…
~ Roedy (born: 1948-02-04 age: 64)
Nazis thought torture was OK, so long and Germans did it for the benefit of the Reich. Americans think torture is OK so long as Americans do it and the victims are Muslim or brown skinned. It does not matter who does it. It is still wrong.
~ Roedy (born: 1948-02-04 age: 64)
Nearly all Americans believe they were 100% innocent and blameless for 9/11. Some consider the possibility of inside help or a false flag operation but very few study how it might have happened as an unfolding of natural political forces. They fervently believe it came out of nowhere without motivation, other than irrational hate or envy. Americans almost never study why others hate them or what wrongs they have committed to generate that hate. The problem is Americans are filled with religious conviction that they can do no wrong. This makes them blind.
~ Roedy (born: 1948-02-04 age: 64)
Newt Gingrich is a scumbag. He is deliberately fomenting bad blood between Christian and Islamic Americans for his own political benefit. Hitler used the same filthy trick, greasing his way to power on the backs of Jews.
~ Roedy (born: 1948-02-04 age: 64)
No matter how much you may disapprove of Major Malik Nidal Hasan shooting 31 American soldiers at Fort Hood, this was not an act of terrorism. By definition terrorism only refers to killing civilians. Personally, I see it as an act of treason. Hasan, acting as a psychiatrist was horrified at the stories returning soldiers told him of what they did to children in Afghanistan and Iraq and decided he had to switch sides and kill the killers to protect the kids. Though legally he almost certainly be convicted of murder, he was motivated by defence of innocents, a legitimate excuse for murder if the attack is imminent.
~ Roedy (born: 1948-02-04 age: 64)
No matter how often I see it, I find it bizarre that the American public are far more upset about how American soldiers treat Afghan corpses with insufficient respect than they are about them torturing living Afghan children, dousing Afghan women in napalm, burning babies to death with white phosphorus and poisoning the ecosystem with DU.
~ Roedy (born: 1948-02-04 age: 64)
Nobody knows better than the soldiers themselves what evils they committed in Afghanistan and Iraq. We know it is much worse than usual because so many returning soldiers now commit suicide or wallow in despair and guilt.
~ Roedy (born: 1948-02-04 age: 64)
Note that countries, such as Switzerland, that do not commit atrocities or acts of terrorism (i.e. civilians killing civilians, or armies killing civilians) are very rarely attacked themselves. Countries that routinely commit atrocities, such as the USA, Russia or Israel, are constantly under attack. If these countries seriously wanted to deter terrorist attacks against themselves, the most effective way to do it would be to forgo terrorist attacks against others. Terrorism invites terrorism in a revenge spiral. The fools imagine they can stop terrorism by committing ever more outrageous terrorist attacks. That sort of rogue behaviour just makes it worse.
~ Roedy (born: 1948-02-04 age: 64)
Now that bin Laden was assassinated, we will never see the evidence how he masterminded 9/11 without inside help.
~ Roedy (born: 1948-02-04 age: 64)
Now that the Iraq war is winding down, Americans are excusing their slaughter by pointing out At least Saddam is gone. Wait one cotton pickin’ minute. Saddam offered to surrender and abdicate even before the war started. George W. Bush turned him down and invaded anyway because he wanted the oil. Saddam’s regime collapsed immediately, but the occupation continued unabated. Saddam was captured on 2003-12-14. Yet the occupation lasted another 7 years and 11 months. On the very day Obama announced troop withdrawals from Iraq he also announced a giant sell off of Iraq’s oil reserves to American and European oil corporations. Mission Accomplished. This suggests the war had absolutely nothing to do with Saddam, absolutely nothing to do with self defence, bugger all to do with a desire for democracy in Iraq, and everything to do with stealing Iraq’s oil for a nation desperate for continued supplies so insanely addicted that it ignores the climate change consequences. Americans are eager to put this all behind them, but they behaved so badly their deeds will live in infamy so long as humans walk the earth. I hope with all my heart these war criminals face prosecution and execution or life imprisonment, even if it takes another 60 years for justice
~ Roedy (born: 1948-02-04 age: 64)
Now that US soldiers are leaving Iraq, collaborators are getting nervous about reprisals from their fellow citizens. The way I see it, these people are traitors. They sold out their country to make a few bucks. The USA promised the world to the collaborators without any intention of delivering. The collaborators were stupid and greedy enough to believe the Americans. They deserve what ever misfortune comes their way.
~ Roedy (born: 1948-02-04 age: 64)
Obama announced in his 2010-05-12 joint press conference with Hamid Karzai that the USA had been fighting in Afghanistan for over 9 years to protect the USA from attacks from Al Qaeda. However, his own generals announced there were less than 100 Al Qaeda in Afghanistan. This is like making a decade-long war on a threat much smaller than Monaco. His explanation does not pass the laugh test.
~ Roedy (born: 1948-02-04 age: 64)
Obama billed himself as a peace candidate. He wound down the Iraq war to 50%, but he cranked up the equally pointless Afghanistan war to 200%. It is possible Obama is a simple liar, but I think the problem is the power of the defence industry. They have so much money, they can buy elections or assassinate anyone who gets in their way. Obama negotiated with them. That was the best deal he could get.
~ Roedy (born: 1948-02-04 age: 64)
Obama campaigned as a peace candidate. Why then the surge the troops in Afghanistan? Why is the USA, despite being unable to afford two wars, despite there being no military threat from either Afghanistan or Iraq, still occupying Afghanistan and Iraq? Ego and pride. Obama does not want to be perceived as losing a war. So he is willing to sacrifice tens of thousands of people on both sides of the conflict, to create the illusion the USA was able to beat these two tiny countries into abject submission. What he wants to do is impossible because, for Muslims, this is a religious war — ejecting the great Satan. For them, resistance is more important than life itself. They will not give up until every last one of them is killed, and even then there are a billion Muslims from all over the world to take up the struggle.
~ Roedy (born: 1948-02-04 age: 64)
Obama completely misrepresented himself in the presidential election. He billed himself as pro-peace. He claimed to be for the little guy in battles with the insurance companies, but when he got into office:
- He cut the Iraq war troop allotment in half, then doubled it for the Afghan war. The net result is no change in involvement in illegal wars. He is as pro war as any Christian Republican.
- He made it illegal not to buy a medical policy from one of these insurance company sharks.
He does not deserve a second term, but for the exact opposite reason the Republicans claim. We should have expected this betrayal way back when we discovered who funded his presidential campaign.
~ Roedy (born: 1948-02-04 age: 64)
Obama has a tiger by the tail. Most of the soldiers in Afghanistan and Iraq are contractor mercenaries. If he lets them go, they will go to the highest bidder, most likely to America’s enemies. Having worked for America, they intimately know her weaknesses.
~ Roedy (born: 1948-02-04 age: 64)
Obama is huge improvement over W., but he is still a war criminal. Why? He is escalating the illegal Afghanistan war. America originally attacked Afghanistan unprovoked. Afghanistan had nothing to do with 9/11. The official story is bin Laden, a Saudi, masterminded 9/11 and Pakistan bankrolled it. Even Obama admits there are only 100 Al-Qaeda left in the country.
~ Roedy (born: 1948-02-04 age: 64)
Obama is reluctant to withdraw troops from Afghanistan and Iraq because that makes the unemployment figures worse.
~ Roedy (born: 1948-02-04 age: 64)
Obama ordered 80,000 troops removed from Iraq and 60,000 to stay. That is about 57% withdrawn. That is an encouraging move, but in no way signals the end of hostilities.
~ Roedy (born: 1948-02-04 age: 64)
Obama usually avoids the bellicose rhetoric of the Cheney-Bush-Rumsfeld era, but he shovels the same amount of cash to the mercenaries and military contractors. The Afghanistan and Iraq wars are killing people faster than ever before. Peace is no closer.
~ Roedy (born: 1948-02-04 age: 64)
Obama’s outrageously big lie is that the USA is fighting Al-Qaeda in Afghanistan to protect the USA. The US military estimates there are less than 100 Al Qaeda in Afghanistan, and they are fighting with homemade roadside IED s, hardly a weapon suitable for mounting an attack on the USA. America is occupying Afghanistan because the arms industry insists on an ongoing expensive war, and because Obama wants Afghanistan’s minerals and oil.
~ Roedy (born: 1948-02-04 age: 64)
Obama’s plan to get the Afghans to take over the American war against the Taliban is as futile as Hitler convincing the French to fight against the French resistance. Obama forgets that the Taliban have the support of the Afghan majority. Without that support, the Taliban could not possibly have held the combined might of the USA, Britain and Canada at bay. The Karzai puppet government is a gang of monumentally corrupt drug and war lords. The Taliban, to our eyes, are completely unacceptable, but to the Afghans, Karzai is even more so.
~ Roedy (born: 1948-02-04 age: 64)
Oddly, I don’t hear Americans complaining that the Afghans and Iraqis attack other nations unprovoked, use banned weapons, ignore the Geneva conventions and routinely torture P.O.W.s… Yet the Americans do those things openly plus rendition, indefinite imprisonment without trial and target civilians… So who has the moral high ground?
~ Roedy (born: 1948-02-04 age: 64)
Oddly, Obama is willing to kill anyone except Gadafi in attempting to topple his regime.
~ Roedy (born: 1948-02-04 age: 64)
Of course Iran is seeking nuclear weapons! Why? Bush, in his axis of evil speech, promised America would annihilate Iran. Obama has not rescinded that threat. Iraq and Afghanistan fell to American invasion. North Korea did not. That is because North Korea has nukes and Iraq and Afghanistan did not. So naturally Iran sees nukes as necessary for its survival. Further, Iran’s arch enemy Israel has nukes. It needs a deterrent to Israel as well. If you want others to refrain from acquiring nukes, you must get rid of your own.
~ Roedy (born: 1948-02-04 age: 64)
Of course Muslims want to wring American necks. Americans attacked them unprovoked, killed and tortured their kids, and stole the only thing that had of value — their oil. If Americans don’t like that, they should stop doing so many things that provoke revenge.
~ Roedy (born: 1948-02-04 age: 64)
Omar Khadr was a 15-year old Canadian citizen who went to Afghanistan to defend it against illegal American invaders. A group of American soldiers attacked and he allegedly shot and killed one in self defence. American locked him in Guantánamo torture camp and held him without charge or trial. Legally, Khadr should have been treated as a child soldier or failing that at least as a P.O.W. Canada did nothing to help him, and even refused to co-operate in a plea bargain where he could choose between confessing to a long list of crimes and a jail sentence in Canada or indefinite detention. I am absolutely disgusted with both the USA and Canada for their contempt for law. This is pure bully mentality — might makes right. Khadr did nothing wrong. Even if he did shoot an American soldier, he had every right to defend his country of origin and to shoot illegal invaders, especially when they attacked him.
~ Roedy (born: 1948-02-04 age: 64)
On 2002-01-29, in his SOTU axis of evil speech, George W. Bush announced America’s intention to destroy the “axis of evil”, namely Iraq, North Korea and Iran. Iran had no chance against America with the largest and best equipped military on the planet. What were they to do? The only thing that could conceivably hold off the USA is a nuclear deterrent. Nuclear missiles worked for North Korea. Iran is trying them too, but since it can’t possibly deliver a missile to the continental USA, it has to bluff a nuclear strike capability against America’s proxy in the region, Israel, instead, and hope the USA cares enough about Israel to call off the attack on Iran. Iran further made it clear they could easily block the Strait of Hormuz and hence freeze 40% of the planet’s oil shipments which would cripple the USA. To me, all this was inevitable once Bush announced his attack plans. Oddly, for most Americans, Iran’s behaviour seems baffling and irrational. Americans refuse to take any responsibility for helping create this messy and dangerous situation. You can’t announce your plans to murder someone and expect them to take it lying down.
~ Roedy (born: 1948-02-04 age: 64)
On 2003-03-20, the opening day of the Iraq war, I sat with some Iraqi expatriates and watched the USA bomb the residential sections of Baghdad on live video feed. They screamed and wailed as the apartment buildings of friends back home were reduced to rubble, and friends inside were crushed to death before their eyes. If you are an American, you too probably remember that day, sitting with your friends, having a beer and chips and cheering the bomb hits as if they were a video game or a fireworks display. I see you as a decadent Roman emperor watching a blood spectacle for his entertainment. I find you an outrageous liar when you claim your soldiers do not kill children, when you personally spent hours watching them do it live.
~ Roedy (born: 1948-02-04 age: 64)
On 2010-06-14, MSNBC TV news showed a firefight in Afghanistan between American soldiers and the Afghan resistance. The American commander took time out during the battle to do an interview, with the machine guns rattling in the background and two American soldiers hit as we watched. The term theatre of war takes on a new meaning.
~ Roedy (born: 1948-02-04 age: 64)
On 2010-08-18 the USA brought back 60,000 combat soldiers home from Iraq, leaving 50,000 advisors behind. Most of these people have killed or tortured someone, including children. Such killing corrodes and twists the mind. For many soldiers, the excitement of killing is addictive. 60,000 trained killers thrown onto the streets of America without jobs! This is poetic justice for America turning a blind eye all these years to the illegal Iraq war, justifying the carnage because Americans would prefer lower gas prices.
Impersonal killers are like drug addicts. The first time gives them the ultimate high, and after that, no high is as good.
~ Roedy (born: 1948-02-04 age: 64)
On 2011-02-04 I saw a documentary by the CBC Fifth Estate on Wikileaks. One of the videos they showed was the audio and video of American soldiers eagerly killing Iraqi civilians from a helicopter as if they were shooting ducks. It was utterly nauseating perhaps the most revolting thing I have ever seen. The men exhibited the jumpy excitement of dogs eager to mount a bitch. Every American soldier should commit suicide in shame to be associated with an organisation that orchestrates such behaviour. Soldiers brag to each other about how many people they have killed that day. They are as sick as any serial killers.
~ Roedy (born: 1948-02-04 age: 64)
On 2011-03-02 the US Supreme Court ruled that professional lunatic Fred (godHatesFag.com) Phelps could picket military funerals for reasons nothing to do with the soldiers or their families. It is odd that nobody pickets these funerals on the grounds the dead soldiers are war criminals, openly guilty of a capital crime, namely aiding and abetting an aggressive (first strike) illegal war. The families are guilty of living off the avails of these crimes. Americans have their heads in the sand about the legality of their two wars. They don’t want them to be illegal, so they collectively pretend they are legitimate.
~ Roedy (born: 1948-02-04 age: 64)
On 2011-05-25 the US House of Representatives voted 215-204 to continue the Afghan war? What on earth for? Those that voted for it did so because they take money from the defence industry that want perpetual war because it means perpetual profits even when there is no point to the war.
~ Roedy (born: 1948-02-04 age: 64)
On 2011-09-07, I heard a young lady on KUOW NPR (National Public Radio) who said she was much wiser now, and had new respect for US soldiers seeking revenge for 9/11.
She had it right the first time. Even President Bush claimed the 9/11 attackers were Saudi (including bin Laden). The Afghans and Iraqis had nothing to do with it. There is nothing honourable about torturing the dog because the cat peed on the sofa. Further, even if they had done it, is not 10 years, 8 months and 16 days sufficient revenge for an attack that took only a few hours? This is obsessive. The USA has gone mad, abandoning the Geneva conventions, using banned weapons, torturing, targeting children (blindly bombing residences which are usually occupied by mostly children)… They have become more depraved than the 9/11 terrorists.
~ Roedy (born: 1948-02-04 age: 64)
One of the creepiest scenes I see commonly on TV is a little girl racing into the arms of her father, still in camouflage gear, fresh from a war zone where he was murdering and quite possibly raping children only days earlier.
~ Roedy (born: 1948-02-04 age: 64)
One of the creepiest things about Americans is they can torture, rape, use banned weapons such as white phosphorus, land mines, napalm, DU, cluster bombs. They can plunder. They can target children and old people. They can destroy the cropland and ecosystems. They can torment an occupied people with regulations that change hourly without notice and severely punish them for infractions. But Americans apparently can’t understand why their victims might hate them, or if they do have a glimmer they see that hate as a character flaw since hating Americans is always unjustified, on par with hating innocent babies. It is not that American are in total denial about their crimes, but they seem to imagine they are totally forgivable, and always justified because they trust Americans always act with just motivation.
~ Roedy (born: 1948-02-04 age: 64)
One of the dirtiest tricks the military use is an old Pavolvian device. They show footage of WW I and WW II heroism, then immediately show footage of illegal wars in Afghanistan and Iraq. The mind unconsciously transfers the glory of defending the homeland to the modern illegal wars even though they are wars of aggression and resource theft, not defence.
~ Roedy (born: 1948-02-04 age: 64)
One of the most bizarre excuses for the Iraq war that Americans give me is that they are defending their freedom from attack by Iraq. What attack? 9/11? Even president Bush on 2003-09-17, said that a Saddam Hussein had nothing to do with 9/11. Bush said bin Laden, a Saudi, and a small band of Saudi Al-Qaeda was responsible. Everyone saw the USA bomb the residential sections of Baghdad live on CNN on 2003-03-20, the opening day of the war, not the reverse. There was no WMD attack. There were not even any WMDs. Perhaps Americans are offended that Iraqis attacked them when the US military illegally invaded their country and started plundering it. That is defence, not attack. What American freedom did Iraqis interfere with — the American divine right to steal? The war was not even about liberating Iraqis from Saddam since Saddam offered to surrender before the war, and was deposed the instant the war started. If regime change were truly what the war were about, the war should have ended as soon as Saddam was captured on 2003-12-13 ( 8 years and 5 months ago). It raged on even more fiercely, without even a hiccup, indicating there was something else fueling it. Hint what does Iraq have billions of barrels of that the USA thinks it desperately needs, needs badly enough to kill and torture children for? War is about stealing other people’s resources. The rest is patriotic bullshit to sell them to gullible people.
