Email from Our America Initiative:
Friends,
In recent days, the news media captured an image of school children chanting “Hands Up, Don’t Shoot” while riding on a school bus in Missouri. Their gesture, of course, is a response to the alarming events in Ferguson.
That image carries a message that cuts much deeper than those children likely realize: We have reached a point at which too many Americans feel threatened by their own government, whether it be federal agencies or local law enforcement deploying armored tactical vehicles supplied by the military.
A CNN poll released just a couple of weeks ago found that Americans’ trust in government is at an all-time low, with only 13% of us believing the government can be trusted to do the right thing “most of the time” — and almost that many saying they NEVER trust the government.
In a nation founded on the notion that government should be limited and should protect our lives, property and liberty, this is an unacceptable state of affairs. Unacceptable, but not surprising, given that the hand of government keeps growing heavier and heavier.
The NSA sweeping up our phone calls, emails, financial transactions and even our images. The IRS clearly abusing its power. The military giving local law enforcement agencies almost half a billion dollars’ worth of equipment last year alone. A drug war that has turned our border into a combat zone. All of these — and many other examples of the growth and militarization of government — have made government a threat that is felt in our homes, our businesses and our streets.
The good news here is that people are waking up. Images from Ferguson, Missouri, of armored tactical vehicles patrolling the streets, the steady stream of disclosures about NSA spying on American citizens and the arrival at our borders of thousands of refugees from the drug war are all making it clear that the time has come to begin pushing back. Even some Members of Congress are taking note and beginning to take small steps to curb the abuses of a too-large and increasingly militarized federal government.
Pushing back is where the Our America Initiative comes in. While many Americans are just now waking up, we have long been speaking out against the kinds of abuses that are now dominating the news. Our Advisory Council members are publishing op-eds and blogs reaching thousands of people. Through the news and social media, I have taken our advocacy of smaller government and greater liberty to Americans at every opportunity.
But we must do more — and that depends on you. Your contribution of $25, $50, $100, $500 or more at Our America provides the resources we must have to turn awareness into action. And the time has never been better to do just that.
I hope I can count on your continued support. Never have the American people been more ready to push back against a government that is chipping away at liberty each and every day. Your contribution at Our America makes it possible for us to begin to reclaim those liberties.
Thank you,
Gov. Gary Johnson
Honorary Chairman
http://libertycrier.com/open-letter-warning-governor-nixon-missouri-oath-keepers/
http://libertycrier.com/good-cops-stay-silent-persecution-officer-adam-basford/
Why “Good Cops” Stay Silent: The Persecution Of Officer Adam Basford
http://reason.com/blog/2014/08/25/war-on-the-streets
We don’t edit comments from legitimate users except by request, or to fix minor typing and formatting errors on rare occassions.
You can see the same comments in the trash. They were copy and paste exactly the same.
I have no idea what Vernon posted above, but I disagree with TLK’s “edits” on the comments. Editing comments stifles speech from legitimate users by discouraging commenting out of fear comments will be changed. If comments violate a site’s policy they should simply be deleted.
Barry Page posted in Libertarian Party of Mississippi
Barry Page
Barry Page 8:51am Aug 25
“Since 2002, the Department of Homeland Security has provided over $35 billion in grants to local governments for the purchase of tactical gear, military-style armor, and mine-resistant vehicles.” ~Ron Paul
http://www.infowars.com/ferguson-the-war-comes-home/
Ferguson: The War Comes Home
http://www.infowars.com
The increasing use of military equipment by local police is a symptom of growing authoritarianism, n…
Lorie Meacham 10:16pm Aug 24
WASHINGTON — A Ferguson police officer who helped detain a journalist in a McDonald’s earlier this month is in the midst of a civil rights lawsuit because he allegedly hog-tied a 12-year-old boy who was checking the mail at the end of his driveway.
Lawsuit Alleges Ferguson Police Officer Justin Cosma Hog-Tied And Injured A Young Child
http://www.huffingtonpost.comLorie Meacham 10:16pm Aug 24
WASHINGTON — A Ferguson police officer who helped detain a journalist in a McDonald’s earlier this month is in the midst of a civil rights lawsuit because he allegedly hog-tied a 12-year-old boy who was checking the mail at the end of his driveway.
Lawsuit Alleges Ferguson Police Officer Justin Cosma Hog-Tied And Injured A Young Child
http://www.huffingtonpost.com
Mark Christensen
Mark Christensen 11:21pm Aug 24
Nixon told CNN he’s confident “justice will be served” in the case, but he suggested it’s a possibility that no charges will be filed.
Nixon also defended the local prosecutor in charge of the case, Robert McCulloch, who has faced questions about his ability to oversee a fair investigation. Critics point to McCulloch’s decision in 2000 to not charge two police officers who killed two unarmed black men. Same O’, Same O’
Jay Nixon on possibility of controversial Ferguson cop being charged
http://www.cbsnews.com
Lorie Meacham
Lorie Meacham 12:19am Aug 25
Monday, August 25th would have been Mike Brown’s first day of college. Instead, it is the day of his funeral. Rather than dropping Mike off at school on Monday, his family will be saying goodbye to him forever.
