There is nothing historicly to indicate that Hermann Goering was homosexual. Ernst Roem was as queer as a blue horse, and no mistake. He seems to have been one of that truly wierd sort of guy, like Ray Cohn (who, one can only hope, is simmering in Hell close by Nixon): hyper-masculine homosexuals who somehow believe that if they are the active participant rather then the passive participant, he isn’t queer, its the other guy. (I’m not going into details, if you need an explanation, I’m sure you can get a volunteer. Frankly, the whole idea creeps me out, but it ain’t no never mind)
Goering was a fat, Nazi morphine addict. But he wasn’t gay.
Milo,
Thanks for the details on your military plan; yes, that’s what I was looking for. It’s the first of its kind I’ve seen on this board and is, I think, likely to be put into action IRL.
As you probably expected, it’s not the solution I would propose. I could go line by line raising my objections, but neither of us would enjoy it and I’m sure you can imagine what they would be. Basically, I think that we wouldn’t be able to get all or even most of Al Quaida, and that the risks to life and to political stability are therefore too great to be justified.
This is correct, I see no need for such a message. As was mentioned earlier by another poster (sorry, but I’m not going to re-read the whole thread so I can give credit), shocking your opponent into submission through a massive military strike has never proven effective. Though I can’t think of any instance in which it has worked, I can think of at least a couple in which it has not. The previous poster mentioned the blitz. I think a better example would be the Allied attacks on Germany. We destroyed urban Germany about as thoroughly as we possibly could have, yet we still had to fight until Germany’s military situation was beyond hopeless. Likewise Pearl Harbor, far from discouraging the American populace, was a rallying cry that ensured we would never accept Japanese control of South East Asia. (I believe the only way this message could work – the only way it ever has worked – is if it it were delivered with nuclear weapons).
I think that your message, if sent with enough force, would only drive thousands of peaceful Islamic fundamentalists to become violent Islamic fundamentalists. I think it would be counter-productive.
I think some people are seeking vengeance. I have no problem believing that you and others see it as an unfortunate practical necessity.
Right, but neither will they be swayed by cruise missiles, and, like I said, I doubt we could even get most of them.
Right, but in the case of the death penalty there isn’t the possibility that we’ll fail to kill the inmate. Nor is there the possibility (generally speaking) that a given execution will spark a wave of retaliatory murders. Those are both distinct possibilities in this case.
I agree that we’re not going to get invovled in a meat-grinder situation in Afghanistan. What worries me is an expansion of the conflict (Iraq, as you said, is a wildcard), especially given that there are at least four nuclear powers in the vicinity (Russia, Pakistan, India, and China) – five if you count us. What’s worse: none of them like each other very much.
– Jer
Two vaguely snotty comments, because I’m in a snotty mood, not because of Gobear at all.
A) No such thing as an “orignal cast soundtrack”. You can have an “original cast album” or a soundtrack, but not both. See about, oh…ten billion posts (give or take a billion) in rec.arts.theatre.musicals for further info.
B) Liza was pretty good…as a matter of fact…TOO good. I never bought that she’d be working in a dive like the Kit-Kat Klub(sp). I prefer Jill Haworth from the Original Broadway cast. Besides, her “Don’t Tell Momma” and “Perfectly Marvelous” are…well, perfectly marvelous and human in a way that the over-perfect tones of Ms Minnelli can’t approach.
C’mon. What’s wrong with a theater hijack. Aren’t you people sick of politics already?
Ah, yes. I remember those salad days, summer of '64, when President Johnson announced our “War on Poverty”. I remember seeing the F-14s flying through the air, conducting their strafing missions on Watts to the cheers of Los Angeleans nearby. The B-1s carpet-bombing Harlem; the Agent Orange released all across Mississippi and Alabama. The guerilla warfare in West Virginia was alarming to all who heard about it, but all the reports from the advance into Capitol Heights, Maryland were good.
Oh, and Mandelstam- in response to your earlier question, which I missed (my apologies): dropzone had stated that the best way to eliminate terrorism was to bring wealth to the Middle East- when an area has a burgeoning middle class, he postulated, it is far less likely to indulge in warfare or terrorism, as there is more to be lost. I felt his postulate was incorrect, and brought up Northern Ireland to show such; if Northern Ireland is in fact extremely impoverished, I shall withdraw that particular objection, but my understanding is that N.I. is generally prosperous- or at least, as prosperous as the rest of Britain. If that is the case, then bringing prosperity to the impoverished of the Middle East won’t stop terrorism.