~ Roedy (born: 1948-02-04 age: 64)
One of the most disgusting things about Americans is the only reason they ever avoid war is injured pride when they bog down in a stalemate.
~ Roedy (born: 1948-02-04 age: 64)
One of the reasons both the Afghans and the Iraqis have managed to fight the USA to a stalemate with almost no budget and a small fraction of the population is American racism. Americans underestimate their opponents over and over. A recent example is the way Afghans have hacked the video broadcasts of the predator drones with software. Americans did not take even the most basic precautions because they were sure all the Afghans were technically illiterate.
~ Roedy (born: 1948-02-04 age: 64)
One of the reasons the USA is eager to find an excuse to annihilate Iran is that Iran has been accepting Euros in payment for oil. Given that Iran’s customers include Europe, Russia and China why shouldn’t Iran accept Euros, rubles, and Renminbi? It could be the beginning of the end of the massive exchange commissions the US gets from having the world’s oil transactions transacted in US dollars. No longer, when the US prints money, would it effectively be able to tax (through inflation) all foreign countries that hold American petrodollars. Without massive foreign global petrodollar holdings, the value of the US dollar would collapse. Recall the Ambassador Glaspie incident when in 1990 Bush-41 tricked Saddam Hussein into giving the USA a respectable excuse to invade shortly after Iraq started accepting Euros for oil.
~ Roedy (born: 1948-02-04 age: 64)
One of the silliest arguments I have heard for prolonging the wars in Afghanistan and Iraq is that people will be killed in the chaos following a withdrawal. Of course people will be killed. That became unavoidable on day one of the war. Far more people die in war than in peace, especially a war that goes on and on year after year. Postponing the end of a war won’t avoid that period of chaos. A protracted war will just kill more people on all sides.
~ Roedy (born: 1948-02-04 age: 64)
One of the things I find extremely repulsive about humans is the way they support wars, even when their side is completely in the wrong and is behaving inexcusably badly. They don’t care. It is all about team loyalty. Stealing resources from your neighbours is mandatory when you are powerful enough to get away with it. Humans have no more morality than army ants. We feign horror at how Nazis could possibly behave so badly, when nations today are behaving even worse. This is normal human behaviour. We are such a spiteful species, that it is only a matter of time until we drive ourselves extinct.
~ Roedy (born: 1948-02-04 age: 64)
Only a handful of Americans believe in rule of law. The majority are completely opposed to trying American soldiers for international war crimes, no matter how serious the alleged crimes. Yet that same majority has no problem with hanging Nazis at the end of WW II for those same war crimes. In addition, that same majority feels comfortable with torturing and denying any civil rights to people simply because the military have labeled them terrorists even when they are not even alleged to have killed any civilians.
~ Roedy (born: 1948-02-04 age: 64)
Only a handful of Canadians believe in rule of law. The majority are completely opposed to trying Canadian soldiers for international war crimes, no matter how serious the alleged crimes. Yet that same majority has no problem with hanging Nazis at the end of WW II for those same war crimes. In addition, that same majority feels comfortable with torturing and denying any civil rights to people simply because the military have labeled them “the enemy”.
~ Roedy (born: 1948-02-04 age: 64)
Only Americans march into the desert to wage war wearing forest green and brown camouflage.
~ Roedy (born: 1948-02-04 age: 64)
Other than invading two small countries unprovoked and killing and torturing, waging war by treating the Geneva conventions as quaint, the most shameful thing about being an American is knowing that your country supports dictators who enslave others for America’s financial well being. The hypocrisy would be like acid corroding your heart. How could you possibly love your country?
~ Roedy (born: 1948-02-04 age: 64)
Other than spawning a son who is a child rapist, about the biggest shame that can befall a family is to have a son who is a serial killer. Yet, because of the power of propaganda, parents rarely feel any shame at all when their son (or daughter) did his/her killing for money from the US military.
~ Roedy (born: 1948-02-04 age: 64)
Our leaders callously lied to us that it was necessary to kill children in Afghanistan and Iraq to protect us from bin Laden even though:
Now that bin Laden is dead, what is Obama and Harper’s new excuse for killing kids?
- The alleged 9/11 hijackers were Saudi.
- None of the alleged 9/11 hijackers were Afghan or Iraqi.
- The head of Pakistan’s ISI wired $100K to the lead hijacker.
- There are, by US military estimate, less than 100 Al Qaeda in Afghanistan.
- bin Laden was presumed (correctly) to be hiding out in Pakistan not Afghanistan or Iraq.
~ Roedy (born: 1948-02-04 age: 64)
Over and over I remind Americans they are not immune to international law even if the USA currently refuses to recognise the authority of the world court. I remind that aiding and abetting an aggressive (first strike) war such as Afghanistan or Iraq is a capital war crime. That was the only charge used to hang all the Nazis at the end of WW II at Nuremberg. Americans typically react with fury, as if I had taken the law into my own hands and had executed these war criminals myself. If they are tried, imprisoned or executed, I won’t be the one doing it. I am giving them information to help them stay out of hot water. They are just angry they can’t legally kill whomever they please with immunity, and I am an easy target to take their frustration out on. Elephants get mean when they are blocked from mating. Americans get nasty when anything interferes with them killing kids.
~ Roedy (born: 1948-02-04 age: 64)
Over and over, Cheney got away with conflating terrorists and P.O.W.s He even got away with it when he said on 2009-06-01 that Americans captured terrorists on the battlefield who were trying to kill Americans soldiers (who had illegally invaded Iraq). Those are prisoners of war. A terrorist is someone who kills civilians. Yet no one ever calls Cheney on his endlessly repeated lie.
~ Roedy (born: 1948-02-04 age: 64)
Over the last decade the US military spent well over $2 trillion dollars trying to ensure control of oil in the middle east. I will leave it up to you to decide just how well they succeeded. How much further ahead would America be if instead they had invested that $2 trillion in alternative energy — clean nuclear, solar, wind, geothermal, tidal… then sold the technology to an energy-hungry world? The way it is now, the US has no clean technology and is just as reliant on OPEC (the Organisation of Petroleum Exporting Countries) oil as ever. They will have to spend trillions more to buy the new technology from China, Europe, India and, surprise, OPEC .
~ Roedy (born: 1948-02-04 age: 64)
Parents feel utterly sick when they discover the child they have invested so much effort into raising has become a drug addict, prostitute, rapist or murderer. Yet they feel pride when their child becomes a soldier and butchers (and sometimes rapes and tortures) other people’s children.
~ Roedy (born: 1948-02-04 age: 64)
People often accuse me of being anti-American. It is true I believe the Vietnam, Afghanistan and Iraq wars are inexcusable, and I detest with extreme passion anyone who supports them. Unfortunately, even the most progressive Americans still blindly support the troops even when they commit atrocities. I also hold America in contempt for allowing the health care industry to corrupt its government and to refuse health care to so many citizens. I lived in San Francisco for 6 months in 1985. Almost none of my friends could afford health care, even though all were employed. It horrified me that they went without even the most basic health care. However, there are some Americans I admire . Ones you may have heard of include:
~ Roedy (born: 1948-02-04 age: 64)
- Dr. Noam Chomsky
- Rep. Barney Frank
- Al Gore
- Bill Joy
- Martin Luther King
- Dr. John Cunningham Lilly
- Bill Maher
- Bill Moyers
- Dr. Carl Sagan
- Keith Olbermann
- Gore Vidal
People presume that if Hitler had prevailed we would still be living today under the worst tyranny mankind has ever seen. Consider how many tyrants have fallen or their regimes have fallen with their deaths: Saddam Hussein, Idi Amin, Joseph Stalin, Pol Pot, Hasni Mubarek, Peron, Pinochet, Franco, Mussolini, Nicolae Ceausescu, Zine El Abidine Ben Ali of Tunisia…
~ Roedy (born: 1948-02-04 age: 64)
People torture others because they enjoy torturing them, period. People tortured will say whatever they think will make the pain stop. They will confess any crime, betray anyone, make up any stupid story… Despite silly scenarios on 24, torture does not produce useful information, much less information that can save lives. Torture is illegal. To help sell it to the public, to mollify their natural outrage, FOX and friends produced silly propaganda dramas like 24. I find it hard to believe that Kiefer Sutherland did not understand he was selling his soul by agreeing to star.
~ Roedy (born: 1948-02-04 age: 64)
People who burn, torture, maim and kill kids or who help others to do, so are the most degenerate creatures on the planet. This includes every US, Canadian and British soldier who aided and abetted either of the Afghan or Iraq wars, even if they just peeled potatoes. It is amazing how relentless propaganda has managed to convince so many people these perverts are heroes protecting the freedom of the homeland. The propaganda does not require censorship to be effective because of the power of wishful thinking. People are happy to believe flattering lies about themselves, even obvious lies. This self-deception is even more shameful than the Nazi embrace of Hitler’s propaganda since Hitler hid the truth.
~ Roedy (born: 1948-02-04 age: 64)
Prime Minister Stephen Harper is firing the counselors who look after returning Canadian vets from Afghanistan. One of the counselors went on the CBC and said that the counselors had to work full time to keep the vets from committing suicide. She was worried many of them would kill themselves if the counseling stopped. Why are these vets so suicide prone? Well, why does anyone commit suicide?
- They may believe that there is no hope for happiness in the remainder of their lives. This might apply to soldiers who lost their legs and genitals or those whose injuries made them hideous.
- They may despise themselves and believe they do not deserve to live. They are terminally ashamed of what they did or what they are.
But, you ask, soldiers did horrible things in WWII, such as dropping a nuke on Hiroshima and fire bombing Tokyo. Why did they too not have such a high suicide rate?
- Killing civilians has low military utility; it is just a distraction from the serious job of crippling the enemy’s ability to wage war. However, WWII soldiers convinced themselves any atrocity was justified since the Japanese started the fight. In contrast, the Afghan vets had no such excuse for their atrocities. Afghanistan was no threat whatsoever to Canada. If you doubt, ask yourself why is Canada withdrawing, not surrendering, and why has no not one general fretted about how to defend Canada from Afghanistan?
- Because there was a draft in WWII, there no shortage of soldiers. They would be rotated into combat, and relatively quickly rotated back out, before they burned out. However, in the Afghan war, there was no draft. A draft would have created public opposition to the war, so there was none. As a result, there were nowhere near enough soldiers. Soldiers thus got almost no time off. Neither were they permitted to retire even when they were completely burned out.
The quickest and least shameful way to commit suicide is to deliberately die in battle. This means the suicide rate is under-reported.
I have no sympathy whatsoever for the vets. Ignorance of the law is no excuse. They knew perfectly well that the war was first-strike and that first strike wars are illegal, making them guilty of a capital war crime. They had no motive to go to Afghanistan except bullying, rape, killing and torture. In short, that had no motive but sadism. Now they are feeling so guilty about what they did, they are killing themselves off. I say, let them. What they did to others was far more cruel than what they are doing to themselves to atone. I’m with Harper. People who commit capital crimes don’t deserve free counseling.
~ Roedy (born: 1948-02-04 age: 64)
Recipe to create a terrorist: take one idealistic young man, lock him into an apartheid system where there is no future, imprison and torture his father, rape his mother and sister then napalm his little brother with a twist of white phosphorous. What puzzles me is why there are so many self-styled warriors against terrorism working so hard to create more terrorists.
~ Roedy (born: 1948-02-04 age: 64)
Recruiters are to the military as pimps are to prostitutes. They bully and lie to bring in new gullible players to a filthy immoral activity.
~ Roedy (born: 1948-02-04 age: 64)
Regime change by force works only when the new regime is clearly better than the old. That is not true in Afghanistan. Hamid Karzai is the biggest heroin dealer on the planet. He is corrupt to the core. Why did the USA back such a loser crook? He was ex-Unocal and the Americans wanted a royalty free pipeline route for Unocal. He was pro-heroin, and has $1 trillion a year in sales to spread around to his friends.
~ Roedy (born: 1948-02-04 age: 64)
Republican Christians ignore evidence of holes in the official 9/11 story. They ignore holes in the bible story. They vote to preserve the privilege of the elites. Why? They have been trained since birth to defer to authority even when authority is apparently incorrect.
~ Roedy (born: 1948-02-04 age: 64)
Republicans claim they are spending billions to make Afghanistan a “better place” by bombing its inhabitants. Yet they won’t spend a dime for school lunches, or a penny for malaria control in Rwanda. It seems they have largess only for projects that make corrupt arms contractors rich and kill people, where they can plunder trillions in oil or minerals as a side effect.
~ Roedy (born: 1948-02-04 age: 64)
Republicans promote war, theft of other nations’ natural resources, torture, abrogation of civil liberties, use of banned weapons, letting people without sufficient funds for medical care die, persecuting gays, ensuring the rich get richer and the poor get poorer, permitting corporations to lie to and harm their customers, the replacement of democracy by corporatocracy or theocracy… This is not a political party; it is a demonic cult.
~ Roedy (born: 1948-02-04 age: 64)
Revenge allows a war to continue forever. Once a war gets started, the aggressor forgets history, and justifies further atrocity simply because the defender resisted him. American soldiers take this a step further. When they invade, they call it “self defence” if the country they are invading offers any resistance.
~ Roedy (born: 1948-02-04 age: 64)
Reverend Al Sharpton called the SEAL (Sea Air Land)s killed when the Taliban shot down A Chinook helicopter “American heroes defending America”. That is simply not true. America attacked Afghanistan, not the reverse. Afghanistan has no means to attack America. They fight with IED s, not battleships and bombers. Afghanistan had no part in 9/11. That attack was illegal by both the Nuremberg principles and by a UN treaty. Anyone aiding or abetting the war is a war criminal guilty of a capital crime, hardly a hero.
~ Roedy (born: 1948-02-04 age: 64)
Richard Holbrooke, US ambassador to Afghanistan, claims only 9% of Afghans support the Taliban. This is not credible. How on earth could 9% of Afghans defeat the remaining 91% of them, the USA (which has the biggest military on earth spending billions every month on the Afghan invasion, with the most advanced military technology on earth, bloody-minded enough to use banned weapons and torture on a routine basis), Britain, Canada…?
~ Roedy (born: 1948-02-04 age: 64)
Robert Bales confessed to butchering 9 Afghan children and 7 adult civilians as they slept. He will probably try an insanity defence saying he had a sudden psychotic break. If I were on the jury, this would probably not fly with me. He had three tours of duty killing civilians in ones and twos. That shows plenty of premeditation. The evidence that he had collaborators will also throw a monkey wrench into that defence.
~ Roedy (born: 1948-02-04 age: 64)
Seeing a torturer tortured is an unsatisfactory resolution, even when the torture is delivered by the natural universe, such as a festering leg (King Henry VIII) or Cheney’s artificial heart. The torturer simply endures his pain. He does not see his torment in any way connected with the pain he has inflicted on others.
~ Roedy (born: 1948-02-04 age: 64)
Serial killers (including soldiers) usually take souvenirs: jewelry, underwear, clothing, ears, penises, eyes, fingers, toes… sometimes using them as masturbation aids. Animal killers take souvenirs too. They take the entire carcass to professionals for long term preservation so they ran relive the kill over and over.
~ Roedy (born: 1948-02-04 age: 64)
Since German vets of WW II, American vets of the Vietnam War, the Afghan war and the Iraq war all fought in illegal first strike wars, violating the Geneva conventions, I don’t see why any of them deserve respect, honour or any form of support. They are all war criminals. That they were just following orders is no excuse.
~ Roedy (born: 1948-02-04 age: 64)
Since WW II, it is never about freedom. For the soldiers, war as about sadism. For the backers, it is about profit.
~ Roedy (born: 1948-02-04 age: 64)
Since WWII, who has been invading and occupying whom? The USA attacked Korea, Viet Nam, Laos, Cambodia, Grenada, Nicaragua, Afghanistan and Iraq. Israel took territory from Palestine, Egypt, Jordan, Syria and Lebanon. The USSR attacked Poland, Czechoslovakia, Hungary and Afghanistan. Iraq attacked Iran. Canada attacked Afghanistan. Given that the USA and Israel attack, occupy and plunder considerably more often than the average nation, is it any wonder that other nations fear them? Given their past bad behaviour, obviously, they especially cannot be trusted with nukes. Yet they claim they should have them, that they desperately need them, but no one else should be entrusted with them.
~ Roedy (born: 1948-02-04 age: 64)
So how is the occupation of Afghanistan going after 10 years and 7 months ? The war is still going, even though its alleged goal, killing bin Laden has already been accomplished. It has been humiliating for the biggest military on earth to be stalemated by an impoverished third world country less than a tenth its size.
The USA demanded Afghanistan capture and turn over bin Laden without the extradition treaty and extradition hearing required by international law. It turned out Bush was demanding the impossible. It turned out bin Laden was extremely hard to track down and, further, he was not even in Afghanistan. Because Afghanistan did not instantly comply to this illegal demand, Bush used it as justification for an invasion on 2001-10-07. Unocal still does not have its free pipeline right of way, one of the major unstated motives for the war. Heroin production is up from near zero to #1 in the world, over a trillion dollars a year. The drug trade has ensnared Afghan and American alike in massive corruption. Even Secretary of State Hillary Clinton calls Afghanistan a narcostate. On 2011-05-01, a strike force of Seals (a type of high-status soldier) assassinated bin Laden in Pakistan. Now we will never find out how he pulled off the greatest terrorist attack of all time, 9/11, with his rag tag band of cave dwellers, a feat German intelligence considered utterly impossible.
