Called and emailed my Congresscritters and tried to block it. Well, good for me? No. I and others like me didn’t succeed, where Colin Powell did. And Powell had ample reason to know he lied. So did Congress.
Would I like to see war crimes charges brought? Yes, but that is easier said then done.
Wars are unpredictable in their outcome, but they are very predictable in the profits for the arms makers and great expense on the population in blood and treasure.
I can actually understand why people listen to Lincolns words and conclude he was not offended by slavery and wanted to wipe it out. It is what he constantly said. But it is the opposite of what he did. People like me want to think of Lincoln and FDR as Honest Abe, etc. But they were not honest. They were far more opposed to slavery and Hitler than they ever dare say in public prior to the war. They lied.
Do you have proof for that? From the stuff I read when I took classes on Revolutionary War-era America, Scots-Irish indentured servants could not just quit; if they broke their indenture, they often were hunted after, arrested and brought back. Indentured servants could also be whipped and beaten (and were often outright beaten to death). In fact, an indentured servant was considered lower than a slave, because a slave was a lifetime investment and an indentured servant could be replaced, and could eventually serve out the indenture and so there was no incentive to not just work them to death. And of course some indentures were just de facto slavery because the “servant” never had any chance in hell of being able to pay it off. I definitely recall reading a document, a primary source, that even decreed that the children of indentured servants could themselves be born into indenture. There was far from some uniform code of conduct and many were treated as de facto slaves.
Only to someone with blinders on. Slavery was illegal in the North, there was a loud and growing movement to abolish it everywhere, and attempts by Northerners to prevent it in the territories were a major reason why the South started the Civil War.
I can believe it’s not a daily topic of conversation. So many people have moved into the region from elsewhere that the obsession has been heavily diluted. There are still “romantics” who can’t let go of the fables, but they’re increasingly marginalized.
Oh dear, we just can’t understand. :rolleyes:
As I said in a similar thread some years back (to less than universal acclaim):
The war is over.
The Union was preserved.
Slavery was ended.
The good guys won.
Get over it.
One thing that’s struck me about two of the most prominent defenders of “Southern heritage” on this board (Sampiro and Liberal) - is that if they were magically transported back to the good ol’ days in the land of cotton, they’d be held in contempt (at the least) or strung up from a handy tree (at the worst). Not that they would have been enormously better off in the North in pre-Civil War days, but kindred spirits would have been a bit easier to find.
The nostalgia for a mindset that would happily have seen you both in the ground is mind-boggling.
Maybe you mean white southerners, because I assure you black southerners look at these things much like northerners do.
Confederate holidays are another “innocuous reminder” of days long past, such as Lee-Jackson Day. Not only does this day commemorate the birthdays of two 1) traitorous Americans who 2) fought for slavery, but the state of Virginia observes this ridiculous holiday in the same weekend period as MLK’s birthday! Anyone care to defend this crap? Perhaps this is just one more thing that non-white southerners can’t be expected to relate to, bless our hearts.
This is a hijack, but take a few minutes to think of all the parallels between the South following their defeat in the Civil War and Germany following their defeat in WWI.
Really not seeing them at all - they strike me as very different situations. I’d say there are closer parallels if you use WWII, but there are still obviously a lot of differences.
[ul]
[li]The victors imposed a liberal regime that was widely despised and eventually overthrown.[/li][li]Resentment over the defeat, the terms imposed by the victors, and the economic privation fueled a resurgence of nationalistic pride. [/li][li]A minority group was scapegoated for the loss and subjected to a regime of official discrimination.[/li][li]A political organization was formed that was highly ritualized, espoused an extemist, racist philosophy, and engaged in violence and intimidation.[/li][/ul]
Granted, the South did not “rise again” with the KKK forming a totalitarian regime and going on to wage Civil War II.
Well, except for the fact that the Weimar Republic wasn’t imposed by the victors… Germany was never occupied… the minority group scapegoated was, in the case of the South, already scapegoated (that whole slavery schebang) and thus was in a very different position to Jews in Germany… blacks not being blamed for the defeat as much as always having been blamed for everything… the rise of the Klan being fundamentally different to the rise of the Nazis… I would agree they are comparable.
Good for you; I am most favorably impressed. I participated in anti war rallies and marches during the Vietnam era; probably got my name on the FBI excrement list for my pains. Maybe we’re brothers under the skin. Again, good for you.
We failed, and so not good for us. Most of the consequences that were predicted have come to be. Coming in second is not good enough. I will not miss Saddam Hussein, but Iraq is still going through a monstrous civil war. Our nation deliberately abandoned human rights and committed war crimes and there is no stomach here to prosecute. Much of the post WWII moral high ground the US held has been deliberately abandoned in search of power and profits. I would prosecute the war mongers and torturers. They said they want the current administration to continue their practices, and as far as I know, that is what is happening. Nearly a million Iraqi lives are snuffed out. I get no satisfaction from having been right or on the side of the angels. I wish I had been wrong and that Blix and Ritter had also been wrong. But their analysis was so obviously right at the time.
I am not asserting anything about the post-WW1 German government here.
I was only debating the assertion that Germany was not occupied. I would like to suggest that pictures of French Poilu in the streets of Saarbrucken would likely inflame any nationalistic passions in the German citizenry, much as they would if the soldiers were photographed in Munich or Berlin.
It’s similar to saying that the U.S. isn’t occupying Iraq because, you know, we’re not everywhere in Iraq, just Baghdad.
If, for some reason, foreign troops were stationed in Maryland and/or D.C. to ensure compliance on some treaty or UN resolution, I would consider the U.S.'s national integrity to have been infringed upon, and would call them “occupying forces”.
I don’t mean that sarcastically; it’s almost funny to hear myself, a gay atheist who grew up in the rural south and has gone into near apoplectic fits over the ignorance and self exoneration of our elected officials who is damned near radical in his denunciations of the GONE WITH THE WINDization of history, referred to as a “prominent defender of Southern heritage”. But life is nothing if not ironic; like St. Paul (a slavery defender) I am all things to all people, so long as none of those things is slim or milk producing.
Perhaps you should have whoever read this to you the first time read it to you again, this time slower. I was referring to such things as growing up in a church with a slave balcony and meeting on an almost daily basis the descendants of your ancestor’s slaves who have the same surname. 1- I really don’t think this happens that much in the north 2- I think black southerners most definitely have encountered this (albeit from the flip side) 3- from your posts it’s quite clear you could miss every point in the pentagon.