Since Mike Brown won’t be in class on Monday we are calling for a National Student Walk Out in Solidarity with Ferguson, MO and every community that has lost people to police violence. Find a #HandsUpWalkout on your campus or create your own below.
#HandsUpWalkOut
ourlivesmatter.nationbuilder.com
I did also erase some neo-nazi music videos off the Russia thread. Although the topic involves fascism in Russia I don’t see how videos by nazi skinhead bands from Russia help the discussion in any way.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DqGO5b_16rM&authuser=0
LOL! Yes, thanks, Thomas.
I don’t think any of us delete Vernon’s comments anymore, unless they’re personal attacks.
Thanks for improving the troll’s comments, Tom. They are much more accurate and entertaining now.
Yes, Jill, we all know you rock.
[comment edit by TLK]
Knapp, you handsome devil, you can edit my disgusting slime all you want, but I’ll keep writing it because I can’t help myself.
[comment edit by TLK]
If you google “vernon” obsessed (put “vernon” in quotes) you will find nothing of legitimate interest. Just like in his comments.
[comment edit by TLK]
Vernon is obsessed with Paulie. Why? Because Vernon is obsessive!
[comment edit by TLK]
Thanks to Jill or whoever took down the nazi troll’s latest comments. I took down a few nazi troll posts on the Russia thread as well.
Lorie Meacham posted in CopBlock.org Fan Group
Ron Paul Institute for Peace and Prosperity:
“The increasing use of military equipment by local police is a symptom of growing authoritarianism, not the cause. The cause is policies that encourage police to see Americans as enemies to subjugate, rather than as citizens to “protect and serve.” This attitude is on display not only in Ferguson, but in the police lockdown following the Boston Marathon bombing and in the Americans killed and injured in “no-knock” raids conducted by militarized SWAT teams.”
Ferguson: The War Comes Home
ronpaulinstitute.org
America’s attention recently turned away from the violence in Iraq and Gaza toward the violence in F…
Mark Christensen 3:09pm Aug 24
One group of people is decidedly happy about the militarized response in Ferguson: those who work in the weapons industry…
Ferguson is big business: How companies are profiting from police crackdowns
http://www.salon.com
Sales of all those military-grade weapons are making numerous American arms dealers extremely rich
http://www.dailykos.com/story/2014/08/22/1323717/-Keystone-Cops-or-liars-Ferguson-police-now-say-there-is-no-incident-report-on-the-shooting?detail=facebook
Lorie Meacham 1:49pm Aug 24
Darren Wilson, the cop who opened fire on Michael Brown, started his police career in 2009, joining a nearly all-white, 45-member task force that patrolled Jennings, Missouri, a small, impoverished city of 14,000 where the residents were 89 percent African-American. The racial tension was high, and the police were accused of using excessive force against its residents. In 2011, city council members voted 6-1 to shut down the force and start over, bringing in a new set of officers. Everyone was let go, including Wilson, but he soon found a job at the Ferguson police department, where he has been since.
Darren Wilson’s Former Police Force Was Disbanded for Excessive Force and Corruption
http://www.alternet.org
The Washington Post gives additional insight into the background of the officer who killed Michael B…
Lorie Meacham 1:22pm Aug 24
“Something very troubling, very frightening is going on in America, something we have never seen before to this extent. Police swat teams seem to be everywhere, in large cities and small towns and when we see them on the TV they look like storm troopers.”
The Uncivil War Escalating Across America
http://www.nationofchange.org
Americans are used to this nation’s military being engaged in wars across the world; wars against na…
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nKt2Mhk73J4
Tanya Sargent DeCant 12:50pm Aug 24
“Once he was arrested, according to Russell, he heard the officer say, ‘We finally got him. We finally got one of those animals and that’s the one we want.’
Russell remembers a young white police officer standing nearby a black county officer. ‘I was called nigger by a city police officer, a young white guy,’ he added. The black county officer just stood by there and didn’t really say anything.
He believes he was targeted for arrest just after he finished a media interview.
‘When I came out of an interview, we saw police officers stand directly looking at us. We cross the street and two of them cross the street.’”
‘We Finally Got One of Those Animals’: Community Organizer in Ferguson Recounts Arrest | The…
dissenter.firedoglake.com
http://www.vox.com/2014/8/18/6043247/ferguson-police-media-harassment
https://www.youtube.com/watch?feature=player_embedded&v=2N8RzLyTbRY
http://www.upworthy.com/here-are-10-images-by-the-time-i-reached-the-third-one-i-was-crying-by-the-10th-i-was-furious?c=ufb1
pf: Most likely because the US never actually intervened to stop the holocaust, not even in WWII.
me: Something that took me a LONG time to “get” is that we can’t make sense of the senseless. Near as I can tell, your logic is flawless here. But it’s also the case that people are not logical. No matter what you say, they see WWII as the good war, and that the US/Allies liberated the camps, etc. And there’s just enough truth in that narrative that it gives crazy people comfort that their take is true.