As of 2011-08-27, the Afghans managed to kill 2,613 invaders. There is no democracy. The country is run by a dictator, Hamid Karzai and his family. Afghanistan has become the most corrupt nation on earth.
The USA has spent more money on the occupation than it would take to fix most American and planetary ills. The American public still erroneously blame Afghanistan for 9/11 even though they know perfectly that the hijackers were Saudi — not an Afghan among them, idiotically conflating all Muslims. Americans are still in deep denial that they fought a completely pointless and illegal war.
~ Roedy (born: 1948-02-04 age: 64)
So how is the occupation of Iraq going after 9 years and 2 months ? The war is still going, even though its alleged goal, toppling Saddam, was accomplished almost immediately. It has been humiliating for the biggest military on earth to be stalemated by an impoverished third world country less than a tenth its size.
Just before the invasion, Saddam offered to surrender. Bush turned him down and bombed Baghdad’s residential neighbourhoods on 2003-03-20, broadcast live on CNN. Saddam immediately went into hiding. Saddam was captured in his “spider hole” on 2003-12-13. He was hanged on 2006-12-30. We discovered that Bush was indeed lying about Saddam’s nukes, ambiguously referred to as WMD s. Saddam did not even have any poison gas left over from that George H.W. Bush gave him on credit to attack Iran.
As of 2010-05-08, the Iraqis managed to kill 4,404 invading Americans. There is no democracy, unless you count the sort of democracy enjoyed in the Democratic People’s Republic of Korea. Iraq has become one of the most corrupt nations on earth.
From a booty point of view, things went rather well. The famous Iraq National Museum was looted. On 2011-06-23 (the same day Obama announced the troop withdrawal) Iraq’s remaining oil reserves were sold off to American and European oil companies. Monsanto now owns all of Iraq’s seed genome and has a monopoly to sell seeds in Iraq which it contaminates with a terminator gene to force repurchase each year. Farmers can no longer use their own seeds they have developed over millennia.
The USA has spent more money on the occupation than it would take to fix most American and planetary ills. It is gradually coming clear to the American public that Iraq had absolutely nothing to do with 9/11. That notion got started with Cheney’s dissembling. Americans are beginning to admit that they fought a completely pointless and illegal war. Americans excuse themselves for the error my claiming the only good Muslim is a dead Muslim, whether his country attacked or not.
~ Roedy (born: 1948-02-04 age: 64)
So long as the USA remains embroiled in two illegal wars, the Captain America comic book character should be considered a villain. It is pretty sick selling illegal wars to 5 year olds.
~ Roedy (born: 1948-02-04 age: 64)
Soldiers and criminals of all types often excuse their actions with the words, “What choice did I have?” To anyone else, the bloody path they chose is unthinkable. To anyone else, they made the choice for selfishness, greed and cruelty time after time until it lead them into a situation even they could not stomach.
~ Roedy (born: 1948-02-04 age: 64)
Soldiers are prone to gang rape. About three men take turns raping a girl. They cut off parts of her anatomy. This makes no sense morally or from a Darwinian point of view. Injuring the girl makes it more difficult for her to raise any offspring that may arise from the rape. The men can infect each other with their semen. The blood from the girl can infect the men. But then soldiers are not the sharpest knives in the drawer.
~ Roedy (born: 1948-02-04 age: 64)
Soldiers are some of the densest people you will ever encounter. It is as if they all had frontal lobotomies. They insist they never kill anyone, just protect themselves in self defence. They even deny they are hired killers. (It would be preposterous for a country to send its soldiers just to get shot at. They could keep them at home much more cheaply with the same effect.) They kill children, but excuse themselves on the grounds they did not really mean to kill the kids. They napalm a house full of kids, but excuse themselves on the grounds they did not really wish the kids harm. What bullshit rationalisation! With that kind of logic they could assassinate the president claiming they were just trying the kill the rose bugs. They talk only to each other, and manage to convince each other that atrocities that would make a Nazi blush are perfectly OK, including actions that are patently illegal (aggressive war, Geneva convention violations, banned weapons, torture…) They hook up with psychotic women who get off on their crimes, and egg them on, much like the women attracted to serial killers on death row. There is no lower form of life than a soldier. No only has he sold his soul, he has sold his conscience.
~ Roedy (born: 1948-02-04 age: 64)
Soldiers are stuck at level 1 or 2 of Lawrence Kohlberg’s levels of moral development.
~ Roedy (born: 1948-02-04 age: 64)
Soldiers are the most evil type of serial murderer. They gain little from their murders but an adrenalin rush. They kill in numbers that dwarf a Gacey, Dahmer or Bundy. They cause maximum pain for others in return for minimal pleasure to themselves. That is even evil than the killer driven by uncontrollable urges to kill. Soldiers are miserable bastards whose sole goal in life is creating misery for others.
~ Roedy (born: 1948-02-04 age: 64)
Soldiers like killing so much, they will prop up dictators they hate and butcher their friends.
~ Roedy (born: 1948-02-04 age: 64)
Soldiers may fool their mothers that they are heading off to butcher children in Afghanistan and Iraq to “defend freedom” whatever that means. But we all know why they are really doing it. They like bullying, torturing, raping and/or killing. If they indulge these desires at home they could end in prison. If they indulge them in Afghanistan or Iraq, they could get a medal.
~ Roedy (born: 1948-02-04 age: 64)
Soldiers murder children and shoot dogs by the tens of thousands. Then they film a tear-jerker documentary about taking one Afghan or Iraqi child to hospital in the USA for some expensive operation or go to great lengths to film bringing back one dog to the USA. This is hypocrisy raised to the Monsieur Creosote level.
~ Roedy (born: 1948-02-04 age: 64)
Soldiers often claim that only those who have been in uniform are entitled to have an opinion on war. That is like saying only pedophiles are entitled to have an opinion on child molesting.
~ Roedy (born: 1948-02-04 age: 64)
Soldiers often offer lame excuses for enlisting and going to Afghanistan or Iraq to butcher children who were no threat to anyone. Commonly they whine they were having trouble finding work. They refuse to acknowledge that not only is killing kids morally reprehensible, it is illegal. Aiding an abetting an aggressive (first strike) war is a capital crime. Their excuse is even less valid than had Nazi soldiers used it. There is no gun forcing Canadian or Americans to enlist. The could have made more money in the Mafia or a drug gang. At least then they would be killing and torturing children.
~ Roedy (born: 1948-02-04 age: 64)
Some soldiers have assured me that the only reason they kill people (innocent and otherwise) is because they are paid to and they can’t get any other job. You could say that equally well for someone who signed up as a hit man with the Mafia. Mafiosi rarely butcher children, so such soldiers are morally inferior to Mafia hit men. This is hardly a honourable excuse for murder. But I don’t believe even this lame excuse for a minute. The pay is terrible, the hours exhausting, the conditions miserable, the locations hellish and the risks to health, life and limb excessive. They enlist despite the low pay and terrible conditions. In Canada, they enlist even when the pay is lower than welfare. In other words, they enlist because they either like killing or enjoy being ordered to kill.
~ Roedy (born: 1948-02-04 age: 64)
Steven Harper wants to make the biggest procurement in Canadian history of 65 F35 fighter jets. Just who would Canada fight with these weapons and what weapons would the enemy be using? The USA is one candidate, but these jets would be no match to the American’s overwhelming numbers of even more advanced jets. Incursions on Canadian sovereignty will mostly likely be oil drilling rigs and ruggedised cargo ships disputing Canada’s claim to jurisdiction. F35s are not an appropriate response.
~ Roedy (born: 1948-02-04 age: 64)
Suicide attacks are a rational strategy against American soldiers because these soldiers are so well protected, trained and equipped, that every one taken out of action will save hundreds of lives. There is nothing more immoral about a suicide attack than an attack where the attacker survives. We award bravery medals to those who sacrifice their lives in suicidally dangerous attacks, yet when our enemies do it, we pretend they are crazed and cowardly.
~ Roedy (born: 1948-02-04 age: 64)
Surely by now Americans are sick to death of the consequences of drug smuggling from Mexico. The biggest Mexican drug lord at the time of writing is Ismael Zambada García. Imagine if Obama said to Mexico, “You have 48 hours to capture him and hand him over. Screw the extradition hearing. We are not prepared to present no steekin’ evidence”. The Mexicans would be aghast, scarcely able to believe their ears. They might offer to let the America have a go at him, protesting “What you are demanding is almost impossible. García is no ordinary criminal, and he may well be hiding outside Mexico.” Then Obama would invade and America would occupy Mexico ever after and sell off all its resources, especially oil. I think you might find a 10,000 Americans who would protest Obama’s behaviour, even if just on the Tea Party everything-Obama-does-is-wrong principle. Yet Bush did something even more illegal. He demanded the same thing of Afghanistan, but was also unwilling to negotiate an extradition treaty first. Further, the USA refused Afghanistan’ offer hold an ad hoc extradition hearing to present evidence. Further, the Afghans could have correctly said, “The American CIA trained and funded Noriega, Saddam and bin Laden. They are your problem to put down, not ours.” The only American who dares to question this illegality is Noam Chomsky
~ Roedy (born: 1948-02-04 age: 64)
Surely doctors who collaborated with the Americans in torturing prisoners have forfeited the right ever to practice medicine again.
~ Roedy (born: 1948-02-04 age: 64)
Terrorism is defined as killing civilians with the intent of changing their political affiliation. Thus Obama is a much bigger terrorist than Osama since he ordered killed far more civilians. However, because of the magic of mass communications, people pretend Obama’s murders don’t count as terrorism. One explanation is that Americans think only attacks against Americans count as terrorism. Lives of people from other countries, especially third world countries have no values and hence killing them for any reason does not count as terrorism.
~ Roedy (born: 1948-02-04 age: 64)
Terrorist revenge attacks against the USA are wrong because they are vigilante justice and because they hurt randomly selected people who did no intentional harm. They are not wrong because the US military is innocent of terrorism.
~ Roedy (born: 1948-02-04 age: 64)
Terrorists (possibly false flag or with inside help) killed 3500 Americans and destroyed two buildings and damaged one other. The Americans, in a flurry of revenge illegally and irrationally attacked two countries that had nothing to do with the attack. Americans have bombed Afghanistan and Iraq to rubble and killed millions of people and routinely tortured POWs. Yet they imagine these acts do not rate even one American civilian death in revenge? Why do Americans think everyone else is so much freer of the desire for revenge than they are? Why don’t they notice their own actions are far more outrageously malevolent than even 9/11 was?
~ Roedy (born: 1948-02-04 age: 64)
Terrorists throughout the world are cheering as American politicians do their work for them by bankrupting the USA with endless, costly, pointless, illegal wars, destroying civil liberties as payoffs to corporations and denying medical care to desperately ill US citizens.
~ Roedy (born: 1948-02-04 age: 64)
Testosterone makes males fight, dominate and bully each other. It makes them take life-threatening risks. It makes them abandon their mates to seek new ones. The levels of testosterone in human males were optimum for life as a caveman, but might be considered poisonous for an officer in charge of a nuclear arsenal.
~ Roedy (born: 1948-02-04 age: 64)
That fact that the word warrior is not a pejorative is an indication mankind will have a short reign, as species go. He won’t be able to resist the ancient urge to kill off his neighbours.
~ Roedy (born: 1948-02-04 age: 64)
The 9/11 attacks were over in hours. America’s revenge has dragged out for 10 years, 7 months and 20 days killing millions of people who had absolutely nothing do with 9/11. Even President Bush admitted the Afghans and the Iraqis had nothing to do with 9/11. He claimed the attackers, including bin Laden, were Saudi. Americans are utterly insane to be proud of themselves for this behaviour. Not even the Nazis were that obsessed.
~ Roedy (born: 1948-02-04 age: 64)
The Afghan war has been dragging on for 10 years, 8 months and 16 days. Those who profit from the war have argued again and again for just another year. Surely, if something could be done in a year, it would have been accomplished long ago. These calls for extensions are just excuses to continue draining the treasury into the bank accounts of Monsanto (ne´ Xe and Blackwater), General Dymanics, Halliburton, Lockheed etc. The Afghans defeated the invading Russians. They will also fight until they defeat the Americans. Like any people they can’t tolerate the tyranny of occupation and a puppet government.
~ Roedy (born: 1948-02-04 age: 64)
The Afghan war was a classic bait and switch. Bush started the war ostensibly to catch bin Laden. It quickly come clear bin Laden was not in Afghanistan, and by the US military’s own estimate there were less than 100 Al Qaeda in Afghanistan. Did the war stop? Nope. Bush redirected it against the Taliban, presumably to wrest from them the prize of prizes, the “Saudi Arabia of lithium (and other strategic minerals)” and to revive the trillion dollar a year heroin trade the Taliban had utterly squashed.
~ Roedy (born: 1948-02-04 age: 64)
The America military tell me nukes are weapons of peace. If that were true, then they should want to see that everyone gets one. They are weapons of hegemony.
~ Roedy (born: 1948-02-04 age: 64)
The American media have worked very hard to hide from the people the fact that both the Afghan and Iraq wars are illegal. Aiding and abetting an aggressive, (first strike), war is a capital (hanging) war crime. Even when notables like UN Secretaries General Boutros Boutros-Ghali or Kofi Annan or lead Nuremberg prosecutor Benjamin Ferencz explain this, TV networks do not report it.
When I point this out to informed Americans, they remind me that the USA does not recognise the authority of the World Court. This means the USA does not hand over suspected war criminals to the court, as other countries are required by treaty to do. This stance does not protect American citizens from prosecution. It is bit like a powerful bank robber imagining his gang is immune to prosecution because the gang does not recognise the authority of the police. War criminals Saddam, Milosevic and Eichmann all protested they did not recognise the authority of the court. It got them nowhere.
Just as few rank and file Nazis were ever prosecuted, so it is mainly the higher ups in the USA who are most at risk. Perhaps they will be nabbed when carelessly traveling internationally. Cheney avoids European travel for just that reason. There is also the matter of just how much the USA could intimated the World Court, if, for example, a high profile criminal like Dick Cheney were captured and tried. The USA could conceivably bomb World Court signatory countries to get its way, or send in a large contingent of Navy seals to spring him.
But that does not change the fact any friend or loved one who serves in those two wars is has committed a capital crime whether they are ever prosecuted or not. It is preposterous to claim any act they committed as part of that crime was heroic. It is like talking of heroic bank robbers.
~ Roedy (born: 1948-02-04 age: 64)
The American military has announced it does not want any outside interference with the internal affairs of Iraq. Oh really? Isn’t the American occupation of Iraq and appointing the provisional government “outside interference”?
~ Roedy (born: 1948-02-04 age: 64)
The American military is like a teenager who spends $30 winning a $3 plush toy at a carnival. The American military have become obsessed with winning the Afghan and Iraq wars, the have lost site of the prize (lithium in Afghanistan and oil in Iraq). Like the teenager they are dragging the fight one merely to save face.
~ Roedy (born: 1948-02-04 age: 64)
The American occupation put all of Iraq’s oil resources up for auction to American and European oil interests on the very day Obama announced the end of the Iraq war. No American news organisation commented on the “co-incidence”. What does this tell you about the ability of Americans to look at themselves honestly?
~ Roedy (born: 1948-02-04 age: 64)
The American people have accumulated a huge amount of bad karma by passively acceding to the illegal, unprovoked invasions of Afghanistan and Iraq, torture, the abandonment of the Geneva conventions of war, the targeting of civilians and the use of banned weapons such as depleted uranium, cluster bombs, white phosphorus, napalm and land mines. The American people accumulated even more bad karma than the Germans under Hitler. The Germans had two excuses that the Americans did not have.
- Hitler hid most of his atrocities from the people. Americans, in contrast, sat around their TVs on 2003-03-20 eating popcorn, cheering and watching as American aircraft bombed the residential neighbourhoods of Baghdad, thus targeting mainly children. Americans were as decadent as any ancient Romans. I was with some Iraqi ex-patriates at the time at a TV station. They were screaming and crying as they saw the homes and apartment blocks of their familiar neighbourhoods blown to bits. They felt Bush had betrayed them. He promised liberation from Saddam, and now he was attacking Iraq’s children. I will never forgive the American people for their callousness on that day.
- Had the Germans protested, they would have been tortured and/or killed.
The Americans have behaved so badly, I don’t think they deserve to continue to exist as a nation. On a subconscious level, they seem to acknowledge this. They are committing mass financial suicide and are dismantling their democracy.
~ Roedy (born: 1948-02-04 age: 64)
The Americans fought the Chinese to a stalemate in Korea. Later the Chinese/Vietnamese defeated them in Vietnam. How would they do today? China has acquired massive manufacturing capability. The USA has shed its factories. The USA is $14 trillion. The Chinese own much of that debt. The American success in WW II came because Roosevelt was able to rapidly commandeer America’s manufacturing industries for the war effort. The USA can’t even prevail in wars against unfunded and unarmed resistance such as in Afghanistan and Iraq. Americans have a bloated opinion of their military might. They are in a position much like Britain in its sunset years, dreaming of empires long gone.
