No, Americans are *NOT* a bunch of racist warmongers

In a recent Pit thread on the Kurds, Diogenes the Cynic goes way off-topic to declare his hatred of America. And Americans.

[An explanatory note before I start: I began a new thread because I didn’t want to allow Diogenes to hijack a different but important one]

Well fuck you, Diogenes.

Half the fucking debate in this country on the impending war centers on the number of civilian casualties, OK? Read a newspaper. Do you want me to provide cites where these issues are discussed?

Where the hell is your moral compass, asshole? Do you want tolls on how many Iraqi civilians have been brutally murdered under Saddam Hussein’s orders? How many have been wrongly imprisoned, tortured, and forced to watch their own children die? That’s not even including the children who have starved because of Saddam’s exploitation of Iraq’s wealth to build himself palaces and lavish mosques. Yes, there will be Iraqi civilians killed. But how many more will be killed if we don’t do anything? Do you really believe his latest bullshit, emptying his prisons and letting everyone go free? How long do you honestly think it will be till the Republican Guard rounds all those prisoners back up for a new round of torturing?

So fuck you, we’re not a bunch of “fucking morons who mindlessly swallow propaganda.” And no, we don’t “get off on killing people”? “Especially brown people”? Who the fuck are you to call us a nation of warmongering racists? Your simplistic labeling of all war as “EVIL” (incidentally, would you have classified bin Laden or Hussein as such?), and your allegations that we would rather bury our heads in the sand than hear the truth are evidence of your complete and utter idiocy. We have diversity of opinion in this country, and unlike the country we are going to war with, we tolerate dissent. So labels, especially the vicious labels you have put out there, cannot possibly apply to the country as a whole.

You tell us how we’ve never seen any war, or any hardships. There’s a 16-acre hole in downtown Manhattan that would say differently. We watched the murder of 3000 of our compatriots live on TV, so damn right we knew war. Did you have the peril of thinking your father might have been killed that day? I know, I know, American chickens coming home to roost, right?

In any case, the mere fact that you’ve “seen war” does not make you infinitely more qualified than any of us to talk about it. Both my parents and their families had to leave their homelands - my father from Algeria because of Islamist/Arab nationalist terrorism, my mother from Romania because of communism. Does that make them the only people allowed to have an opinion on those subjects? Despite what you seem to think, you are not better than everybody else.

And then, of course, you chime back in with “BTW I’m not defending any attacks on the Kurds. I’m not defending saddam,” which at this point sounds like “but I have plenty of gay friends!”. As far as you are concerned, the US is just as evil as Saddam. Well, you’re fucking wrong.

You know, I’m actually opposed to the war against Iraq, but some of the people who agree with me make me want to switch to the other side.

:mad: sup[/sup]

First of all, YES Hussein is evil. Yes bin Laden is evil. Did I ever say they weren’t?

There is a big difference between actually being PRESENT in a war zone, seeing it up close, fucking SMELLING it, and sitting on your fat ass, eating cheetos and watching the CNN coverage of 911.

BTW what did Iraq have to do with 911?

At the risk of using the old “…some of my best friends…” argument, I have to say that I had Kurdish friends in college who had escaped from Saddam. I have no illusions about Hussein’s despotism, or his treatment of his own people. The solution, however, is not to kill even MORE Iraqi people.

American bombings in the Gulf war killed an estimated 30,000 people a week in Iraq. The total civilian death toll was 200,000 plus. This is at least twice as many innocent people as Saddam allegedly killed.

I never said I “hated” America. As someone who once put on a uniform for this country I really resent that charge. However, AS an American, I have a right to be critical of and resist an action by this country that I sincerely believe to be unjustified and immoral.

I’m with you Fang. ('Cept for the opposition to the war part)

As I stated in another thread, D_t_C seriously needs to go mix himself a drink, and settle back with a good book. Dude has got waaaaaay too much stress going on.

30000 a week? Bullshit. Prove it.