This thought stream got me off the strict non-interventionist stance to a heavily biased against interventionist stance. Why fight the senseless? Sure, if there is a “clean” case where the US can intervene to stop another Holocaust, I’m open to supporting it. And I’m sincere in that stance. If the Mounties are mowing down millions of French Canadians on the VT border, if I’m president, I might ask Congress for a declaration of war to stop the Mounties. Rivers of French Canadian blood flowing into the Green Mountain State is pretty offensive, as is mass slaughter of our neighbors!
And if the UN had a vote to intervene and stop the carnage in Rwanda, I might direct the Ambassador to vote yes.
Call me a statist sell-out, but there are times when the scale of brutality is such that we are our brother’s keeper, depending on the circumstances.
“Never, never, never” forecloses any ability to engage in the Public Square conversation, since I suspect it’s just too dogmatic for most. I’d note that it’s OK to be an extreme outlier, just don’t be surprised that such self-marginalization > virtually no influence and almost certainly no effect.
Or African. Or Native American. Or German, Russian, Ukrainian etc killed by Stalin.
Why is the US so interventionist? Well, I don’t guess it’s too different from the USSR, the UK and France and Spain in their respective heydays, the Aztecs, the Mongols, the Romans, the Japanese a century ago…territorial expansionism seems to be a part of the reptilian brain that we have had for many millions of years and will be stuck with for maybe another decade or two.
Dunno. I guess some genocides are more equal than others.
Most likely because the US never actually intervened to stop the holocaust, not even in WWII. It so happened that two of the losing nations in WWII were engaged in mass murder in the millions – the Japanese also killed massive numbers of Chinese, although that is relatively obscure when compared with the European holocaust. But then again the winning nations (including the US) killed millions of civilians too, and the Soviets killed millions of their own people as well as millions of “enemy” civilians. The holocaust was not widely known in the US before or during the war and played no role in the decision to go to war, and boatloads of Jewish refugees from Hitler were turned away by the US. So, I honestly don’t believe that stopping genocides ever played any role other than propaganda in any US decisions to go to war, invade, occupy or bomb any nation.
It’s only easy when you examine where the actual death camps were. Clearly there are a lot of people who don’t examine that, don’t know or just gloss it over.
pf: Given that the population of Vietnam and Cambodia is far smaller than Europe it was just as bad as the Holocaust for their society. We aren’t so traumatized by it because they are not “people who matter,” much the 70-80 million Chinese killed by Mao.
me: Again, we’re largely in concurrence. I’m scratching my head why the US is so interventionist. I want to at least UNDERSTAND it, which — at the moment — I don’t. Perhaps you do. There likely is something to what you suggest: that Americans just don’t care about Asian deaths. Still, there may also be the “ethnic cleansing” aspect to the H that makes it even MORE offensive.
pf: And who cares about the 2 million or so Iraqis killed by US invasions, bombings, occupation and their secondary effects in Iraq over the last quarter century? Or for that matter US genocide of America’s native population as the US amechieved its “manifest destiny”?
me: Well, I care. Why do so few Americans care? Is there a Frankel Hypothesis?
pf: That must explain why US troops intervened in Rwanda, Sudan and the Congo (if the H is an important aspect of US f.p.).
me: Some wanted the US to do so. Why didn’t the US?
pf: It’s pretty easy to overcome when you examine where the actual death camps were. The ones the US liberated were nowhere near in their league of deadliness. All the main death camps were in Poland, and the US never liberated Poland during WWII.
me: If it were “easy,” PF, then I’d say the nation would be over the H. All indications is that we are not. Also, at the time, the USSR was on part of the Allies. It was a team effort to end the Holocaust. Regardless, I suspect your “average” American would say that the WWII effort was worthwhile if the US only liberated ONE concentration camp.
Do you have a different take?
LOL. “Paulie’s” singularity?
Exactly. And there was also Stalin’s Holodomor in Ukraine and his nearly-forgotten ethnic cleansing of Germans in Eastern Europe in the aftermath of WWII which also killed several million. But who cares, he was our good ally “Uncle Joe.”
Around 2-3 million Vietnamese died in the war (mostly civilian casualties), and perhaps an equal number of Cambodians when you include those killed by Pol Pot’s regime, after a large portion of the country’s population was already killed by US bombing. Given that the population of Vietnam and Cambodia is far smaller than Europe it was just as bad as the Holocaust for their society. We aren’t so traumatized by it because they are not “people who matter,” much like the 70-80 million Chinese killed by Mao. And who cares about the 2 million or so Iraqis killed by US invasions, bombings, occupation and their secondary effects in Iraq over the last quarter century? Or for that matter US genocide of America’s native population as the US achieved its “manifest destiny”?
That must explain why US troops intervened in Rwanda, Sudan and the Congo.
It’s pretty easy to overcome when you examine where the actual death camps were. The ones the US liberated were nowhere near in their league of deadliness. All the main death camps were in Poland, and the US never liberated Poland during WWII.