~ Roedy (born: 1948-02-04 age: 64)
The ancestors of the victims of Alexander the Great and Genghis Khan are still resentful about it to this day. Modern day leaders of the USA, Russia and Israel should remember the consequences when they imagine brutality is the best policy.
~ Roedy (born: 1948-02-04 age: 64)
The ancient Mayans would pop the finger joints of captured kings, bind them into a ball and roll them down the temple steps; the Nazis would work and starve Jews to death. The Americans specialise in killing and torturing children, with cluster bombs, white phosphorus, land mines, bombs, bio warfare (including destroying water, sewage and electric plants) and napalm. I find the war crimes of the Americans the most odious. It is one thing to exact torment on your opponents and quite another on bystanders. Like the ancient Mayans, Americans don’t just kill, the want the deaths to be as painful as possible.
~ Roedy (born: 1948-02-04 age: 64)
The ancient Romans believed in group punishment, punishing people for the crimes of others. If the resistance attacked a Roman soldier, the Romans would line up everyone in the village and kill every tenth person, a process they called decimating. Hitler did the same thing killing one in thirty. Americans and Israelis have their own variant. They kill at least 100 random children, usually with explosives, whose parents need have no connection to the resistance at all. They call this defending themselves and feel quite self righteous about the moral propriety of punishing children for the crimes of unrelated adults.
~ Roedy (born: 1948-02-04 age: 64)
The ancient Romans used to enjoy watching people being eaten by wild beasts. Modern Americans use napalm and white phosphorus to torture and kill in one operation. The idea is to terrorise their victims into submission after watching their children die hideous deaths. But the American soldiers found this treatment too rich for their stomachs. To protect themselves, they invented unmanned drones like the Predator aircraft and the Northrop Grumman Firescout, so they could murder and torture sitting on a couch slurping cokes and gorging on pizzas with no more emotional involvement than they would have dispatching zombies in a video game. Americans are so full of themselves they cannot see how they have become just more decadent than Nazis. The primary function of these unmanned craft is to suppress compassion, regret and restraint.
~ Roedy (born: 1948-02-04 age: 64)
The ancient Romans watched gladiators fight to the death and the slaughter of wild animals from all over the known world. They considered it first class entertainment. Modern day Americans watch fights, rapes, torture, murder, beheadings, animal killing… on TV, news, movies, Youtube, and video games. They too consider it entertainment. Even when simulated with special effects, the result is the same, increased callousness toward the suffering of others, and an addictive demand to view and participate in ever more sadistic violence.
~ Roedy (born: 1948-02-04 age: 64)
The basic facts of Afghanistan are these: The USA plus Nato has tried for over a decade to conquer Afghanistan. It has poured billions of dollars into it. They have installed the crookedest dictator on the planet as their preferred leader. Even with all this effort, at best the US has managed a stalemate. When US and NATO leave, Americans claim that Karzai will prevail. That makes no sense. How could the war go better for Karzai without help that with it? He will be hang from his thumbs or flee to hide in luxury on his drug money. The Taliban ground down the Russians and they have ground down the USA. The Taliban are fighting for their country. Americans can’t even tell you why they are fighting. The American troops have no motivation but the pleasure of fighting. They have no delusions left their war has something to do with defending the USA.
~ Roedy (born: 1948-02-04 age: 64)
The biggest dent the USA could put in terrorism would be to stop killing civilians. They kill far more than anyone else.
~ Roedy (born: 1948-02-04 age: 64)
The bright side of pointless conflicts like the Iraq war is that the most sadistic and stupid members of society sign up to become maimed, disfigured, shell shocked and killed, thus taking those vicious genes out of the pool. At the very least, these types are blocked from breeding for their term of service.
~ Roedy (born: 1948-02-04 age: 64)
The C.I.A., since the Bush years, has been secretly using Predator drones to assassinate people in Pakistan. This is surely no secret for those being targeted or for the citizens of Pakistan. From whom is this information supposedly being withheld? Obviously the citizen of the USA. How can that be justified? Claiming national security is obviously BS. The intent is to manipulate public opinion about the Afghan and the Iraq war.
~ Roedy (born: 1948-02-04 age: 64)
The cheapest way to deter terrorist attacks is to stop committing atrocities. Americans have this notion that they are innocent victims of irrational religious violence. They refuse to acknowledge that they commit most of the theft, torture and killing in the world. Whatever happens to the USA is token retribution.
~ Roedy (born: 1948-02-04 age: 64)
The citizens of ancient Rome did little work. They sponged off their colonies/provinces, taking the tribute as their natural due as Roman citizens. They maintained this privilege with an unusually brutal and efficient army. Americans are similar.
~ Roedy (born: 1948-02-04 age: 64)
The classic advice in war is to know your enemy, to get to know how he thinks in precise and accurate detail. However, I have found the people in the USA and Canada who are at war against the Muslim world, prefer to believe inaccurate caricatures instead. They have absolutely no interest in what motivates those they slaughter, any more than a rancher is interested in what motivates the cattle he butchers.
~ Roedy (born: 1948-02-04 age: 64)
The considerable honour of enlisting in the National Guard has been lost since such enlistment is now tantamount to agreeing to kill innocent people in Afghanistan and Iraq if so ordered.
~ Roedy (born: 1948-02-04 age: 64)
The Cuban missile crisis of 1962 was by far the most terrifying event of my life. The world escaped nuclear war only because a Soviet submarine captain refused orders to fire his nuclear weapons. Oddly, as the cold war thawed, the USA stepped up its blockade on Cuba. In 1992 the Torricelli act made it illegal for a ship to dock in the USA for 160 days after docking in Cuba. In 1996 the Helms-Burton act sanctioned any country that traded with Cuba. On 2004-06-04 the USA allocated $59 million dollars for anti-Castro propaganda. To top it off, the US attempted to assassinate Castro over 600 times. Why is this? Today, Cuba presents little military threat to the USA. It can’t be that Castro is a dictator. The USA has happily supported hundreds of many other dictators throughout the world including the leaders of Afghanistan, Saudi Arabia, Chile, Indonesia, the Philippines, Jordan, Zimbabwe, Brazil, Nicaragua, the Shah of Iran, Batista in pre-revolutionary Cuba, even Saddam Hussein in pre Gulf war Iraq… The reason is the USA wants to return to the way things were prior to 1959, when the USA picked the puppet dictators who ran Cuba for the benefit of the USA, treating it the way Britain used to exploit its colonies.
~ Roedy (born: 1948-02-04 age: 64)
The denial of Americans is so powerful, that they will deny American soldiers have ever killed any children in Afghanistan or Iraq based on a single propaganda photo of a soldier handing out candy or holding a child. They ignore the fact they funded $1 trillion in aircraft, bombs, white phosphorus, napalm, tanks, rifles… to pound these countries to rubble. They ignore the photos of bombed homes or dead children. They will even ignore the televised deliberate killing of children during the killing of al-Zarqawi on the bombing of the residential sections of Baghdad broadcast live on the opening day of the war.
~ Roedy (born: 1948-02-04 age: 64)
The Dick Cheney of the ancient world was Solon, leader of Athens. He killed everyone in the city of Kira by poisoning their water supply with hellebore, a plant with poisonous alkaloids in its roots.
~ Roedy (born: 1948-02-04 age: 64)
The endless celebration of victimhood on 9/11 is downright pathological. It has lead Americans to do malevolent things they would never normally do. In revenge for 9/11, they attacked two nations who President George W. Bush admitted had nothing to do with 9/11. The 9/11 attacks were over in hours. The revenge has gone on 24/7 for a 10 years and 7 months with no end in sight involving attacks with 25 different types of aircraft. It is madness.
You might argue that Americans support the Afghan war in solidarity with Muslim women. If that were true, American would not be in last place in developed nations in terms of foreign aid. Americans are not generous anywhere else, especially to Muslim women. Further, Americans would not have installed dictator Hamid Karzai allowing him to enforce the same Shari’a law as the Taliban. You might argue that Americans support the Iraq war to overthrow a dangerous dictator. But if that were true, the Iraq war would have ended on 2003-12-13 when Saddam was captured.
What is even crazier is Americans are proud of the fact they used banned weapons, roasted alive innocent Muslim children, routinely tortured detainees, violated the quaint Geneva conventions… The endless craving for revenge, fueled by the cult of victimhood, has turned Americans into monsters even worse than those who attacked on 9/11. The only way to atone for this mega-crime and to ensure America never abuses its power that way again, would be too dissolve the union.
~ Roedy (born: 1948-02-04 age: 64)
The essential character of the soldier comes clear when discipline breaks down, such as in the Congo where soldiers rape women and then poke sticks and guns in their vaginas to destroy the wall between the vagina, uterus and rectum leaving them in pain and incontinent for life.
~ Roedy (born: 1948-02-04 age: 64)
The expression “the blind leading the blind” comes from WW I. Soldiers blinded by poison gas attacks would be lead around in chains, each soldier with his hand on the shoulder of the soldier in front of him.
~ Roedy (born: 1948-02-04 age: 64)
The fashion is to glorify soldiers as if they were heroic firefighters. But they are more like street gang members. They kill, maim and torture without any inkling why such action might be necessary or pointless. Some soldiers in WW II fought both for and against Hitler. Soldiers fight because they like hurting other people. It is a relatively rare when the fighting actually helps to defend their countries. The outrageous aggression and brutality of the American soldiers is counterproductive. It is helping to fuel a word-wide hatred of America and a desire so see her humbled, hardly a wise self-defence move.
~ Roedy (born: 1948-02-04 age: 64)
The German people looked the other way when their country illegally invaded country after country. They rolled over for the Nazis. This is to their eternal shame. Even a higher proportion of Americans did exactly the same thing when the their country illegally invaded Afghanistan and Iraq. They imagined that disapproving was sufficient. They behaved no better than the Germans. The Germans had more excuse. No American would have been shot for resisting.
~ Roedy (born: 1948-02-04 age: 64)
The herd instinct is so powerful, that even Bill Moyers bought into the lie that Afghanistan attacked the USA first, thus justifying the invasion. That would be like justifying invading and plundering Mexico’s or Columbia’s natural resources because of the actions of drug smugglers. That Nazis were able to bamboozle their entire population to follow a path of evil is more understandable.
~ Roedy (born: 1948-02-04 age: 64)
The hypocrisy of America never ceases to amaze me. At the end of WWII , at Nuremberg, they made up new laws, and applied them retroactively to hang the Germans. Then they broke those same laws repeatedly themselves, yet never permitted any American citizen ever to be tried.
~ Roedy (born: 1948-02-04 age: 64)
The hypocrisy of Americans never ceases to amaze me. They give medals to Americans who go on suicide missions, but spit on anyone who resists American invasion the same way.
~ Roedy (born: 1948-02-04 age: 64)
The illegal American occupation of Iraq has been going on for 9 years, 2 months and 7 days , since 2003-03-20. America signed a treaty agreeing not to attack other nations unless attacked first.
~ Roedy (born: 1948-02-04 age: 64)
The image to the right is a centrifuge. North Korea unveiled third generation centrifuges capable of enriching uranium which could be used for nuclear power or nuclear bombs. The United States has cried foul. It is regrettable but hardly foul. Why? In his state of the union axis of evil speech, President Bush promised to annihilate Iraq, Iran and North Korea. Iraq is rubble. Iran and North Korea are still standing but only because they have a tiny nuclear threat. Obama has not rescinded Bush’s promise. The United States has enough nukes to wipe out humanity many times over. It and its nuclear puppet Israel threaten other nations with preemptive nuclear annihilation. Under those conditions, you could make a case it becomes rational for other nations to seek a nuclear deterrent. It is irrational for the USA to expect other nations to disarm while it maintains such a grossly lethal arsenal, not just a minimal deterrent.
~ Roedy (born: 1948-02-04 age: 64)
The image to the right is Michael York. In the 1968 film The Strange Affair, criminals attacked P.C. Peter Strange, played by Michael York, by boring holes in his cheeks with a power drill. Now we discover the Bush administration used power drills as an interrogation technique.
~ Roedy (born: 1948-02-04 age: 64)
The image to the right shows an American soldier displaying a severed Iraqi arm hung in a mosque to terrorise the Iraqi resistance. If the photo were in black and white, you might easily conclude the soldier was a Nazi.
~ Roedy (born: 1948-02-04 age: 64)
The Iraq war amounts to home invasion on a massive scale, yet Americans can’t understand why the rest of the world, including the international court, considers what they are doing criminal.
~ Roedy (born: 1948-02-04 age: 64)
Can you see the pattern of how human psychology works to explain how different people look on the exact same deeds and see something completely different?
The Japanese felt no guilt about attacking Pearl Harbour. Americans believe the attack on Pearl Harbour will “live in infamy”. Canadians think the Americans nuking two cities was excessive. Americans think nuking Hiroshima and Nagasaki served the Japs damn well right. There was no other choice. Canadians think that Americans attacking Iraq without provocation was wrong. It was especially bad to pretend it was done out of nuclear self defence. Americans think that attacking Iraq was a noble deed. It was a very generous gift to give to the people of Iraq. Germans thought that attacking Poland was a noble deed. Americans consider Hitler putting Jews in concentration camps and starving them to death the biggest atrocity in recorded history. Germans saw the treatment of Jews in WW II as justified. Germans thought is was ok to beat up Jews and confiscate their property. Americans think it is ok to mass-torture Muslims, kill their children and confiscate their property. Canadians insist their soldiers never kill anyone in Afghanistan but the worst terrorists. Canadians would never dream of dropping bombs on children, but if they did, there was no other choice.
~ Roedy (born: 1948-02-04 age: 64)
The key moral principle the Star Wars series of movies hammer home is that when you fight an extremely evil foe, you have to be very careful not to succumb to the dark side of the force, and bit by bit become just as evil as they are. This is exactly what happened to the USA. After 9/11, it was so outraged that it succumbed to the dark side of the force in blindly seeking revenge. They have not noticed that in many ways they are now behaving worse than the terrorists, worse even than the Nazis. Consider:
~ Roedy (born: 1948-02-04 age: 64)
- Dragging the Afghan war on 10 years, 7 months and 20 days and the Iraq war 9 years, 2 months and 7 days as revenge for an attack that was over in hours.
- They attacked both Afghanistan and Iraq, unprovoked. Neither country was involved in 9/11. This is a capital war crime according to the Nuremberg convention and the UN charter treaty. It is not me saying this, it is Kofi Annan and Boutros Boutros-Ghali, Secretaries General of the U.N. and Benjamin Ferencz, Chief prosecutor at Nuremberg for the Einsatzgruppen and Noam Chomsky.
- The USA falsely accused Iraq an imminent nuclear attack on the USA.
- The USA targeted children by blindly bombing residences, which in the third world, are mostly occupied by children.
- They abandoned the Geneva conventions, calling them quaint. The USA is treaty bound to observe them. This treaty trumps even the constitution. This is a capital war crime.
- They used banned weapons including DU, cluster bombs, napalm, land mines and the nightmarish white phosphorus.
- Routine torture of all detainees. This violates both US and international law.
- Rendition to dictatorships for extreme torture.
- Indefinite detention in Guantánamo.
- Sold off all of Iraq’s oil reserves to American and European oil companies.
- Allowed Monsanto to confiscate all seeds in Iraq and force farmers to buy terminator gene seeds from them.
- Assassinations with Predator drones in Pakistan, a supposed ally. Assassinations are illegal.
- In the name of democracy, truth and justice have installed dictators, lied outrageously and violated just about every international law.
The key thing to understand about bullies is that they don’t have all that much power, but they are ruthless at intimidation. If one subject refuses to acquiesce, the bully can bring 100% of his might to bear on reprisals. However, if ten people simultaneously rebel, the bully has only 10% of his might to bear on each troublemaker, and the bully becomes laughable. Groups such as the NRA (National Rifle Association) and AIPAC (American Israel Public Affairs Committee) use classic bully tactics. Politicians fear them because of the way they single out any candidate who is not sufficiently submissive. However, a unified party as a whole has nothing to fear from them. Politicians don’t seem to realise that.
~ Roedy (born: 1948-02-04 age: 64)
The kinkiest think I have ever heard of is young men shaving off their hair and becoming willing slaves to abusive old men who order them to kill children and torture people, i.e. join the US military.
~ Roedy (born: 1948-02-04 age: 64)
The leaders of Hamas and Israel out of frustration at not being able to kill each other, kill children. These leaders all deserve death by hanging, drawing and quartering.
~ Roedy (born: 1948-02-04 age: 64)
The least efficient way to stimulate the economy is with military spending. Why?
~ Roedy (born: 1948-02-04 age: 64)
- When you are done you have nothing to show for it, no highways, schools, education, sewers or airports that help support business.
- The spending usually happens on the other side of the world. The spinoffs flow there, not back home.
- Military spending is a high profit business. This means most of the money ends up in the pockets of a very few, very rich people. Other forms of spending spread the money around more evenly.
The military almost never tells the truth. They reserve their most fiery ire for those who expose their lives. They believe they have the right to mislead the public to get them to support military policy, e.g. resource wars.
~ Roedy (born: 1948-02-04 age: 64)
The military buzz-cuts recruits to intimidate them, destroy individuality and make them more obedient. Recruits must submit to this if they want to get to kill people, but why do civilians shave their heads bald and erase their individuality?
~ Roedy (born: 1948-02-04 age: 64)
The military is a hierarchy where superiors browbeat, abuse and bully their inferiors. Everyone gets Stockholm syndrome, and starts to feel proud of the abuse they have endured.
