Perfection.
Well, I made my cousin eat a bug once, but he wasn’t a Marine yet.
I don’t think that’s it. However, the continuing repetition of incidents where our tactics betray our long term interests makes me wonder whether we have an overall strategy for prosecuting the war against terror.
If we do, I’d like to see it.
If we don’t, shouldn’t we start working on one?
In addition to what’s already been written in response to your question, Sam, I’d like to ask what purpose your snarky, hateful comment could possibly have, other than the underhanded implication that people concerned about these issues already hate the military anyway.
As usual, you complain loudly about conservatives (such as yourself) being mistreated on these boards, while simultaneously being the first to dish out backhanded insults.
That’d require a subtlety of thought which folks like Sam Stone do not possess.
Yeah. I, for one, am sick of having to wade through all the threads about American soldiers’ generosity, courage, and good deeds. Couldn’t they just be combined into one thread? Maybe this one could be the flagship and the rest merged into here.
You know, for someone so deeply imbued with the skills of logic—including a knowledge of its symbols and arcane terminology—you are, at times, surprisingly illogical.
We are attempting to refute here the notion that leftists and liberals are soldier-haters, the notion that we have, in Sam Stone’s words, “a general antipathy towards the military.” Refuting such accusations does not require us to demonstrate that we have started threads lauding the American soldier.
Furthermore, i believe that i have stated on more than one occasion pretty much the same thing that i stated in my post above—that i have admiration for those who have the courage to join the military and who do that dangerous job well. I’ve seen plenty of other liberals and leftists on these Boards say the same thing. If you’ve missed this stuff, you must have been looking elsewhere at the time.
I took Liberal’s comments as a way of pointing out the irony of rjung criticizing someone for lacking “subtlety of thought”.
Having said that, I do agree that Sam’s statement really has no relavence to the ongoing discussion here.
Would that it were so, Johnny. But I’ve been watching them pull this crap for nigh on to 40 years now, whenever they want to sell us a turd, they wrap a flag around it and tell us its chocolate.
And why do they do it? Because it works. Dr. Johnson was wrong, patriotism isn’t the last refuge of a scoundrel, usually, its the first. Because it works.
You might be right. But if so, his intentions were pretty well disguised by his words.
I think the words were clear. Using sarcasm as a device, they ridicule the notion that liberals are patriotic. Why even bother to make such a claim, as ETF has done? Be honest, as Luc has been. Call patriotism what it is — a political tactic for hypnotizing the masses and inducing sabre rattling. The idea is to attach emotionally to a reified entity, pledge life and limb to a rah-rah rag, and beat people about the heads and shoulders until they submit to a brain bath of serotonin. It dehumanizes those whom it declares to be enemies, and anthropomorphizes the State into a father figure. Isn’t it time for liberals to be proud of what we stand for? Individual liberty and personal responsibility? You cannot out-Republican the Republicans. And frankly, you should stop out-Democrating the Democrats. They left liberalism in the dust long ago.
Whre? Where did I make such a claim? Let’s look at what I said:
And these words are a stirring call to blind patriotic flag-waving fervor how?
What has happened to the commanders of Abu Gharib, Gitmo and the various other prisons where abuse has occuted?
As far as I can tell, absolutely nothing.
If this administration were serious about stopping these abuses wouldn’t you think they would have punished those responsible?
Except that the debate wasn’t about patriotism. It was about whether or not liberals are hostile to the military. Not the same thing.
I agree that patriotism is “a political tactic for hypnotizing the masses and inducing sabre rattling.” But this doesn’t mean that i’m hostile to the men and women who serve in the armed forces, which was Sam Stone’s original accusation, and the one that i was seeking to refute.
You have a curious knack for making the debate about what you feel like holding forth about, rather than engaging the actual topic at hand.
The biggest thing wrong with having the best hammer in the world is the tendency to see all problems as nails.
Canadians?
Not “nothing”, but no prison, at least not yet. Army demotes a one-star general accused of dereliction in prisoner abuse scandal.
Of Karpinski’s crimes:
What’s remarkable to me is that Sanchez got off so quickly. ISTR that after his testimony to congress about not authorizing dogs, a memo surfuced in which Sanchez had authorized the use of dogs at Abu Ghraib. Maybe congress doesn’t care?
** John Mace**- That is a start but lets look at what other people recieved:
Letters of f’in reprimand and some court-martials for torture endemic to the system? Heads ought to be rollin for this and there ought to be jail time for any officer in the chain of command aware of the torture.
Hey, I was just responding to the person who said “nothing” had been done. That was incorrect.