L: There are a lot of reasons, but they don’t have anything to do with how “calculated and methodical” the Holocaust was. What Stalin and Mao did to their own people was just as “calculated and methodical” as the Holocaust. So was Truman’s mass murder in Japan.
me: Yes, there are other issues. The H was largely an “ethnic cleansing,” and the aftermath was heavily filmed and photographed. Stalin and Mao’s were not. Mass killing for one’s ethnicity feels even creepier than killing for ideological or economic reasons, yes?
If you are referring to Truman’s bomb-dropping, while I find those awful, unjustified acts, they are different in many ways from the H.
It’s my contention that the H is still something that motivates US policies, which my sense is that perhaps majorities of Americans by and large support. “We don’t want another Holocaust” is a thought that seems to foreclose any counter to military restraint.
If I’m in the neighborhood of correct, then we are dealing with an irrational mindset. The combination of “we’re superpowers/we need to stop the next Holocaust” has thus far made shifts to US f.p. unattainable. The only thing that takes the wind out of the sails of US adventurism is war weariness. And even that only lasts for a short time. It seems to only take a beheading to get the hawkish American psyche itching to go on yet another crusade.
We keep inviting the crazy Uncle in the attic down for dinner, and then we’re surprised that he does something crazy.
(Where I often differ with my L colleagues is that I don’t see meeting irrationality with either a blizzard of facts OR shocking overstatements in the other direction as being likely winning strategies for mindset reversal. There’s got to be another way, although I’m not sure what that might be. It does seem, though, that if we want peace we should offer peace, not more hysteria.)
Oh, well. Perhaps the only hope is Paulie’s Singularity.
me: As for civilian deaths since the US became a “superpower,” it feels a bit high
pf: How so?
me: A bit of research on this this am…looks like it broke a million during Korea alone, so at least 2 seems likely. Not finding a really good source, and of course with stats like these, the data has to be estimated. Still, fair enough, “millions” seems workable enough to me.
I wish I had some anti-superpower pixie dust that I could sprinkle across the nation to disabuse and otherwise purge this absurd concept from people’s minds. The hubris!
There’s a reason why the culture is STILL traumatized by the Holocaust but not so much by, say, civilian deaths during Vietnam. Sheer numbers for one, but also the fact that the H was so calculated and methodical.
There are a lot of reasons, but they don’t have anything to do with how “calculated and methodical” the Holocaust was. What Stalin and Mao did to their own people was just as “calculated and methodical” as the Holocaust. So was Truman’s mass murder in Japan. Yet none of those things have achieved anywhere near the level of infamy that has been heaped on the Holocaust. Then again, none of those things supposedly made WWII the “Good War.”
[Mandatory disclaimer for brain-dead morons who parse every single statement looking for any miniscule angle that they can use to infer bigotry: I am not in any way denying the horror of the Holocaust, which was indisputably one of the most tragic and senseless acts of brutality ever.]
L and JP: Murder is murder..
me: I hear that, but OTOH, there are different levels of “murder.” Homicide is somewhat different from manslaughter, though the outcome is the same for the victim.
There’s a reason why the culture is STILL traumatized by the Holocaust but not so much by, say, civilian deaths during Vietnam. Sheer numbers for one, but also the fact that the H was so calculated and methodical.
So much of US foreign policy hinges on avoiding the next Holocaust. The mythology surrounding US troops liberating the camps is pretty hard to overcome, actually.
Lorie Meacham via – Police the Police – (A Community Project)
1 hr
ACLU Says the Ferguson Police Report on Michael Brown’s Death Violates the Law ~ Learn more: http://bit.ly/1pqrInx
“I’ve never seen an incident report that didn’t contain a description of the incident, at least on some basic level,” said Don Tittle to Yahoo News, a veteran Texas civil and criminal attorney. “It makes you wonder if they don’t want to commit to a story.”
It was said: “I and probably most would draw a distinction between a collateral death and a round-them-up-and-slaughter-civilians death. Death is death, to be sure, but the motives are different”
It makes no difference to me. Murder is murder..
How so?
I and probably most would draw a distinction between a collateral death and a round-them-up-and-slaughter-civilians death. Death is death, to be sure, but the motives are different.
I’m sure such benevolent motives provide a great deal of comfort to the victims’ families.
Seems to be trannies, judging from the porn section of his blog (now removed).
The attack on the Soviet Union was inevitable given nazi ideology (lebensraum). But if the nazis ignored the USSR what would they have done instead? Perhaps conquered the UK, although I doubt that. After that they would have had to move on the USSR. No chance they could take the US. Not even if the Hitler-Stalin pact held.
Good point.
“Marion Areola” Nathan Norman so needs to get a girlfriend. Or whomever it is he fancies.