~ Roedy (born: 1948-02-04 age: 64)
The modern theory of warfare (World War II on) is if somebody shoots at you, they are likely well-trained and hard to kill. It is safer and easier to leave them alone. Instead you should kill somebody else who is much easier to kill, e.g. women, children and elderly. The theory is, those that shot at you will be so hurt by what you did, they will stop shooting at you. This of course does not work, as the endless wars in Palestine, Afghanistan and Iraq attest. Why doesn’t it work? One reason is soldiers are largely nasty selfish sadists who don’t give an shit about anyone but themselves. They just like killing and torturing people for any excuse. They might even vicariously get off on the deaths of the women, children and elderly, as is the custom of serial killers. The other reason is one of the women you kill might be a beloved wife or mother. Your opponent might then vow revenge even if it means a suicide attack. If you think about it, this strategy is as nutty as Cleavon Little, as Sheriff Bart, taking himself hostage in Blazing Saddles.
~ Roedy (born: 1948-02-04 age: 64)
The most despicable thing about terrorists is that they take revenge on people who had nothing whatever to do with the grievance. The Americans are by far the biggest terrorists in the world, in that they kill the most civilians. They excuse themselves, on the grounds that they wear uniforms and drop bombs from the air when they kill non-combatants, and that they claim they regret killing children as a side effect of warfare. They are still terrorists. The definition of terrorism is killing civilians in an attempt to influence they political views. American terrorism lowers the bar and helps other terrorists excuse themselves. It is much like chlorine by one combatant in WW I excused all types of poison gas by all combatants.
~ Roedy (born: 1948-02-04 age: 64)
The most revolting perverts on earth are the US soldiers who claim they are killing Iraqi civilians to defend the USA. They are such liars. They watched the USA launch the war, unprovoked, live on CNN by bombing the residential parts of Baghdad. They are fully aware Iraq has no planes, submarines, ships, tanks, missiles, nukes… The Iraqis must resort to home-made bombs and small arms to defend against the American occupation. The soldiers are fully aware Iraqis killed not a single American even when the USA killed 1.5 million Iraqis in the sanction bombings prior to the Iraq war. If the Iraqis would not retaliate against US civilians with even that provocation, what would it take? The soldiers know the USA auctioned of all of Iraq’s oil resources to American and European oil companies. They know the war is really about oil. Why then are they killing, raping and torturing? They surely would not risk their lives simply for oil. It is not the pay. It is not the travel. Iraq is the arm pit of the earth. What possible motive does that leave for the mayhem? — sadism.
~ Roedy (born: 1948-02-04 age: 64)
The mother, wife or girlfriend of a serial killer always protest he was a gentle kind boy who would not hurt a fly. They deny the clues, e.g. that he enjoyed blasting the heads off animals and birds, or enjoyed threatening people with guns or that he enlisted in the military to go overseas to hunt children.
~ Roedy (born: 1948-02-04 age: 64)
The Muslim world has millions of times more reasons to kill Americans than it did on 9/11. The United States used 9/11 as an excuse to make war on any Muslim (e.g. Afghans and Iraqis) not just the ones responsible for 9/11. They have killed millions of civilians. They have ignored the Geneva conventions as quaint. They have routinely tortured POWs. They used banned weapons designed to kill as painfully and slowly as possible. They have stolen all the natural resources of the countries they invaded. Even Nazis did not behave that badly. Americans are such conceited egotists, they don’t see their behaviour as criminal.
~ Roedy (born: 1948-02-04 age: 64)
The Navy should stick to what it does best — making porn videos.
~ Roedy (born: 1948-02-04 age: 64)
The NSA (National Security Agency) has transcripts of all of bin Laden’s telephone conversations, but will not let the CIA have any information from them. It sounds like the NSA considers the CIA a greater threat to American security than Al Qaeda. Who is NSA protecting, bin Laden and his fellow conspirators inside and outside the USA or the USA?
~ Roedy (born: 1948-02-04 age: 64)
The number one reason for nuclear proliferation is fear of attack from an existing nuclear nation. Iran fears Israel because it has nukes, has made first strikes in past and has threatened nuclear attack. Iran and North Korea fear the USA for the same reason. If we are serious about preventing nuclear proliferation, the number one priority has to be reducing the arsenals of the existing nuclear states.
~ Roedy (born: 1948-02-04 age: 64)
The official story is a rinky dink, broke, untrained, terrorist outfit orchestrated the most complex terrorist act in history, completely defeating the combined efforts of a multi-trillion dollar defence system using nothing more than a few box cutters. How do you explain it?
~ Roedy (born: 1948-02-04 age: 64)
- Divine intervention.
- Blind luck on the part of Al-Qaeda.
- Gross incompetence on the part of the US military.
- Inside help.
- The whole story is a complete crock. It was actually done by someone with access to high tech, most likely Bush himself as an excuse to start two wars and suspend the constitution with the patriot act.
The one redeeming virtue of war is that it helps kill off the sociopaths faster.
~ Roedy (born: 1948-02-04 age: 64)
The only evidence I am aware of that bin Laden masterminded 9/11 was a video tape claiming responsibility. There were dozens of other fruitcakes also claiming responsibility. The head of German intelligence said they had been monitoring Al Qaeda, and it was a rinky dink outfit incapable of orchestrating 9/11. They have done nothing comparable since. There are dozens of unexplained inconsistencies in Bush’s version of what happened, including why the towers fell faster than Newton’s law for free fall predicted. Why then are all Americans so totally convinced bin Laden pulled this off without any inside help?
~ Roedy (born: 1948-02-04 age: 64)
The only people who have benefited from the Afghan and the Iraq wars are wealthy investors who have sold goods and services to the USA military at inflated prices with no-bid contracts. Other wealthy investors benefited from the oil and lithium spoils of war. Yet, oddly, for the first time in US history, the wealthy have been able buy the Republican politicians so the rich did not have to pay even a penny extra to fund the war. It was funded on the backs of the middle class and by borrowing.
~ Roedy (born: 1948-02-04 age: 64)
The only way a hawk can maintain his pro-war stance is by massively lying to himself and blocking out the hideousness of war.
~ Roedy (born: 1948-02-04 age: 64)
The only weapon I could think of that would discourage war would be a device a woman could use to quickly remove the penis and testicles of her rapist, damaging the organs so they could not be reattached. Surely the American soldiers in Iraq and Afghanistan could have no objection to their widespread distribution.
~ Roedy (born: 1948-02-04 age: 64)
The Ortho® Home Defense MAX® Kill & Contain® Mouse Trap is a beautiful metaphor for American attitudes to the children of Afghanistan and Iraq killed by the American occupation. The advantage of the trap is it does not let you see the dead mouse or learn the mechanism by which the mouse was killed. Deliberate ignorance somehow assuages the conscience.
~ Roedy (born: 1948-02-04 age: 64)
The Pat Tillman scandal is important only in that it reminds the public that the essential nature of militaries is lying. Whether he was killed by Americans or the resistance is irrelevant because he was a war criminal who had committed a capital crime, namely aiding and abetting an aggressive (first strike) war. Fate sentenced him somewhat ahead of his fellows.
~ Roedy (born: 1948-02-04 age: 64)
The people most likely to commit multiple murders, murder, torture and rape children are those who sign up for the military. In return for killing those the military orders killed, the military protects the soldiers from prosecution for their crimes.
~ Roedy (born: 1948-02-04 age: 64)
The people of Afghanistan and Iraq have the moral and legal right to kill American soldiers, anywhere on the planet, because America attacked their countries unprovoked and continue to occupy their countries. Given that Americans have butchered so many children, the people of Afghanistan and Iraq also have the natural right, though not the legal or moral right, to butcher American children anywhere on the planet. We should all be thankful they have refrained from exercising that right.
~ Roedy (born: 1948-02-04 age: 64)
The power of military propaganda was able to turn the word stealth from meaning sneaky thievery into modern, fast and high tech.
~ Roedy (born: 1948-02-04 age: 64)
The primary motivation now for fighting the Afghanistan and Iraq wars is male pride. The pro-war faction don’t want to admit that even with unlimited budget they cannot defeat a small band of what they consider their racial inferiors. Granted, withdrawal means wounded pride, but persisting with the occupation means more people maimed and killed on both sides just to procrastinate the emotional pain of admitting their enemies/victims will never say uncle no matter how viciously they are bombed or tortured. Americans give lip service to Christianity, but the Afghans and Iraqis truly do believe they cannot die.
~ Roedy (born: 1948-02-04 age: 64)
The Prime Minister said that unless Canada’s submarine program starts functioning properly very soon, it will be scrapped. This screams to me that the program is optional. We would have been much better off from the getgo spending the money elsewhere. This also suggests the F35 is probably equally optional.
~ Roedy (born: 1948-02-04 age: 64)
The principle of universality says you must judge your own military actions as if your enemy had done them to you. For example, what would you think had Iraq attacked America, killed 8% of the population, sold off all its oil resources, patented all its historic seed strains and sold them off and occupied it for 9 years on the ground the USA might be harbouring nuclear weapons?
~ Roedy (born: 1948-02-04 age: 64)
The purple heart is a booby prize. The goal of combat is injure or kill the other guy, not yourself. Logically soldiers should get the medal for every consecutive year they manage without injury, like an AA (Alcoholics Anonymous) years of sobriety lapel pin.
~ Roedy (born: 1948-02-04 age: 64)
The purpose of an air show is twofold: to impress and cow the populace with the power of the military machines and secondly to camouflage the true purpose of these expensive machines, namely to burn the skin off the backs of children in the Middle East.
~ Roedy (born: 1948-02-04 age: 64)
The purpose of torture is not to gain information but rather to cow the population. It is thus a form of terrorism, one practiced by the USA.
~ Roedy (born: 1948-02-04 age: 64)
The reason American, Canadian and British leaders are so reluctant to prosecute war crimes is they realise they too are guilty of them. The reason Germans are less reluctant is they want to hold others to the same standard they were held at the end of WWII, even before war crimes were officially illegal.
~ Roedy (born: 1948-02-04 age: 64)
The reason the Afghan and Iraq wars have dragged on so long is because there is no draft. The reason there is no draft is because the wars are fought roughly 50% with contractors, most of whom are not American. In other words, Americans are happy to butcher third worlders for oil so long as too many of their own don’t die in the process.
~ Roedy (born: 1948-02-04 age: 64)
The Romans told themselves it was OK to plunder the surrounding territories because they were Roman and the people they plundered were mere barbarians (wore beards). The European settlers told themselves it was OK to push native American off their lands because they were Christian and the natives were not. The Germans told themselves it was OK to invade surrounding countries because they were the master race and needed more lebensraum (living room). The Jews told themselves it was OK to steal Palestinian lands because they were god’s chosen people and the Palestinians were not. The Americans told themselves it as OK to invade Afghanistan and Iraq unprovoked and confiscate their natural resources because they were American and the Afghans and Iraqis were not. Apparently, entire populations will excuse themselves for stealing and genocide for the most trivial of excuses.
~ Roedy (born: 1948-02-04 age: 64)
The royal wedding fills me with dread. Prince Harry is a war criminal. He participated in the illegal first strike war in Afghanistan. This is a capital crime, though it is unlikely a wealthy royal would ever be prosecuted. I can envision the people of Afghanistan who have lost millions of sons and daughters to the US-British invasion taking revenge on Britain by killing Prince Harry during the wedding festivities. It would be an absolutely crushing blow.
~ Roedy (born: 1948-02-04 age: 64)
The Snowbirds are a Canadian Military aerobatics team. Their job to glamourise the military and seduce young people into enlisting for the illegal Afghan war. I find that pimping morally reprehensible. Further they do their dangerous aerobatics swooping over cities, making an enormous noise terrifying the residents. An elderly lady ran from her house here in Victoria. She was convinced she was being strafed as she had been in London in WW II. I had to calm her down. They have no business annoying, terrifying and endangering private citizens. I hope the lot of them are killed in some spectacular collision into a remote mountainside.
~ Roedy (born: 1948-02-04 age: 64)
The success of the Homeland Security people to derail terrorist attacks is astounding. It would seem to me that a terrorist would be a complete idiot to confide in anyone, yet they apparently nearly always seek out Homeland Security agents as co-conspirators. This suggests these people are rank amateurs.
~ Roedy (born: 1948-02-04 age: 64)
The terrorists asks himself, “Will my violence hurt those who oppose my cause?” He fails to ask “Will my violence promote my cause over the long run?” or even more important “Is this the most effective way to use my energy to promote my cause?”
~ Roedy (born: 1948-02-04 age: 64)
The thing that makes absolutely no sense about Americans is that they learned almost immediately that Iraq had no WMDs and Bush had lied to them about the need for war. However, even though they knew they had no reason for the war, they kept sacrificing their children to fight it and pouring trillions of dollars into it for 9 years with only token protest. It appears, to Americans, war is the normal state, and they need a constitutional amendment to end one.
~ Roedy (born: 1948-02-04 age: 64)
The United States has been butchering Afghans for 10 years, 7 months and 20 days . What has been the result?
~ Roedy (born: 1948-02-04 age: 64)
- Afghanistan has gone from exporting near zero to a trillion dollars of heroin a year — the world’s biggest producer. This flood of cheap heroin has created many new addicts, including elementary school children who are now criminals eroding the social order.
- The entire Muslim world now sees the USA as the Great Satan out to destroy Islam.
- The atrocities have recruited tens of thousands of terrorists all over the world.
- The taxpayers of the USA are stuck with the $10 billion a month bill. Borrowing to pay that bill has ballooned the national debt so large it can never be paid off. America is doomed to bankruptcy.
- Afghanistan is still ruled by Shari’a religious law — that the mandates beating women for uncovering their faces.
- Hamid Karzai, the US puppet dictator, is the biggest drug lord on the planet, and Americans forced him on the Afghan people, deposing a theocracy with majority popular support.
The United States has dug itself into quite a hole. It has illegally attacked, unprovoked, three Muslim countries, Afghanistan, Iraq and Pakistan. It has arrogantly ignored the Geneva conventions terming them quaint. It has used banned weapons, biological warfare and torture. It has killed millions of civilians, mostly children. It stole all of Iraq’s oil, and auctioned it off to European and American oil companies. It preparing to steal Afghanistan’s lithium treasure. This is monstrously bad behaviour. The entire Muslim world is quietly biding its time to take revenge when the financial and military power of the USA has weakened. How is the USA to avoid taking it on the chin to pay for these crimes? I can only think of one way — massive reparations.
~ Roedy (born: 1948-02-04 age: 64)
The United States spends more on its military than all other countries in the world put together. Polls tell us Americans believe this money is well spent, necessary to prevent invasion. They fail no notice that almost no countries are ever invaded, not even ones without militaries like Costa Rica. The country most likely to invade others is the United States itself. This suggests the purpose of the US military is not defence, but planetary hegemony.
~ Roedy (born: 1948-02-04 age: 64)
The US government response to those who refuse to believe the official story on 9/11 is heap abuse on them and dismiss them as cranks and conspiracy theorists. They never once addressed any of the apparent holes in the official story. Basically, their contention is anyone who does not believe the government is a nut. Yet if we study history, we find the government and especially the military, almost never tell the truth. Lying is the first automatic response, even when it is not necessary. So it seems to me, believing the government on faith is about as naîve as believing in the tooth fairy just because your older sister told you so. Even if they were telling the truth, it would be illogical to believe them, simply on statistical grounds.
~ Roedy (born: 1948-02-04 age: 64)
The US government trained Timothy McVeigh in the art of mass murder in Desert Storm. This is a bit like buying a vicious pit bull then being surprised when it turns on you.
~ Roedy (born: 1948-02-04 age: 64)
The US military is having trouble with soldiers, especially young married ones, refusing to kill children when ordered to in the Iraq and Afghanistan occupations. One of the research think tanks has come up with what amounts to an outsized version of the successful Ortho® Home Defense MAX® Kill & Contain® Mouse Trap that lets you kill mice without ever seeing them or knowing the mechanism by which they were dispatched. The child killing trap is baited with candy instead of peanut butter, almost irresistible to children living on a calorie deprived diet.
~ Roedy (born: 1948-02-04 age: 64)I am pulling your leg. This is not literally true, but the military uses all manner of long range weapons, such as bombers, rockets, high powered rifles, flame throwers, napalm, white phosphorus,… that let soldiers kill their victims without ever seeing their faces.
The US military is so corrupt it is preparing to bilk the taxpayers out of trillions for a new fleet of submarines to fight the Russians who no longer make subs. The only reason to do this is to turn a firehose of money on kick-back offering defence contractors.
~ Roedy (born: 1948-02-04 age: 64)
The US military works non-stop to provide a respectable cover for the sadists, rapists and racists who enlist. It is much like the way the Catholic church provides a holy cover for pedophiles who enlist in the priesthood.
~ Roedy (born: 1948-02-04 age: 64)
The USA and Iraq are as mismatched combatants as Mike Tyson and a bag lady. Americans make themselves look ridiculous when they justify invading and occupying Iraq in self defence.
~ Roedy (born: 1948-02-04 age: 64)
The USA and NATO have been pounding a way for 10 years and 7 months at Afghanistan spending hundreds of billions of dollars and have barely made a dent in defeating the Taliban resistance. Now the US Military tells us, that after the USA and NATO leave, Karzai, on a billion euro a year allowance, will either defeat the Taliban or force them to the bargaining table. What utter BS! That is not even wishful thinking. That is a bald faced lie. Karzai, collaborator and betrayer of his country, will most likely be strung up by the testicles, a fitting end to the crookedest politician on earth and biggest drug dealer. If he is smart, he will have his private jet idling, reading to evacuate to a haven for drug lords where he can live the remainder of his life in unimaginable luxury.