This combined with your trashing of the firemen in NYC, leads me to believe that my assessment of you is correct.
Having a low opinion of you in neither a lie nor the truth. It is an opinion, not fact.
Get this straight: You are right that dissent is not disloyalty. You will notice that I haven’t trashed Dropzone or Mandelstam, despite their being in the peace camp. That’s because they have shown that they really are concerned about the welfare of America and the Afghans. They and I just have differences of opinion.
I think you’re disloyal because your posts have come just this close to saying “America deserved it” without actually crossing the line. I think you’re disloyal because you blithely dismissed the deaths of your countrymen. I think you’re disloyal because you showed contempt for the brave men and women who labored to save people at the WTC.
We are both exercising our constitutional rights, dumbshit. And you’re right, loyalty under threat is no loyalty at all. but ** you’re not being threatened**! Show one threat that anyone has made to you in this thread.
You are the liar, Otto, not I.
Dropzone and Mandelstam, I want to get my inner goteddy back too, but it’s really hard right now.
Well, there’s little wonder! I go away for a while and come back and the damned thread is about GAY NAZIS! And to think I was upbraided for being off topic!
Has anybody noticed that Pollyanna has been mentioned at least twice in this thread? Have any of you actually read the book or seen the movie? What did I ever see in Haley Mills?
BTW, bro, this thread has been going nowhere for pages. In order to find your inner goteddy I suggest ending the fight with Otto by walking away from it. Punch a wall. Get some friends together, go to a straight bar, and bash some breeders. Continuing an endless fight isn’t good for your heart.
**Milossarian **,"Where we seem to most disagree is, you apparently don’t see a need for the United States to respond in a way to the perpetrators of the Sept. 11 attacks, that sends a message throughout the radical, American-hating, fundamentalist Islamic world. A message that causes them to shudder when they later recall the level of retribution one gets for attacking innocent Americans on American soil in such a way"
Just one question Milo, a message that causes *who * to shudder? Do you think Saddam Hussein was shuddering during the Gulf War bombardment? Do you think that the Taliban and bin Laden are shuddering now? What makes you think that people fanatical enough to kill themselves to cause indiscriminate mass destruction are likely to “shudder” because you destroy their neighbors? What have such people got to lose?
Once again, I’m not necessarily against the use of force on a limited scale. But I’m perplexed by a certain ambivalence in your views. On the one hand, you describe a limited “special force” attack–presumably to attempt a surgical hit on key players. Fair enough (though I wonder how tenable it is given everything I’ve read on the subject). On the other you talk about a punitive and deterrent “level of retribution.” Somehow this doesn’t add up for me.
But I’m actually more interested in what you think about the links, so I look forward to it.
Broomstick: “Because if we cave instead of resist it means we’re weak and easily manipulated.”
Again, this crude psychologizing seems utterly groundless to me. What danger is there that the United States, the richest and most powerful nation on earth, is likely to be perceived as “weak and easily manipulated” by small Middle Eastern nations? What you don’t seem to understand is that terrorism is the weapon of the weak. You’re acting as though the terrorists were a surly high school teenagers who need to learn that we’re “tough on crime.” Remember, no one in this thread is advocating a total “cave-in.”
gobear, good luck. I’d offer you a virtual hug but Milossarian might get jealous. <ducks>
<<<What makes you think that people fanatical enough to kill themselves to cause indiscriminate mass destruction are likely to “shudder” because you destroy their neighbors?>>>
What makes you think that the individuals who comprise the power structure of the Taliban are necessarily fanatical enough to kill themselves?
<< What have such people got to lose? >>
Quite a bit. They are alive, well fed, and in power.
I think the idea is that so far, neither Saddam Hussein nor Osama bin Laden have actually been willing to kill themselves. Witness the fact that when the shit hits the fan, they both go into hiding.
Not that I advocate killing any innocent Afghans (although I would strongly oppose inaction solely to protect them), but I do think that a cold, ruthless, campaign of terror approaching either of them would indeed make them shudder. Not a morally acceptable way of making them shudder, but an effective one.
Ugh. Milo, the terrorist attacks have probably resulted in us seeing eye-to-eye more so than on any topic ever, but if David Horowitz told me I was on fire, I’d want a second opinion. He is so fundamentally dishonest, I consider him to be simply untrustworthy.
waterj2: “I think the idea is that so far, neither Saddam Hussein nor Osama bin Laden have actually been willing to kill themselves. Witness the fact that when the shit hits the fan, they both go into hiding.”