The Nazi’s ideas about a “final solution” applied to Jewish people, Gypsies, the mentally ill, physically disabled et al go back into the 1920s. Early 1942 the Wansee conference outside of Berlin was where the German bureaucracy came together on how to coordinate carrying it out. So the genocide against Jewish people was ongoing long before the US got involved. I do agree that it was the attack on the Soviet Union that stopped the Nazi’s from conquering much of the world. The pressure from the US in the west and south always seemed to me like the anvil so the Soviets could use their hammer and smash the Germans. And I do not think the US consciously went into WW2 with the intention of saving peole from death camps. The govt would have let more refugees in to the US if that were true. I would think.
https://www.facebook.com/CopBlock
So what do the cops have to hide?
http://mic.com/articles/97012/here-s-the-long-awaited-police-report-on-the-mike-brown-shooting
http://libertycrier.com/silver-lining-statism-creating-anarchists-every-day/
Scroll up for several good examples…
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/olivia-cole/the-10-kinds-of-trolls-yo_b_5691405.html
The 10 Kinds of Trolls You Will Encounter When Talking About Mike Brown
http://mises.org/daily/6852/Police-States-and-Private-Markets
Police States and Private Markets
Mises Daily: Saturday, August 23, 2014 by Jeff Deist
https://www.youtube.com/watch?feature=player_embedded&v=4LmHhgr7TGk
tk: But US intervention also marked the final transformation of the US into a “superpower” engaged in 70 years of interventions since then, also featuring millions of civilian deaths.
me: Thanks for your take. I’ll probably lose the Holocaust may not have happened to the extent it did tack based on your perspective.
As for civilian deaths since the US became a “superpower,” it feels a bit high, but regardless, I and probably most would draw a distinction between a collateral death and a round-them-up-and-slaughter-civilians death. Death is death, to be sure, but the motives are different.
I tend to find myself in a more nuanced frame of mind when relaxing after biking about 25 miles today to finish up my 100 miles for the week 😀
Agreed with Knapp. That’s a more nuanced explanation than I had the patience for, but it is basically what I meant.
“Do you have an opinion?”
Well, like I said, the only way to know for certain what MIGHT have happened is to have a time machine in which we can re-run history. And we don’t.
But I think it’s reasonable to assert that had the US not entered World War One, that war would likely have ended without the crushing terms of Versailles, which would in turn have made it less likely that Hitler or someone of his extreme ideology would ascend to power.
While it’s true that as the Third Reich crumbled the Nazis went all out to speed up their mass murders of Jews and others, I don’t see that the US not intervening would have changed the ultimate outcome in that particular respect. Hitler et. al had less time so they worked faster. If they had had more time, they might have worked slower, but would have worked for longer. The die with respect to Jews in particular was probably cast when negotiations (probably desultory in any case) between Eichmann and Zionists in Palestine to deport rather than kill Jews fell through.
In fact, one might be able to make a case that US intervention culminating in the invasions of Italy and France disrupted at least some of the Holocaust killing. But US intervention also marked the final transformation of the US into a “superpower” engaged in 70 years of interventions since then, also featuring millions of civilian deaths.
seems much agreement here. TK, PF contends that the Holocaust was unavoidable whether the US forces came to Europe or not. My contention is it’s POSSIBLE that the Holocaust’s magnitude might have been tiny had US forces not pressured the TR.
Do you have an opinion?
I must admit that my heavy bias for non-intervention motivates my proto-hypothesis, since the Holocaust is used to justify all sorts of US adventurism since then. Still, if Mr. Singularity is 100% correct, I’d like to know that. It wouldn’t change my non-interventionism, but it makes the case a BIT harder to make.
Quoth RC,
“we surely can’t know what would have happened had the US not sent forces to Europe during WWII.”
True. What actually happened is what actually happened. Without a time machine, it’s not like we can go back and try different things to see if we get different outcomes.
However:
– The Soviets (with the aid of Russia’s awful winter) stopped the Germans short of Moscow in early December of 1941, a couple of weeks before the first US “Lend-Lease” shipment arrived.
– The Soviets destroyed the German 6th Army at Stalingrad in early 1943, months before the US/UK opened even a theoretical “second European front” by invading Italy, and turned back the final German offensive in the battle of Kursk, also 1/2 months before the US/UK invasion of Italy.
– By D-Day, the Soviets were in full offensive mode, and within a month of D-Day were re-taking ByeloRussia and eastern Poland from the Germans.
It can’t be proven, but it seems very LIKELY that the Soviet Union would have prevailed over the Third Reich even if Britain had surrendered in 1940 and even if the US had never entered the war in Europe.
It also can’t be proven, but also seems very LIKELY that the Soviet Union would have substantially exhausted itself doing that, leaving more of eastern Europe free to determine its own future instead of living for the next 45 years under the USSR’s heel.
I barely started first grade when we left.
LOL. Just study of history and logic.
Incidentally, even in the absurd scenario where Hitler takes and holds on to the whole USSR the number of Jews there was smaller than I thought. I was fixing the links in the Russia article last night (the copy and paste caused many of them to cut off and messed up the links so I had to fix them manually) and came across this:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ethnic_groups_in_Russia
Jews Semitic European Russia 1926: 539,086 0.58% 1939: 891,147 0.82% 1959: 875,058 0.74% 1970: 807,526 0.62% 1979: 699,286 0.51% 1989: 550,709 0.37% 2002: 233,439 0.16% 2010: 156,801 0.11%
Contrast this with the number of people the Soviets killed in the aftermath of the war. Granted, I would have never been born if Hitler reached the Urals and Siberia, but really, some familiarity with the subject makes such a scenario laughable. Add the even loopier idea of Hitler crossing the Atlantic and invading the US, when he couldn’t even cross the English Channel and take the UK, while holding the far reaches of Siberia at the same time, and you are in deep fantasy land.