~ Roedy (born: 1948-02-04 age: 64)
The USA has repeatedly invaded other countries unprovoked. This is illegal. Nazis hanged for doing it. Americans excuse themselves for it, apparently on the religious belief that America can do no wrong, even when they can’t see any rational self interest for doing so. Consider Vietnam, Grenada, Gulf War, Afghanistan, Iraq… You might be puzzled by the inclusion of the Gulf War. Google “Ambassador Glaspie” for how the USA betrayed Saddam to provide the excuse for that war.
~ Roedy (born: 1948-02-04 age: 64)
The way Americans vilified the French when France refused to join the USA in the illegal invasion and plunder of Iraq reminds me of the way a drug addict turns on then sheds his friends who try to warn him of the dangers of his lifestyle.
~ Roedy (born: 1948-02-04 age: 64)
The way international law works, any country can try any war criminal no matter what country that war criminal is a citizen of or where the alleged crimes were committed. It is only a matter of time until some country tries Cheney, Bush-43 or one of his henchmen. I enjoy the thought of this fate giving them ulcers.
~ Roedy (born: 1948-02-04 age: 64)
There are a class of women who fall in love with serial killers. They do this to compensate for a lack of personal power. Those that enjoy notoriety and scandal pick incarcerated serial killers. Those that wish to project respectability select soldiers.
~ Roedy (born: 1948-02-04 age: 64)
There are two kinds of evil nations, those who make lives miserable for their own citizens and those that make misery for the citizens of other countries. The United States is the most evil nation in history of the second type, simply because they are the most militarily and financially powerful nation of all time and because they have chosen conspicuous consumption as the national virtue and unregulated capitalism as the state religion. The irony is, because of the power of propaganda, they see themselves as the greatest benefactors of all time.
~ Roedy (born: 1948-02-04 age: 64)
There are under 1000 deaths a year world wide attributable to terrorists, and 1,000,000 deaths attributable to vehicles. Yet the spending to stop terrorists dwarfs that to make vehicles safer. An automobile is 1000 times more likely to kill you than a terrorist, yet Americans fear terrorists far more than they do Hummers.
~ Roedy (born: 1948-02-04 age: 64)
There is a cheery song Canadian children are taught to sing in school The British Grenadiers. It celebrates a class of soldier who rips the limbs off people with explosives.
~ Roedy (born: 1948-02-04 age: 64)
There is a documentary series on the history channel called Ancients Behaving Badly. It documents the atrocities of people like Genghis Kahn, Alexander the Great, Caligula etc. I could imagine some future version of this show featuring the USA in the early part of the 21st century. The thing that would amaze viewers is that Americans of the time did not see themselves as cruel at all. Even though they had full access to the facts, the extreme nationalism of the time made Americans interpret atrocity as heroism.
~ Roedy (born: 1948-02-04 age: 64)
There is a primitive tribe in the Americas that has an odd custom. The elders hand out special ritual garments to selected lay members of the tribe, usually from the lower castes. Wearing this clothing bestows almost complete ritual immunity to all taboos. The wearers may steal, rape, murder… with impunity. In turn the wearer of one of these garments agrees to unquestioningly do anything one of the elders wants, most commonly dispatching rivals or killing for entertainment, or sometimes S&M-tinged sexual favours. This primitive tribe live to this day in the USA, and they call the ritual clothing a military uniform.
~ Roedy (born: 1948-02-04 age: 64)
There is a scene in Dexter, a TV show, where a serial killer stabs Dexter’s mom to death in front of Dexter as a child. It is gut wrenching. In real life this happens every day in Iraq and Afghanistan where parents are butchered in front of their children at the hands of Americans, with all manner of weapons. I can never forgive them for this. These are deeds evil beyond imagination.
~ Roedy (born: 1948-02-04 age: 64)
There is a trillion dollar set of businesses that depend on continuous war for their profit. Now, with the Citizens United supreme court ruling, those businesses can buy politicians with whatever it takes to keep the wars rolling. Business will permit a change of war venue as a sop to the voters, but not cessation of war.
~ Roedy (born: 1948-02-04 age: 64)
There is absolutely nothing noble about invading a country and torturing/killing its people for 10 years and 7 months to force them to accept the worlds biggest drug lord, and most corrupt war lord, Hamid Karzai, as their dictator, give up their religion and hand over their oil and minerals. All manner of slimy liars in America and Canada, including the leaders of both countries, try to disguise this occupation as self defence, liberation and altruism.
~ Roedy (born: 1948-02-04 age: 64)
There is no way you can bomb someone into liking you. Every blow you strike in offence will eventually be paid back with interest. Americans are insane in their belief that if they kill enough children and torture enough teenagers that their victims will give up hating America and plotting revenge.
~ Roedy (born: 1948-02-04 age: 64)
There is something a bit nuts about people like Al Franken who support the USO (United Service Organisations) but claim to oppose the Afghan and Iraq wars. By making life in the field more pleasant for soldiers, fewer will go home and stay there, thus prolonging the wars. You can’t have a war without soldiers willing to fight it.
~ Roedy (born: 1948-02-04 age: 64)
There is something wrong with the universe when George Huguely is facing first degree murder charges for shaking his girl friend to death while George W. Bush faces not even a legal scolding for killing and torturing millions of innocent women and children.
~ Roedy (born: 1948-02-04 age: 64)
There was no exit strategy for Iraq because the Cheney/Bush administration never planned to leave. Why would they leave before all the oil and gas were gone? The trillion dollar plus investment in gaining control of the oil would make no sense if Americans just handed it back to Iraq. Obama announced the phased withdrawal from Iraq on the same day he announced the auction of all of Iraq’s oil resources where the invited buyers were American and European oil companies.
~ Roedy (born: 1948-02-04 age: 64)
These is only one valid reason for killing someone — when there is no other way to prevent him from killing people. I doubt very many of the people the Americans and Canadians killed in Afghanistan or Iraq met that criterion. Self-defence would not apply in that situation since the Americans and Canadians invaded illegally. It would be like a home invader claiming self defence.
~ Roedy (born: 1948-02-04 age: 64)
Those soldiers who forget the lessons of Nuremberg are condemned to repeat them, namely:
~ Roedy (born: 1948-02-04 age: 64)
- It is illegal to attack another nation unprovoked.
- Being ordered to is no excuse for committing an illegal act.
Though Obama is clearly better than the alternatives, he is still far from acceptable. The biggest problem is he billed himself as peace candidate. He wound down the Iraq war and simultaneously cranked up the equally illegal, equally pointless, Afghan war. He lied with the gusto of George W. Bush about the value of the war. He claims it is bringing democracy. Yet even after 10 years, the Afghans live under a dictatorship and suffer under the same Shar’a law as ever. Even Secretary of State Hillary Clinton calls Afghanistan a narcostate. The dictator that Bush chose, Hamid Karzai, is the most corrupt politician on the planet. Obama still pretends publicly he is a fine fellow. This suggests that Obama is in the pocket of the defence industry, or possibly living in terror of the out-of-control defence contractors like Xi who would not think twice about assassinating him. They don’t care where the wars are, just that the hose into the taxpayers’ pockets grows ever thicker.
~ Roedy (born: 1948-02-04 age: 64)
Throughout history, there have always been a few people who noticed that weapons were inevitably evolving more and more lethality. The end point of this escalation is the extinction of the human race. These people have so far been unable to persuade the general population to forgo this lemming march to mass suicide. Most people refuse to look at the big picture. They see only the immediate need for a better weapon to defend or conquer.
~ Roedy (born: 1948-02-04 age: 64)
To this day the Greeks cheer Alexander and his sadistic conquests. Romans still reenact the bloody conquests of Imperial Rome. British and Americans celebrate the genocide of the indigenous people’s of North America. Germans hailed the Nazi hordes. So it is no surprise the Americans cheer on their soldiers in two illegal wars against two militarily insignificant nations, Afghanistan and Iraq.
~ Roedy (born: 1948-02-04 age: 64)
To understand Bush and Cheney, you need to study the life stories of the great serial killers of history. In particular, study how they appear on the surface to be charming likeable men. Learn how they get extreme sexual pleasure from humiliating and inflicting pain on others. They come from toxic families. They successfully pull off their crimes because no one can believe it is possible they could be such fiends.
~ Roedy (born: 1948-02-04 age: 64)
To understand the American soldiers in Afghanistan and Iraq, view Richard Attenborough’s Planet Earth the episode where the males in one troop of chimpanzees attack the females and infants of a h neighbouring tribe. The big difference is the Americans don’t eat the infants they kill.
~ Roedy (born: 1948-02-04 age: 64)
Today, Caesar’s plundering legions would arrive in black limos carrying titanium laptops. President Obama announced the phase-out of the Iraq war on the exact same day bureaucrats in his administration announced that all of Iraq’s remaining oil reserves were going up for auction to European and American oil interests.
~ Roedy (born: 1948-02-04 age: 64)
Today, way more US soldiers die from suicide than from combat. This was certainly not true in WW II. People kill themselves because they are deeply ashamed. They believe they don’t deserve to live. They believe they are so deeply flawed they don’t deserve love. These soldiers know better than anyone the atrocities they committed in Afghanistan and Iraq. This suicidal guilt is the natural consequence of committing atrocities. Nobody pushed the soldiers into it. They eagerly sought out the opportunities for such sadistic mayhem. All Americans share in their guilt because they funded those two illegal wars against countries who were no threat to the USA, ignoring the Geneva conventions, targeting civilians, and using routine torture and banned weapons. Afghanistan and Iraq’s only crimes were having oil and minerals under their soil.
~ Roedy (born: 1948-02-04 age: 64)
Today’s soldiers have absolutely no interest in who or why they are killing. They consider that somebody else’s concern. In other words, they are not killing for a reason, they are killing because they like killing or they enjoy being ordered to kill. In either case, I consider that pathological, not heroic. I am not about to mourn the death of such a psychopath or even pay the most basic respects. To me, it would be like weeping over the execution of someone on death row for a brutal multiple murder.
~ Roedy (born: 1948-02-04 age: 64)
Truth in advertising department. A TV US military recruiting ad shows a young man saying “When I enlisted in the National Guard, I never thought I’d be saving lives.” Presumably he expected to be sent to Iraq to slaughter people.
~ Roedy (born: 1948-02-04 age: 64)
Trying to stop war with a website is a bit like being a raindrop trying to put out a forest fire. The raindrop has the consolation that all wild fires eventually are put out, mainly by the concerted action of raindrops.
~ Roedy (born: 1948-02-04 age: 64)
TV news loves to do stories where a soldier returns unannounced from Iraq or Afghanistan to surprise his child. One of these days some child is going to react rationally to his father’s return after abandoning the child for years to go hunting kids on the other side of the globe and scream at being grabbed by a strange psychopath.
~ Roedy (born: 1948-02-04 age: 64)
Under what extreme circumstances would you consider participating in suicide attacks? Perhaps if some foreign power had invaded and occupied your country for 10 years, raped your women and children, rounded up and tortured your young men, desecrated your places of worship, used hideously cruel, illegal weapons of war on your civilian populations, and/or killed your family. What is your evidence the Taliban are any different from you?
~ Roedy (born: 1948-02-04 age: 64)
Unfortunately, Barack Obama turned out nothing like the way he presented himself during the election. He force fed rich stockbrokers and bankers with a trillion dollars of public cash that they used to pay themselves extravagant bonuses. He made no changes to the leverage or transparency rules to prevent the need for another bailout. He legally accepted large amounts of money from the health care insurance companies prior to the election. In return, he did nothing to help universal health care along. He greatly escalated the Afghan war. He spent more on the military than any president in history, more than all other countries combined. His views on torture and war crimes match the ultra-right views of Cheney’s and the Nazis accused at the end of WW II. He refused to speak up for gay marriage rights. He left don’t ask don’t tell in place and has continued to dishonorably discharge gays in the military. It is possible he caved into terrible threats to his family from the military and industry, however it is even more likely he was their puppet all along. Like Reagan, industry picked him as their Democratic spokesperson because he was a good actor and orator. He is such a disappointment, nearly everyone, myself included, are still in denial.
~ Roedy (born: 1948-02-04 age: 64)
Universality is a philosophical principle that cuts to the quick in deciding if a given policy is fair. You must apply the same rules to your own and others’ behaviour. Any measure applied to gay people, Hispanics, women, Muslims etc. must also be applied to everyone.
~ Roedy (born: 1948-02-04 age: 64)
Very few Germans publicly questioned the righteousness of Hitler invading his neighbours unprovoked, so it is not surprising most Americans have no moral qualms about invading and occupying Iraq and Afghanistan. Americans are concerned about American casualties, war costs and oil — not about morality or legality.
~ Roedy (born: 1948-02-04 age: 64)
Vets of the Vietnam war, especially those captured and kept in prison camps, feel hard done by. They forget they swooped over Vietnam burning children alive. Surely anything done to them in the prison camps, including even being burnt alive, was a mild punishment for such unprovoked attacks. The Vietnamese did not even threaten America much less attack them.
~ Roedy (born: 1948-02-04 age: 64)
War is just well-funded terrorism. It is no more respectable.
~ Roedy (born: 1948-02-04 age: 64)
War is so ubiquitous, we forget how utterly idiotic it is. When soldiers invade a country, they destroy its infrastructure and homes that they will need months later for the occupation. War selectively culls the fittest young men, leaving the pudgy, ill and deformed to spawn the next generation. The Pentagon uses more fossil fuels than anyone else on earth — hardly a wise move when the motive for war is gaining control of dwindling petroleum supplies. Once the war starts, almost no one on the front line actually enjoys it. Even the sadists don’t like the living conditions. They just think they will relish it. The people who enjoy war most never go near the theatre of war. They make billions billing and bilking the government for war materials and services. Why should they get all the benefits and none of the pain?
~ Roedy (born: 1948-02-04 age: 64)
War persists because of herd cowardice. People let their leaders and soldiers get away with the most preposterous lies because everyone else does. They are afraid to be the only one to tell the truth. So they pretend to believe the lie, which further disheartens others who also see the lie.
~ Roedy (born: 1948-02-04 age: 64)
Wars, like other government projects, require funding. They must compete for funding, just like other mega-projects promoted by lobbyists. The lobbyists with the biggest purses to sell their wars both to the politicians and the public are the ones promoting resource wars with the highest financial return. As Dr. Bethune put it, “It is the secret of all wars: profit.”
~ Roedy (born: 1948-02-04 age: 64)
Watching American TV news is so surreal. It is as if the Nazis had won WW II. They interview admitted war criminals and torturers and treat them with the respect due national heroes.
~ Roedy (born: 1948-02-04 age: 64)
We all know how young athletic men with high testosterone levels behave in a football or hockey game. Imagine how they would behave without a referee! War is an athletic contest with lethal weapons and no referee. Why then are we surprised at torture and other flagrant violations of the Geneva convention rules of war?
~ Roedy (born: 1948-02-04 age: 64)
We all know why the USA is occupying Afghanistan:
~ Roedy (born: 1948-02-04 age: 64)
- The Taliban refused Unocal a free right of way for pipeline to the north, strategically important in case Iran blocks the Straits of Hormuz.
- The US wants Afghanistan’s four trillion dollars in strategic minerals, particularly lithium, important for high performance batteries.
- But why did Canada attack Afghanistan too? Prime Minister of Canada at the time, Jean Chrétien explained that Bush twisted his arm. The deal was if Canada would join in attacking Afghanistan, Bush would let Canada off the hook attacking Iraq in the coming Iraq war. But Bush is gone, why is Canada still pummeling Afghanistan?
- Obama, like Bush, is in the pockets of the “defence“ industry. They want a permanent war, as expensive as possible without triggering a taxpayer revolt.
- The defence industry in Canada, is known for corruption. Harper is accepting benefits, possibly legally, from them. They want permanent war.
- Harper is mentally defective. He is like a child who wants to play general. Having a war to command makes him feel manly and important. His pudginess is a constant source of embarrassment to him. War is his way of dealing with the feelings of inferiority his body generates. Napoléon had similar body image problems with his short stature and deformed hand.
We are bombarded every day with news of unspeakable cruelty. Here is an attempt to put it into perspective:
Conflict Deaths 9/11 3,500 US soldiers killed in combat in Iraq 3,532 Syrian rebellion 12,000 Libyan rebellion 30,000 Darfur 300,000 Civilians killed in the Iraq war 1,455,590 So in numeric terms, it is no contest; the Americans are by far the biggest killers on the planet, and that does not even count Afghanistan.
~ Roedy (born: 1948-02-04 age: 64)
We are lucky that terrorists prefer suicide attacks. If they did not, terrorists would become more successful with each attack, and they would teach young terrorists from their experience.
~ Roedy (born: 1948-02-04 age: 64)
We will know we are making progress when war criminals from the winning side are also prosecuted.
~ Roedy (born: 1948-02-04 age: 64)
What countries torture? USA under Bush, Iraq under Saddam, Chile under Pinochet, Zimbabwe under Mugabe, Uganda under Idi Amin, Myanmar under Pol Pot, Germany under Hitler. What countries routinely torture all detainees? USA. Not even Germany under Hitler did that.