D_t_C- Pray tell, what warzone were you, exactly?

I wouldn’t mind seeing a cite for the 30,000 figure myself.

So, because you have a little bit of post-trauma stress, you’re suddenly a fucking expert on the entirety of the U.S. military intelligence effort, war planning, and operations?

Stop this appeal to authority bullshit, buckaroo. Some of us are well aware of how atrocious a war is, without having seen dead bodies strewn about. Some of us who AREN’T acting irrationally due to overstressed emotions recognize that the cost of NOT going to war can be worse than actually doing it.

This seems unfair.

Spoofe, Diogenes actually submitted his claim to actual experience of the bombing after you accused him of “sipping cappucino in the Coffeehouse Of Omniscience”. Then you attack him for an “appeal to authority”. Sorry Spoofe, but you can’t have it both ways, and you were the one who started that line of reasoning.

Diogenes the Cynic, I call shenanigans on you!

Diogenes the Cynic, what would you have us do? Sanctions haven’t worked against Castro’s Cuba, and they certainly haven’t worked at getting Saddam out of power, so what do you propose? Simply leaving Saddam in power? Granted there are a lot of evil shitheads in power in the world that the US is ignoring at this time, but most of them haven’t been actively seeking nuclear weapons, nor have they attacked another country in hopes of spreading the war to an entire region of the world, Iraq has done both. Everyone in the US, including Bush, the men and women in the armed forces, and the ordinary folks in the US, would prefer that Saddam do the world a favor and put a bullet in his brain, but that’s unlikely to happen.

So since you obviously have all the answers, let’s hear 'em. Put up, or shut the fuck up.

Ten bucks says that Diogenes never said a peep about the cruise missile strikes called in on Iraq, Afghanistan and the aspirin factory in Sudan by Clinton.

Neurotik- I dunno. He seems pretty pissed off about everything.

And I love his statement that we bombed the wedding. I felt horrible at the time for the mix-up, and still do, but really, folks, if you’re in a war zone, and you KNOW that there are bomb-loaded planes on patrol just searching for hostile, armed groups, do you and a bunch of friends get together and start shooting in the air?

I would submit the following: “Hell no.”

Gee Diogenes, you seemed to have inflated the civilian death toll by 100 fold. So “fawh yawh”*.
*[sub]That’s "fuck you’ said with a mouthful of Cheetos.[/sub]

Here is a cite for Iraqi casualties

http://www.casi.org.uk/discuss/2000/msg00007.html
I was in the Gulf War. I saw the aftermath of American and Iraqi bombing and it bothered me. I don’t want to do it again.

So flame me.

Oh, and Neurotik is wrong in saying that I didn’t object to Clinton’s bombing campaigns. I’m opposed to ANY bombing that has even the potential to kill civilians. I don’t give a shit WHO does it.

Tuckerfan: The White House has as yet shown absolutely no compelling evidence that Iraq has either WOMD or the means to fire them at the US. The CIA has has said that Iraq is not a threat.
An IISS report has said that Iraq is several years away from getting a primative nuclear bomb, and that even THEN they wouldn’t have the missle capability to fire one at the US.

Here is the IISS website

http://www.iiss.org/news-more.php?itemID=88

I never said anything about a wedding. what the fuck are you talking about?

I never said anything about a wedding. what the fuck are you talking about?

Very sorry, Diogenes. I misreferenced that quote. It was Urban Ranger who said that. My apologies.

A few things about your cite, Diogenes.

1: It’s a post on a discussion thread, though c&p’d from fair.org. The original article is no longer available.

2: Your selected piece:

does not state civilian casualties, and offers that number as a high-end estimate.

3: In the very same link there are cites for far lower estimates of casualties.

I’m backing no horse in this race, but surely you can provide a cite that supports your position rather than those of your opponents?

In addition to what Ino said, FAIR is a liberal organization whose coverage on other issues has sometimes been tilted.