In deference to Starchild’s point, I am not suggesting Hitler personally doing any of this, of course, but rather people following his orders.
My point exactly.
Yes.
Of course, to get back to the troll’s original “point,” ISIS, ISILevant, IS or whatever the correct name for the group is has nowhere near the military capability of Hitler – they are literally just a very few thousand people.
pf: The end result would have been the same, as the Napoleonic wars show. Hitler didn’t learn the lessons of history, so he had to learn the hard way, much like Americans who haven’t learned the millenia old wisdom to not get involved in a land war in Asia.
me: You are 100% certain, is that right? Is this Russian schooling manifesting for you? Or perhaps has the Singularity touched you first, giving you access to alternative universes and timelines? 😉
I met a Turkish dude y’day, and he told me that it was 100% certain that Mossad is behind ISIS. My Inner Andy could see that as a POSSIBILITY, and yet the certainty of this fellow troubled me.
btw, I’ve mentioned the Napolean comparison on this thread myself. The lessons of history are not math equations, though.
pf: And even if we imagine that Hitler somehow managed to take and hold all of the USSR, which is patently absurd, what about all the millions Stalin killed after the war? Were their lives less significant than those of my grandparents and other Jews who remained in the USSR? Their numbers were larger.
me: Millions more BEFORE WWII as well. The forced starvation of Ukraine comes to mind. Having myself NOT been touched by the Singularity (as yet), I don’t know how it might have gone, but the notion of 2 lunatics and their mindless followers fighting on for years and years depleting one another sounds like a potentially less harmful outcome than the timeline we are living, where a marginal player (US) intervened, facilitating a faster fall of Lunatic 1 (Hitler) and giving Lunatic 2 (Stalin) semi-permanent control of a much larger land mass (E. Europe).
pf: The final solution plan was already laid out before he ever came to power in Mein Kampf. The losses in the war may have moved up the timeline. But it would have happened eventually.
me: iirc, only in general. But, yes, Hitler was deranged — obviously so — but somehow he was also highly persuasive. His mindless followers still retained a shred of humanity, so it took a while to get them all on the same insane page. Otherwise, the mass executions would have commenced immediately on arrival to the camps, yes?
Good point, Starchild. I try to be careful with that but sometimes it’s easy to fall into shorthand.
Just a note in response to multiple comments on this thread using personal pronouns to refer to the U.S. government — “we” are not the government, and the government is not “us”.
Many if not most of us have a non-consensual relationship with government.
Fantastic. Hope you and Lesiak have fun there.
Not here. He recognizes and understands his ban. He is being invited back to report for A3PR!
I missed the news that you were welcome back. Not sure who made that decision.
Thanks for the heads up, Marlon/Nathan/CLC. Glad to see Lesiak making an effort again, but where’s Fauver?
And Nathan Norman is being invited back as long as he doesn’t use it to attack Paulie or IPR.
Good discussion above. IPR needed to at least mention ISIS. Before I go I’d like to note that apparently A3PR is back.
LOL, I had a feeling it was you, Nathan (or whatever your real name is).
Your site does not compete with IPR. It’s basically just another blog with your opinions. You don’t cover news stories and you don’t have a comment community to speak of.
You have a strange definition of “competing with.”
Your blog “competes” with IPR in much the same way that mine “competes” with the New York Times.
Jeffrey Tucker FTW:
I found a cool new website that is competing with this one. It only discusses the facts about Ferguson and includes an insightful article about the myth of sexual orientation
http://functionalfillmorefrugal.WordPress.com
True. Israeli Arab/Palestinian population is growing faster than Israeli Jews.
True. The community in Feguson is defending itself. Militarized police and world policing military indiscriminately kill many foreigners and Americans (especially if they are poor and/or “nonwhite”).
Marlon,
Not sure who you think you’re replying to — not only have I never claimed there is genocide in Palestine, I’ve explained more than once (for example, here) why that’s a BS claim.
Almost as much of a BS claim as most of the claims you’ve made here.
Almost.
But not quite.
The US did not defend itself in Iraq, it invaded twice, occupied for a decade and bombed for another decade, a 25-year war that has kiled well over a million Iraqis, half of them children. Iraq never attacked the US.
You haven’t paid attention. See prior threads and links to news reports I have posted.
How may links would you like to US regime violence in Iraq? I can put up a few (or a few hundred) after work if you don’t know how to use search engines.
Your “indifference” (facilitation of) the growing US police state is way beyond appalling.
Nope, just arrest him. And the real mob in Ferguson is the police; the protesters are peaceful.
Too bad Michael Brown and thousands of other Americans killed by out of control occupying army of police weren’t given that presumption.