~ Roedy (born: 1948-02-04 age: 64)
What countries use chemical weapons in warfare? USA under Johnson, Nixon and Bush, Iraq under Saddam, Iran under Khomeini.
~ Roedy (born: 1948-02-04 age: 64)
What do you call a nation that picks on smaller nations, uses its military might to extort valuable natural resources from other nations, consumes far more than its fair share of the world’s resources, pollutes mightily and produces little? I remember, America.
~ Roedy (born: 1948-02-04 age: 64)
What does a terrorist organisation need? recruits and money. The illegal invasion of Afghanistan is helping Al Qaeda with both. The worse the US behaves with torture, banned weapons, killing civilians… the more recruits and money pour into Al Qaeda from around the world from people horrified at American behaviour. It is thus illogical to think the situation can be improved with still more torture, banned weapons and killing civilians. If nine years of it did not work, why would even more help? It is literal insanity to try the same brutality over and over expecting a different result. Ask the Russians. They occupied Afghanistan for a decade too, before they gave up and went home.
~ Roedy (born: 1948-02-04 age: 64)
What if China had used stealth technology to enter the USA without permission to kill someone they considered an arch criminal. There would be calls to nuke China at this assault on sovereignty. Obama’s invasion of Pakistan was crazy grandstanding that risked nuclear war with Pakistan. Obama lucked out. Risking nuclear war to nail one man was reckless. That is why he had to monitor the operation step by step, ready to mollify the Pakistani leadership should they have been so furious they were ready to use their nukes. Cut it out you American yahoos! You do not have the right to risk my life as a Canadian in your cowboy escapades.
~ Roedy (born: 1948-02-04 age: 64)
What is the reaction a mother has on learning her son has been killed in a the act of committing a crime such as looting, torturing a crippled man who could not speak English, murdering an old lady, bombing a school, or raping a child? Grief? Shame? Nope. Pride! She holds her head high and brags how her son sacrificed his life for God, country, freedom, liberty and justice. What is the magic that allows to so delude herself? It is just a coat, also known as a military uniform.
~ Roedy (born: 1948-02-04 age: 64)
What kind of father or mother abandons their kids for a year at a time to go to Iraq or Afghanistan to hunt, kill and torture children and their parents who are no threat whatsoever to the USA?
~ Roedy (born: 1948-02-04 age: 64)
What kind of person dedicates their life to serving war criminals? Look at a doctor in a VA (Volt-Amps) hospital.
~ Roedy (born: 1948-02-04 age: 64)
What kind of person would stand idly by while his country tortured children? If you are from Paraguay, Chile or America, look in the mirror.
~ Roedy (born: 1948-02-04 age: 64)
What kind of sick puke would design a bomb/land mine/cluster bomb that would detonate 50 years after the war was over to kill children?
~ Roedy (born: 1948-02-04 age: 64)
What objectives of the Iraq war have been accomplished?~ Roedy (born: 1948-02-04 age: 64)
Confiscate Iraq’s oil. Americans speak of the war as an investment and the oil fields as the return. Civilised people would call it the spoils of war. Punish Saddam for allegedly trying to kill W.’s daddy. Depose Saddam. Kill Saddam. Confiscate Iraq’s seed genome of hot weather crops needed for global warming conditions. Spend almost a trillion dollars on products and services from political contributors. Leave a stable US-friendly puppet government in power. Find and destroy WMDs. Weaken Islam. It is notable that the USA auctioned off Iraq’s oil resources to American and European oil companies on the very same day Obama announced the troop withdrawal from Iraq. Clearly that was the day the USA felt its true mission in Iraq had been accomplished. The public goals were accomplished within months or days. Those were clearly not the entire set of goals or the war would not have dragged on and on the way it did.
What on earth gets into people that they think they have divine right to attack other nations unprovoked to steal their resources? How do they manage to feel so darn self-righteous about killing kids, torturing people, burning them alive — people who never did them any harm? Rome, Britain, Germany, Japan, Italy, Russia, America, Canada… They all did it.
~ Roedy (born: 1948-02-04 age: 64)
What sort of person would vote for the wars in the middle east?
- People similar to those who approved of Nazis extracting gold from the teeth of Jews because they liked the gold.
- People similar to those who approved of Hitler’s concentration camps because they were Christian and the people in the camps were not.
- Because they are paranoid ignoramuses who feel threatened by unarmed people on the other side of the globe who make only $5 a month who had nothing to do with 9/11.
They are beyond contempt.
~ Roedy (born: 1948-02-04 age: 64)
What were the Americans thinking when they planted land mines in Vietnam designed to keep on killing even 50 years later?
- They figured the war would still be ongoing?
- They wanted to rip the legs off Vietnamese children, yet unborn, to punish them for the sins of their grand parents, namely refusing to submit to the American occupation?
It is a wonder that Americans enjoy a reputation any better than Nazis. How else could it be but the fruits of dogged self-promotion?
~ Roedy (born: 1948-02-04 age: 64)
What would have happened if Pakistan had noticed the US Strike force going after bin Laden. They may have presumed it was the USA or India attacking them, and in a fit of pique launched a nuclear counter attack. Obama made a huge gamble because the payoff was his reelection.
~ Roedy (born: 1948-02-04 age: 64)
What would it take for the Americans to consider that they had won sufficiently in Afghanistan?
- Less than 100 Al Qaeda left? No. That happened long ago.
- Less than 100 Taliban left? Not likely. The majority of Afghans support the Taliban in their effort to eject the American occupation. That would require a massive blood bath.
- Have 75% of Afghans support Hamid Karzai. Not bloody likely. He is the most corrupt dictator on the planet. Not even the Americans like him. He will never enjoy popular support.
The Americans have rigged things so they cannot win. They have set things up so that have to fight endlessly for the profit of GE, Halliburton, Xe (née Blackwater) etc. Corporations are happy to have the war proceed forever. It saves the profit disruption required to start new wars should the public get too tired of the Afghan and Iraq wars.
~ Roedy (born: 1948-02-04 age: 64)
What would the world be like had the Nazis won? The winners of the war would still be telling themselves they were #1 and hence deserved the lions’ share of the world resource pie. Everyone would accept that somehow war crimes did not count. Torture would be commonplace. Soldiers who tortured, raped and murdered children would be celebrated as heroes. In other words, it would be little different from the way it is now.
~ Roedy (born: 1948-02-04 age: 64)
What would you say to someone who had raped, tortured, mutilated or murdered a child, or helped someone else do so? You get a chance every time you meet a member of the armed services of the USA, Canada or Britain.
~ Roedy (born: 1948-02-04 age: 64)
What would you think if America invaded Canada because a suspected terrorist gang hung out there? What if it overturned the government and installed the world’s biggest drug lord as leader? What if it occupied Canada for 10 years? What if it routinely tortured Canadian citizens. What if it killed over a million Canadian civilians, mostly children? That’s what America did to Afghanistan. If the treatment of Afghanistan appears acceptable to you, it is because you are more of a bigot about people from Afghanistan than Canada.
~ Roedy (born: 1948-02-04 age: 64)
What would you think of a guy who patched up serial killers then released them into the world to resume their killing sprees? That is exactly what army medics do.
~ Roedy (born: 1948-02-04 age: 64)
What’s the difference between serial killers who enlist to kill children in Iraq and those that kill them back home in the USA? The ones that do it is Iraq get paid to. The ones that do it back home risk arrest by the American justice system. The ones that do it in Iraq risk arrest by the International justice system. Americans hold parades to honour the perverts who kill in Iraq and spit on the graves of those who kill them in America. Why such a difference? Racism. Iraqi children don’t count as human to the American heart.
~ Roedy (born: 1948-02-04 age: 64)
What’the difference between a serial killer and a US soldier in Afghanistan or Iraq? The soldier gets paid.
~ Roedy (born: 1948-02-04 age: 64)
What’the difference between a serial killer and a US soldier in Iraq or Afghanistan? We hold a parade for the soldier to celebrate his kills. The serial killer gets a lethal injection.
~ Roedy (born: 1948-02-04 age: 64)
When a criminal gets himself killed in the process of committing a crime, the nation hoots at him on late night TV, but when an American soldier gets himself killed in an illegal aggressive war, he is honoured on TV as a hero, even though the criminal may have committed only burglary where the soldier committed murder, rape and capital war crimes.
~ Roedy (born: 1948-02-04 age: 64)
When a gang of thugs beats up a man and steals his watch and wallet, pleading innocence based on the fact that there was consensus about beating up the man, would get nowhere. Similarly the coalition of the coerced are just as guilty of aggressive war against Iraq for its oil and Afghanistan for its minerals as the USA would have been had it acted alone.
~ Roedy (born: 1948-02-04 age: 64)
When a man volunteers to rape, torture and kill children and women, I don’t believe him when he offers some vague noble-sounding excuse like “defending freedom”. We all know darn well he would have done it for any excuse.
~ Roedy (born: 1948-02-04 age: 64)
When a marten raids a squirrel nest, the squirrels can do nothing but shriek insults. Americans treat the shrill insults of their victims as serious threats that justify an initial attack. They are such Nazis, but have such a high opinion of themselves they can’t see how badly they are behaving.
~ Roedy (born: 1948-02-04 age: 64)
When a people become so addicted to oil that they are willing to butcher and torture tens of thousands of children to get it, you realise we are dealing with an addiction even more pernicious than heroin.
~ Roedy (born: 1948-02-04 age: 64)
When a terrorist blows up a subway station, we do not in the least excuse him if he claims to regret the deaths of the children. He knew full well how many kids he would kill. In like manner, when an American military man drops bombs on houses, no matter how much he may regret killing the 50% of the occupants who are children, he is still a terrorist and still a murderer of innocents and still a war criminal. He is guilty of a capital crime and should be treated as anyone else who brazenly committed a capital crime even if he escapes prosecution.
~ Roedy (born: 1948-02-04 age: 64)
When Americans say they “support the troops”that means they support the troops in what they do, namely waging illegal aggressive wars, violating the Geneva conventions, using banned weapons, targeting civilians and torturing P.O.W.s., hardly part of the American self-image. Claiming to support the troops while simultaneously being opposed to the war is as silly as saying you support rapists, though you are opposed to rape. Americans are so deeply in denial, including left wingers like Al Franken, that they don’t even notice they are being ridiculous.
~ Roedy (born: 1948-02-04 age: 64)
When an arsonist burns down a nursing home, did he intend to kill the elderly inside? He would claim no. To him, killing them was just a side effect of producing a pretty blaze. I would say yes, because he was well aware they would not be able to escape. In a similar way, American generals claim they don’t intentionally kill civilians. Yet I have seen with my own eyes US forces dropping bombs on apartment buildings and mosques. The generals claim they were trying to kill armed resistors, yet clearly they killed more children, women and elderly since they outnumber the targets in the general population. The generals play these word games to make it sound as if they only rarely kill civilians. Hitler could have excused himself the same way for his rocket attacks on London.
~ Roedy (born: 1948-02-04 age: 64)
When I ask Americans why they are attacking Afghanistan I get two basic answers:
~ Roedy (born: 1948-02-04 age: 64)
- To protect our freedoms. They seem to forget that Afghanistan had no part in 9/11. The alleged hijackers were Saudis. Afghanistan has no interest in or means to attack America. They just want Americans off their backs.
- To kill the Islamic people in Afghanistan because Islam is a terrible religion that oppresses it own people. We must rescue people from the evil of Islam. They don’t seem to understand this would require killing everyone in Afghanistan. Surely Afghans should enjoy the same freedom of religion that Muslims enjoy in the USA. Pro-war folks want to take that freedom away from them. Ironically, Americans falsely claim Islamic people kill anyone who isn’t a Muslim, when Americans want to kill anyone in Afghanistan who isn’t a Christian or American collaborator. Afghans have defended themselves against illegally invading American soldiers, but have not harmed any American, Canadian or British civilians who were not in Afghanistan as part of the war effort as part of the military.
When I ask ordinary Americans why they are fighting in Afghanistan, they tell me all the things they don’t like about Islam, and the need to kill them all, even the children. Given that nearly everyone in Afghanistan is a Muslim, are Americans seriously planning to kill everyone in the entire country to wipe out a competing religion? Do they imagine, with sufficient torture, a latter day crusade will convert all Afghans to Southern Baptist? This is all so bigoted and ignorant when the average American has not read even a single sentence of the Qur’an. Americans’ sole exposure to Islam is hate propaganda. Americans are behaving like the Spanish Inquisition, with their self-righteous cruelty and holy certainty.
~ Roedy (born: 1948-02-04 age: 64)
When I listen to NATO leaders toasting each other and joking around, I find it hard to reconcile with the mission that brings them all together — exterminating Muslims.
~ Roedy (born: 1948-02-04 age: 64)
When I see casualties of war, particularly the bystanders and the kids hideously burned, maimed or blown to a Cuisinart purée, I ask what possible justification could there be for such cruelty? If someone says freedom, I demand to know just whose freedom was enhanced and the freedom to do what? In what way, specifically, does that particular atrocity enhance anyone’s freedom? How could this hypothetical enhanced freedom possibly justify forcing innocents to sacrifice their ultimate freedom — the freedom to live?
~ Roedy (born: 1948-02-04 age: 64)
When I was a little boy, adults told me about the Korean war. I got the idea Korea was a place where they held an endless war where anyone could go who wanted to play soldier. Come to think of it, that is a fairly good description of Afghanistan.
~ Roedy (born: 1948-02-04 age: 64)
When I was a teen, I often wondered what on earth got into ordinary German citizens that they not only went along with the Nazis, they also cheered them on and started a world war so Nazis could dominate the earth. Finally, I think I understand what happened. Hitler had control of media in Germany, much the way a few corporations control the media in the USA today. Hitler pumped his “We’re Number One” message, just the way American TV pumps its patriotic flag worship, America uber alles propaganda 24/7. Today, almost every American I encounter has never read a book on politics and does not read newspapers. He never reads anything written by foreigners. He may listen to talk radio or watch FOX News or other infotainment news. The way he decides if something is true is very simple. He asks “Does it conflict with the notion Americans are #1, the most important, the most generous, the most virtuous people on the planet by far?” If it does, it can’t be true. If it doesn’t, it must be true. There is no fact checking at all. Germans and Americans were thus putty in the hands of the propagandists.Hitler was big on scapegoats suggesting that if only some group were eliminated all world’s trouble in the world would go away. Americans are big on scapegoats too. They use liberals, gays, blacks, pro choicers, Hispanics… Scapegoating has special appeal for losers. Even a high school drop out, alcoholic on welfare can feel superior to the local scapegoats with twice the income and education. This builds a culture of hate and violence that eventually erupts the way it did in Nazi Germany.
~ Roedy (born: 1948-02-04 age: 64)
When I was in elementary school and junior high, I was the kid most bullies picked on. I was tripped, punched, held down, beaten up, set on fire, spat on, even sustained an attack on a pet turtle (the ultimate insult). They always attacked in gangs surrounding me. I was not the only victim. There was a tall kid with a round head called “Slobbo”. The epithet became so prevalent I was surprised when the teacher addressed him by his actual name. The class bully Dennis, every time he passed, gave a sharp punch to Tony’s arm, a skinny little kid who would wince in pain from the repeated bruising. I did not stand up for Slobbo/Richard or Tony. I had enough grief to deal with already. Nobody else did either, presumably for similar reasons. Bullies like this graduate to more sophisticated mayhem. They became soldiers. I am now taking the time to call them out for the pieces of shit they are.
~ Roedy (born: 1948-02-04 age: 64)
When is murder justified? Perhaps to defend the planet from ecological destruction, to defend one’s homeland from invasion, or to prevent extinction, but surely not for trivial motives like hegemony, oil and sadistic entertainment, the motives for most of the killing.
~ Roedy (born: 1948-02-04 age: 64)
When people join a death cult, first they are brainwashed, then they can kill repeatedly without thinking anything of it. The exact same thing happens to soldiers.
~ Roedy (born: 1948-02-04 age: 64)
When soldiers keep reenlisting despite the horrors, we have either a sadist or a masochist suffering from Stockholm syndrome. In either case they are mentally ill.
~ Roedy (born: 1948-02-04 age: 64)
When the USA was defending itself against Japan, it killed Japanese civilians by the millions. They never called themselves terrorists, yet when Muslims do the exact same thing on a much smaller scale to defend their homelands, the Americans invariably call them terrorists.
~ Roedy (born: 1948-02-04 age: 64)
Whenever I see movies involving post 1960 wars, and a soldier from the aggressor country is killed or maimed, I have a sense of satisfaction. One more of these bastards who enjoy hurting others met a fitting end and has left the gene pool. My attitude conflicts with the violins soaring and the other actors bawling their eyes out as they strut about in their pompous little uniforms. When soldiers come home fresh from slaughtering other people’s children, and embrace children, I cringe, just as if I would if the soldier were a known domestic homicidal pedophile.
~ Roedy (born: 1948-02-04 age: 64)
Whenever the American military talk about “surgical strikes” I wonder how you would remove a breast tumor with a 50 kg (110.23 lbs) bomb without killing the patient and everyone else in the room.
~ Roedy (born: 1948-02-04 age: 64)
Whenever two groups have an armed conflict, you can be pretty sure the one with the most power will behave worse and the one with the least power will enjoy the worse PR.