No doubt these two egomaniacs want to live and think they have nine lives; but you can’t expect to end the threat of terrorism by driving either into hiding. Both seem to love the idea of flaunting their bravado before the world at large more than they fear capture or death. Nor can you believe that terorism will stop if ObL is either killed in a military action, or extradited, tried and punished. Someone else will assume his place–some other guy whose name we’ll all learn how to pronounce.
Believe me, I wish that this were a problem that could be solved by one small tactical effort by military heroes from the US or anywhere else. But this is not a Hollywood movie.
John: I’m by no means the best authority on these boards on Ireland. But Ireland as a whole was in the 70s, 80s and most of the 90s pretty economically screwed with, IIRR, an unemployment rate of as high as 50%. Much worse off than most of Britain. Northern Ireland was worse off than Southern. Quite recently Ireland’s had a kind of economic boom since their entry to the EC; I don’t honestly know the extent to which that’s been spread through North as well as South. My point though about the difference was this: Ireland is a place scarred and divided by a history of a privileged minority dominating a less-privileged majority. In that kind of situation prosperity can be tricky if it’s not distributed the right way. But that’s not the problem in Afghanistan.
I responded to “go away” at the same level as “go away.” Strange how one warrants eye-rolling and the other doesn’t. Jagoff.
That gobear and others use the war metaphor when it suits their purposes and recant it when it doesn’t.
I’ve never taken LSD, my tinted glasses are regular old sunglass tint and my vivion uncorrected is 20/15.
As I noted immediately after the line of mine you quoted, a number of people made threats against the flag-flying gentleman here in Madison. Rep. Barbara Lee has been and may still be under police protection subsequent to the death threats she has received for voting against the use-of-force resolution. I’d say killing someone who “looks Arab” qualifies as a “threat” as well, and at least one such person is now dead.
Did I say that US-sponsired deaths justify American deaths? No. I said that in spite of the tragic deaths at WTC and the Pentagon, the chances of an American soldier being killed on deployment to a combat zone dwarfs his or her chance of dying in his or her own home.
Ignoring the truth: the first resort of the irredeemably stupid.
elucidator
Roy. FYI.
Fenris
That was the thinking in the recent revival, which is why the role went to people like Natasha Richardson whose singing, being charitable, is not great.
John Corrado
I take it that you either don’t understand or choose to ignore the qualitative difference between the rhetoric of the “war on poverty” and the current situation.
gobear
No. Uhn uh. You specifically stated that I wish to give “aid and comfort” to the enemy. Either post a quote from me where I said any such thing or admit you’re a damn liar.
And I think you’re a worthless piece of garbage who can’t pull his head out of his fat ass long enough to figure it out. Dismissed the deaths of my countrymen? First off, you’ve just dismissed the deaths of the women. Secondly, if I blithely dismissed anyone’s death, would I be in here and IRL demonstrating against blithely sending more of my “countrymen” off to their deaths? No, if I didn’t care, I wouldn’t speak up.
Get this now and get it right. Nobody deserves to be murdered. Is that clear enough for you, you dumbshit fatherfucker?
Oh, are we limiting it to this thread now? Funny how when you want to trash me you feel free to hark back to another thread, but then when I mention threats it’s suddenly limited to this one. Hypocrite.
I’ve already posted a series of your pernicious lies. Strange how you’ve been unable to post a single one of mine.
Did you say “I want to give aid and comfort to the enemy”? Well, no. But in the tenor of your comments, that firefighters should be ashamed of themselves for chanitng USA and that the deaths at the WTC are peanuts to the deaths America has caused (A damn lie, BTW,), yes, you’re as bad as Tokyo Rose.
A worthless piece of garbage, but fat? Honey, you couldn’t lift what I bench.
I’ll agree with that 100 percent.
Produce one threat I have ever posted to you! Insults, sure, but no threats. You are a liar.
Before I respond to the the last sentence, let’s look again at the most important ones.
In other words, when you said I said this, you lied.
As for the rest, the first part’s a distortion, the middle part’s a sign of your ignorance and the last, well, I don’t look good in a kimono.
Oh what was I thinking, of course someone’s worth is directly related to how much he can bench press.
And still you aren’t man enough to apologize.
Hmm. Did I say you threatened me? But unless you want to compound your lies with another lie, you’ll admit that I have been threatened on these boards.
The way to let a thread die is to not post to it. See, if you post to a thread it pops the thread up to the top. Saying you want to let a thread die while posting to it is just a passive-aggressive ploy to try to make yourself look like you’re above it all while still actually rolling in the trenches.
Continuing an endless fight isn’t good for your heart.