Much less the many thousands of pet dogs (and at least one parakeet) shot by police for no good reason.
Backatcha. And increasingly likely you are CLC/NN since that is his line…
And there is no genocide in Palestine either. Palestinian deaths are collateral damage from Israel defending itself. Plus the Israelis always warn before they strike.
There’s a difference between defending oneself and indiscriminate killing. Namely, the former is not genocide.
Marlon,
Were you against “genocide” when the US was murdering hundreds of thousands in Iraq 2003-2010?
Or is mass murder only bad when it’s Muslims doing it?
The only thing unusual for the area about Ferguson in that respect is that it’s large enough to have its own police force. In the smaller towns in the area, there are either elected city marshals (with ordinance ticketing but not arrest powers) or “code enforcement officer” appointees (same, only not elected — the politicians love that because they write more tickets since they don’t have to answer to voters). It’s a major revenue scam, as well as a great way to harass political opponents, etc.
You have posted no images of actual violence committed in Ferguson. I have posted a link showing actual violence in Iraq and Syria.
Your indifference to the genocide is APPALLING.
The mobs in Ferguson want to lynch Darren Wilson. He is INNOCENT until PROVEN guilty!
How do you sleep at night?
Lorie Meacham 7:46pm Aug 21
8/20/14 – some weapons are less obvious like technology to kill livestream feeds during questionable police activity. And that’s precisely what happened last night according to Ferguson’s most prolific livestreamer Argus Radio.
Ferguson Police Use “Kill Switch” on Livestream Signal The Moment They Create Chaos
http://www.activistpost.com
Mark Christensen 8:46pm Aug 21
“the courts are supposed to be the place where you administer justice, not rely on for revenue”
A local public defender on the deeply dysfunctional Ferguson court system
http://www.vox.com
Lorie Meacham
Lorie Meacham 9:14pm Aug 21
The people of Ferguson demand justice for Michael Brown, including the arrest of Ferguson Police Officer Darren Wilson, who killed Brown.
The Ghost of Dred Scott Haunts the Streets of Ferguson
http://www.nationofchange.org
Lorie Meacham 11:48pm Aug 21
Police violence in the United States should not surprise anyone. In Ferguson, Missouri, we have witnessed the use against US citizens of Iraq-tested war technologies. Police and military have become almost impossible to tell apart due to two little-known Federal programs: the Department of Defense Excess Property Program (DOD 1033) and the 1122 Federal Program.
The US War Culture Has Come Home to Roost » CounterPunch: Tells the Facts, Names the Names
http://www.counterpunch.org
The US War Culture Has Come Home to Roost
http://colorlines.com/archives/2014/08/ferguson_hires_all-white_pr_firm_to_help_deal_with_racial_tension.html
Missed this yesterday — CNN reporting that the “Brown fractured Wilson’s eye socket” story was apparently BS:
The police/prosecutor/supporters-of-same version continues to change on an hourly basis.
Lorie Meacham 12:21am Aug 22
“The situation in Ferguson was so badly handled it almost seems like the police state, in responding to the shooting, intended to provoke violence so that the American public could become accustomed to military force being applied to unarmed civilian protests.”
5,000 Americans Killed by Cops Since 9/11 – LewRockwell.com
http://www.lewrockwell.com
Lorie Meacham 2:16am Aug 22
A Missouri chapter of the Ku Klux Klan has raised more than $150,000 for the white police officer who shot and killed unarmed black teenager Michael Brown in Ferguson, Missouri.
KKK raising money for Ferguson cop
http://www.presstv.ir
Lorie Meacham 4:48am Aug 22
“Ferguson solidarity protests spread to dozens of cities nationwide”
Ferguson solidarity protests spread to dozens of cities nationwide
http://www.theguardian.com
Demonstrations from Los Angeles to New York protest killing of Michael Brown and other recent cases …
Press TV
A girl holds a sign as she protests the shooting of Michael Brown August 21, 2014 in Ferguson, Missouri.
Well worth reading:
http://www.thedailybeast.com/articles/2014/08/21/the-libertarian-moment-in-ferguson.html
An Imminent Rebellion
another photo from #Ferguson #Antifa #ACAB — with Alan Dawson and Lorie Meacham.
Speaking of “good Germans”…
Urban Cusp
@TheRoot: 5 eyewitnesses to the #MichaelBrown shooting and what they saw: http://bit.ly/1n6cZcy
Protests Expected in 37 Cities of the U.S. for Murder of Michael Brown http://www.anonsweden.se/?p=6111 #Anonymous #Ferguson — with Lorie Meacham.
What killed Hitler was the same thing that did Napoleon in: the Russian winter and the resilience of Russian resistence. The western front was a sideshow, and a minor one. If Hitler didn’t have to defend his western flank he would have had a few more troops to throw at the eastern front but that would just have meant a few more Germans dying in Russia and Poland rather than those same Germans dying in France. The end result would have been the same, as the Napoleonic wars show. Hitler didn’t learn the lessons of history, so he had to learn the hard way, much like Americans who haven’t learned the millenia old wisdom to not get involved in a land war in Asia. The hubris of empire is far too difficult for the power-hungry to resist. It may look on a map like Hitler was surrounded, but it’s clear from troop levels and casualty numbers that the west was a minor sideshow for Hitler.