~ Roedy (born: 1948-02-04 age: 64)
Which country is more admirable, an or B? Country an invested heavily in military technology, far in excess of other countries. Country A held its citizens without trial, and tortured them to death. Country an attacked other countries unprovoked to take control of their natural resources. Country A when occupying a country, used group punishment and terror to ensure compliance. Country A was a master of propaganda and disinformation, and considered this a primary tool of warfare. Country A believed themselves vastly superior to those they conquered and imposed their religion and culture on them. Country B tortured its own citizens on a much smaller scale, though did all those things too, and in addition thumbed its nose at the world court, killed primarily civilians and children in its wars, used banned weapons and routinely tortured all P.O.W.s. If you picked A, you picked Nazi Germany. If you picked B, you picked the USA.
~ Roedy (born: 1948-02-04 age: 64)
Who is worse, the Nazis or the 21st century Americans.
Issue Nazis Americans Governance run by a dictator Run by elected representatives including president. The constitution is frequently ignored. Illegal first strike wars Attacked most of Europe and the USSR. Attacked Afghanistan, Iraq and Pakistan. Deaths Killed 6 million Jews in concentration camps, plus the military deaths plus the civilian deaths in bombings. Killed 3 million Muslims mostly in bombing and bioterror. Geneva Conventions? Largely conformed. Considered them quaint. torture of POW s? rare routine National cult of superiority? Targeted civilians? Used land mines? Used banned chemical weapons? Pretended provisional governments were democratic? Imposed religious beliefs on the conquered? Illegally targeted sanitation and
water treatment to cause cholera epidemics?Pretended their aggressive wars were for self defence?
~ Roedy (born: 1948-02-04 age: 64)
Why Did the USA Lose the Wars In Afghanistan and Iraq
The USA has been trying to subdue Afghanistan for 10 years . They have been trying to subdue Iraq for 8 years. The USA has spent over a trillion dollars, but can’t defeat two unarmed, penniless countries each less than a tenth their size. What gives? Granted the Russians could not defeat them either, but then the Afghans had American help. In their desperation to prevail, Americans resorted to routine torture, targeting children and women, rape, use of banned weapons like DU , white phosphorus, napalm, land mines, cluster bombs, desecration of corpses, Qur’an s, and mosques. The resistance countered with suicide missions. America is using extreme force to:
- Force the population to accept Hamid Karzai as leader. He is arguably the most corrupt politician in the world.
- Accept Hamid Karzai as the biggest heroin dealer on the planet — pumping out a trillion dollars worth a year. The Taliban had shut the trade down almost completely.
- Hand over Afghanistan’s minerals, especially lithium, at bargain prices to the USA.
- Commit acts of blasphemy against Islam (this is a torture/brainwashing technique)
Ask yourself, how could it be possible, these tiny countries fought the best equipped, richest, most high tech, overwhelmingly larger invader to standstill?
I think the answer is motivation. The Americans cornered the Afghans and Iraqis and gave them no way out. They would sooner die that accept the American indignities. The American soldiers have no corresponding motivation. Neither Afghanistan nor Iraq threaten American families in the slightest. The soldiers are bored and enjoy killing and torture, but to no purpose other than entertainment. The Afghans will never give up. The Americans have had more than enough already.
~ Roedy (born: 1948-02-04 age: 64)
Why do Americans think it is perfectly OK for them to attack other countries who did not attack them first, but it is a hanging offence if anyone else does it?
~ Roedy (born: 1948-02-04 age: 64)
Why do Americans think it is perfectly OK for them torture teenagers in dungeons for years on end, but it is unspeakably evil for anyone else to do the same thing?
~ Roedy (born: 1948-02-04 age: 64)
Why do so few Canadians and Americans protest the Afghan and Iraq wars:
~ Roedy (born: 1948-02-04 age: 64)
Greed
They want the oil and minerals that are the plunder of war. Of course they forget about the cost in money and lives.Bigotry
They enjoy the idea of non-Christians, non-whites burning alive, even children.Racism
They harbour all manner of crazed stereotypes about their Muslim victims. It is very similar to the psychology of lynching that justified torture/murder for being black.Patriotism
They will always root for the home team, even when it behaves worse than the Nazis.
Why is it OK for the USA and Israel to stockpile enough nukes to destroy the earth many times over, but when any other nation has even one, it is a totally unacceptable assault on world peace?
~ Roedy (born: 1948-02-04 age: 64)
With official sanction, US soldiers hand out Christian medallions at checkpoints in Iraq and Afghanistan. The Taliban use this as proof that the US intends to interfere with their religion. Imagine the effect if occupying Muslim soldiers handed out Islamic medallions.
~ Roedy (born: 1948-02-04 age: 64)
With the National Space Policy of 2006-08-31 the U.S.A. asserts sovereignty over all of space, in that the Americans assert a right to deny access to space to anyone hostile to U.S.A. To enforce this policy, the U.S.A. has developed and tested technology to shoot down other nations’ satellites and spacecraft. The Chinese responded by developing their own anti-satellite technology.
~ Roedy (born: 1948-02-04 age: 64)
Would you let a woman who was sexually attracted to men who killed children near your kids? If not, why then do you tolerate soldiers’ wives as caretakers and school teachers for your children?
~ Roedy (born: 1948-02-04 age: 64)
Yes, the USA has a bigger military that almost everyone else on earth put together, but try as they might for a decade they could not defeat two tiny unarmed countries, Afghanistan and Iraq. What makes them think they can defeat Iran? Unlike Afghanistan and Iraq, Iran has rockets, planes, missiles and bombs. Iran has friends — Russia and China. Its sunburn missiles can sink a destroyer with one shot. It can block the Straits of Hormuz thus strangling most of the world’s oil supply. It has had a decade to prepare since Bush promised to annihilate them in his Axis of Evil speech. It has fortified its defences underground. They may even have nukes. Trade insults, not bombs.
~ Roedy (born: 1948-02-04 age: 64)
You can look on the Afghan war either as an American attempt to stage a coup, or as a simple invasion and installation of an interim dictatorship. What you cannot do is pretend the war has anything at all to do with introducing democracy. The very fact Afghanistan, a country 1/10 the size of the USA, has fought America to a stalemate, indicates the vast majority of the Afghans oppose the American occupation and the Karzai provisional government. If even 30% of the Afghans supported the invasion, the Americans would have prevailed years ago. Americans are behaving in an anti-democratic way, trying to force the highly unpopular, extremely corrupt Karzai government down the throats of the Afghans. Even the US State Department admits Karzai was an unfortunate choice.
~ Roedy (born: 1948-02-04 age: 64)
You can make a case you need to develop biological weapons in the lab so that you can create defences for them, but it insane to stockpile them. By far the most likely victim of them is yourself.
~ Roedy (born: 1948-02-04 age: 64)
You can see a pattern stretching back to antiquity. Every decade, military men invent ever more lethal, terrifying and cruel weapons. Even when the weapons are considered unspeakably horrible, they eventually end up being used. Massive military budgets and technology have accelerated this evolution, through war, peace, boom and bust. What is the end point of this progression? the extinction of man. We are utterly nuts to march toward a goal nobody, not even war-profiteering Republicans, wants.
~ Roedy (born: 1948-02-04 age: 64)
You have no idea how evil a man can be until he has absolute power of life or death over others, and by extension the power to rape, torture, bully, steal and extort, in other words until you see how he behaves after he has volunteered for the military.
~ Roedy (born: 1948-02-04 age: 64)
You know that Afghanistan and Iraq never were any threat to the USA because the military talks of withdrawing or “ending the occupation” not surrender.
~ Roedy (born: 1948-02-04 age: 64)
You might wonder what sort of sicko would travel half way round the earth to stick a baby to death with a bayonet, to go hunting humans with the same casualness he might shoot squirrels. Ask any kid. That person started out as a school bully.
~ Roedy (born: 1948-02-04 age: 64)
You really have to wonder about the motives of someone who tells you they are willing to endure extreme danger and hardship for a chance to butcher children, in “self defense” of course, on the other side of the world.
~ Roedy (born: 1948-02-04 age: 64)
Young American males like to argue that the USA is the world’s only superpower, therefore they can do anything they like. No one can stop them. Might makes right. I counter, the USA spends more on the military than the rest of the world put together, but it far from invincible. Two tiny countries, Afghanistan and Iraq fought it to a stalemate. Iran, North Korea and Venezuela stick out their tongues in ridicule. China produces far more energy than the USA. China manufactures far more than the USA. The EU has a larger population and greater economic activity. The USA is up to its neck in debt to the rest of the world. It is racing toward bankruptcy, trying to finance its energy-guzzling lifestyle by borrowing money. They are stuck in an economic slump, pinned there by corrupt politicians and corrupt corporations. As America gets weaker and weaker relative to its rivals, Americans are going to wish they had not behaved like such blustering bullies, thieving natural resources. The rest of the world will not forget or forgive the USA.
~ Roedy (born: 1948-02-04 age: 64)
You”d think returning US soldiers would at least have the decency to change out of their blood-stained, DU-contaminated camouflage gear before greeting their families.
~ Roedy (born: 1948-02-04 age: 64)
Zombie movies are thinly disguised Nazi concentration camp fantasies where guards slaughter defenceless, emaciated, ill prisoners. They are indicative of a pervasive sadism that has gripped the USA much as it gripped ancient Rome.
~ Roedy (born: 1948-02-04 age: 64)
so wat i joined [the Iraq war] to kill kids.
~ Private Tyler Rogers United States Army Signal corps, in in email
But who is Osama bin Laden really? Let me rephrase that. What is Osama bin Laden? He’s America’s family secret. He is the American president’s dark doppelgänger. The savage twin of all that purports to be beautiful and civilised. He has been sculpted from the spare rib of a world laid to waste by America’s foreign policy: its gunboat diplomacy, its nuclear arsenal, its vulgarly stated policy of “full-spectrum dominance”, its chilling disregard for non-American lives, its barbarous military interventions, its support for despotic and dictatorial regimes, its merciless economic agenda that has munched through the economies of poor countries like a cloud of locusts. Its marauding multinationals who are taking over the air we breathe, the ground we stand on, the water we drink, the thoughts we think. Now that the family secret has been spilled, the twins are blurring into one another and gradually becoming interchangeable. Their guns, bombs, money and drugs have been going around in the loop for a while. (The Stinger missiles that will greet US helicopters were supplied by the CIA. The heroin used by America’s drug addicts comes from Afghanistan. The Bush administration recently gave Afghanistan a $43m subsidy for a “war on drugs”…)
~ Arundhati Roy (born: 1961-11-21 age: 50), 2001-09-29, Booker prize winner
The [Iraq] war could last six days, six weeks. I doubt six months.
~ Donald Rumsfeld (born: 1932-07-09 age: 79), secretary of War, 2003-02-07, apparently not.
Well, the Office of Management and Budget, has come up come up with a number [for the cost of the Iraq war] that’s something under $50 billion for the cost.
~ Donald Rumsfeld (born: 1932-07-09 age: 79), secretary of War, 2003-01. As of 2008-08 it is about $3000 billion and climbing. It is a debt so large it can never be paid off. Future generations will pay interest in perpetuity.
On October 26th, a date which will live in infamy, the President signed the USA/PATRIOT act, officially known as HR 3162. And you should well note that, according to Representative Ron Paul (R) of Texas as reported on November 9th by Kelly O’Meara of the Washington Times Insight Magazine, the bill had not even been printed and members of the House could not read it before they were compelled to vote on it. O’Meara wrote, “Meanwhile, efforts to obtain copies of the new bill were stonewalled even by the committee that wrote it.” Most of its provisions have nothing to do with fighting terrorism.
~ Michael C. Ruppert (born: 1951 age: 60)
War is the greatest waste of energy and resources there is.
~ Michael C. Ruppert (born: 1951 age: 60) Confronting Collapse: The Crisis of Energy and Money in a Post Peak Oil World : A 25-Point Program for Action
War does not determine who is right — only who is left.
~ Bertrand Russell (born: 1872-05-18 died: 1970-02-02 at age: 97)
War is not an adventure. It is a disease. It is like typhus.
~ Antoine De Saint-Exupery (born: 1900-06-29 died: 1944-07-31 at age: 44)
When the rich wage war, it’s the poor who die.
~ Jean-Paul Sartre (born: 1905-06-21 died: 1980-04-15 at age: 74)
Current estimates suggest the cost of the war in Iraq could exceed $700 billion.
~ Representative Jan Schakowsky (born: 1944-05-22 age: 68) (D-IL),As of 2008-08 is it about $3000 billion and climbing. It is a debt so large it can never be paid off. Future generations will pay interest in perpetuity.
War is the only game in which both sides lose.
~ Sir Walter Scott (born: 1771-08-05 died: 1832-09-21 at age: 61)
Accelerate your life!
~ Navy recruiting slogan . This is refreshingly honest — effectively, “Get your life over with faster.”
A state of war only serves as an excuse for domestic tyranny.
~ Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn (born: 1918-12-11 died: 2008-08-03 at age: 89)
I wondered to myself during “Shock and Awe,” I wondered which of the megaton bombs Jesus, our President’s personal savior, would have personally dropped on the sleeping families of Baghdad?
~ Meryl Streep (born: 1949-06-22 age: 62), 2003-07-09
All those who seek to destroy the liberties of a democratic nation ought to know that war is the surest and shortest means to accomplish it.
~ Alexis de Tocqueville (born: 1805-07-29 died: 1859-04-16 at age: 53)
No protracted war can fail to endanger the freedom of a democratic country.
~ Alexis de Tocqueville (born: 1805-07-29 died: 1859-04-16 at age: 53)
I’m only interested in Libya if we get the oil.
~ Donald Trump (born: 1946-06-14 age: 65) 2011-04-07 in an interview with Meredith Viera.At least he is honest. US leaders agree with him, but pretend their interest is freedom, oddly though, only of people who live in countries with oil.
All war is deception.
~ Sun Tsu The Art Of War
All war is deception.
~ Sun Tzu (born: 544 BC died: 496 BC at age: 48)
If an unjust and rapacious conqueror subdues a nation and forces her to accept hard, ignominious and insupportable conditions, necessity obliges her to submit, but this apparent tranquility is not a peace, it is an oppression she endures only so long she lacks the means of shaking it off and against which men of spirit arise on the first favourable opportunity.
~ Emerich de Vattel (born: 1714-03-25 died: 1767-12-28 at age: 53) , The Law of Nations
Currently, the [Afghanistan] pipeline is a go-project thanks to the junta’s [Bush/Cheney’s] installation of a Unocal employee (John J. Maresca) as US envoy to the newly born democracy whose president, Hamid Karzai, is also, according to Le Monde, a former employee of a Unocal subsidiary. Conspiracy? Coincidence!
~ Gore Vidal (born: 1925-10-03 age: 86) not to mention Zalmai Khalilzad, the Unocal point man in the Bush cabinet.
I don’t see us winning the war. We have made enemies of one billion Muslims.
~ Gore Vidal (born: 1925-10-03 age: 86)
In almost every case (where the United States has fought wars) our overwhelming commitment to freedom, democracy and human rights has required us to support those regimes that would deny freedom, democracy and human rights to their own people.
~ Gore Vidal (born: 1925-10-03 age: 86)
It is forbidden to kill; therefore all murderers are punished unless they kill in large numbers and to the sound of trumpets.
~ Voltaire (born: 1694-11-21 died: 1778-05-30 at age: 83) [François Marie d’Arouet Voltaire]
The Afghan people detest the Taliban.
The United States is the greatest fighting force in the history of the world.
~ Roger Wicker (born: 1951-07-05 age: 60) Republican senator from Mississippi.This makes no sense. How could a tiny group of Taliban defeat the entire Afghan people, backed by the USA (with its high tech warfare and unlimited budget), Britain, Canada and other NATO nations? The answer is, the Taliban beat them the same way they expelled the Russian invaders. They have the hearts and minds of the people the way a drug/war lord collaborator like Hamid Karzai never could. The Taliban are fighting for independence, to oust the infidel invaders. They are fighting for their religion which the Americans despise. We might find Islam odious, but they are convinced it represents the will of God. The USA, Britain an Canada have realised that they cannot win (and plunder the oil and mineral resources), and are trying to save face without admitting defeat.
I have little choice but to conclude that some of the intelligence related to Iraq’s nuclear weapons programme was twisted.
~ Ambassador Joseph C. Wilson (born: 1949-11-06 age: 62)
The revulsion against war… will be an almost insuperable obstacle for us to overcome. For that reason, I am convinced that we must begin now to set the machinery in motion for a permanent wartime economy.
~ Charles Erwin Wilson (born: 1890-07-18 died: 1961-09-26 at age: 71) President of General Electric (1940-42, 1945-50), head of the Office of Defense Mobilisation in 1951, US Secretary of Defense (1953-57)
There are only about 100 Al Qaeda in Afghanistan, so…
~ Charles Nesbitt Wilson (born: 1933-06-01 age: 78) Texas congressman inspiration for the movie Charlie Wilson’s War 2009-10-07
To fight, you must be brutal and ruthless, and the spirit of ruthless brutality will enter into the very fibre of national life…
~ Woodrow Wilson (born: 1856-12-28 died: 1924-02-03 at age: 67)
For reason that have a lot to do with US Government bureaucracy, we settled on the one issue everyone could agree on, which was weapons of mass destruction.
~ Paul Wolfowitz (born: 1943-12-22 age: 68) 2003-06, explaining how the Bush administration sold the Iraq war to a gullible public.
It seems like such a terrible shame that innocent civilians have to get hurt in wars, otherwise combat would be such a wonderfully healthy way to rid the human race of unneeded trash.
~ Fred Woodworth
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