We can imagine all sorts of nonsense, but supposing even that he could somehow overcome what Napoleon couldn’t, the Jews who did not manage to escape Europe by then were almost all killed; there weren’t millions left at that point.
And even if we imagine that Hitler somehow managed to take and hold all of the USSR, which is patently absurd, what about all the millions Stalin killed after the war? Were their lives less significant than those of my grandparents and other Jews who remained in the USSR? Their numbers were larger.
It was a formality which Germany was obligated to follow as part of its alliance pact with Japan. Hitler had no interest in actually crossing the Atlantic, which he would have never been able to do. And what, hold all of the USSR at the same time? Yeah, right.
True. However, the Slavs would have beat him with or without the Yanks.
The final solution plan was already laid out before he ever came to power in Mein Kampf. The losses in the war may have moved up the timeline. But it would have happened eventually.
“Libertaryans drive me crazy.”
Well, let’s be honest here — you were within walking distance already.
pf: I don’t unerstand what you are uncertain about. Look at the troop and casualty levels on the German side in the east vs in the west. Look at the historical data on where the death camps were. Look which areas were taken by the Soviets vs which ones were take by the US and the Brits and when. The historical data is readily available. The war in the west was a sideshow and had very little to do with ending the holocaust. The holocaust was mainly taking place in Poland and accelerated when Soviet troops started advancing west and Hitler read the writing on the wall. Most of the death camps were in area that ended up being conquered by the USSR, not the Americans.
me: Empiricism can be helpful, but a good analyst understands that all action is at the margin. The swing factor here is that Hitler had been facing a largely one-front war, as the French had folded like a cheap suit. The marginal change of adding the US to the mix meant that the western allies were advancing, which meant that the Axis was now really in a bind. The USSR was advancing, and Germany was now being surrounded.
The MAIN point I was making, though, was that WE CAN IMAGINE that the deranged Hitler might have been able to hold his shit together (to the extent he HAD shit) if he continued to fight a one-front war. Despite his obvious insanity, he was very possibly beating himself up internally for declaring war against the US. Not only was his bullshit that he was the leader of a Master Race being proven wrong by the “lowly” Slavs to the east, his veneer persona as Great Leader was being unmasked by provoking the fresh, high-population, well-resourced Yanks.
His bunker mentality could have been exacerbated, and this led him to declare for a Final Solution. Maybe. I can’t say for sure. But if it was a simple Russo/German war, maybe he’d just have kept the camps (still under his control) as slave labor camps, not mass extermination depots.
IOW, while he was clearly insane the whole time, provoking a two-front fuck up triggered his most psychotic thoughts to the fore (i.e., the Final Solution.)
Lorie Meacham 6:42pm Aug 21
Cops Forced To Wear Body Cameras Makes Police Brutality Drop By 60% Immediately.
August 21, 2014 MSNBC News News http://MOXNews.com/
Lorie Meacham 4:46pm Aug 21
The Pentagon has provided local police with $4.3 BILLION worth of military hardware. Stop this!
Lorie Meacham 4:25pm Aug 21
St. Louis resident and 90-year-old Holocaust survivor Hedy Epstein was one of several demonstrators arrested for protesting the police killing of African-American teenager Michael Brown and the law enforcement crackdown on the resulting protests. One part of a nine-person human-chain, Epstein was handcuffed, transported to a police station and then booked for refusal to disperse.
Holocaust Survivor On Police Militarization: “Like Little Boys Playing With Toys” – Liberty Crier
libertycrier.com
Lorie Meacham 3:25pm Aug 21
Life in the American police state is an endless series of don’ts delivered at the end of a loaded gun: don’t talk back to police officers, don’t even think about defending yourself against a SWAT team raid (of which there are 80,000 every year), don’t run when a cop is nearby lest you be mistaken for a fleeing criminal, don’t carry a cane lest it be mistaken for a gun, don’t expect privacy in public, don’t let your kids walk to the playground alone, don’t engage in nonviolent protest near where a government official might pass, don’t try to grow vegetables in your front yard, don’t play music for tips in a metro station, don’t feed whales, and on and on ad nauseum.
OpEdNews Article: Article: Turning America Into a War Zone, Where ‘We the People’ Are the Enemy
http://countercurrentnews.com/2014/08/ferguson-store-owner-says-he-doesnt-believe-thats-mike-brown-on-surveillance-video/
Lorie Meacham 3:08pm Aug 21
Dear Lorie,
On Monday, I wrote to share the disturbing sights and experiences of CCR staff while they were on the ground in Ferguson, MO, working with local community groups to demand accountability for the murder of Michael Brown and an end to ongoing police violence and repression.
Many of you have asked how you can help. Here’s what Ferguson community organizers are asking people across the country to do today.
Attorney General Eric Holder also went to Ferguson this week, and the attention his visit brought to the injustice there is necessary and good. However, it must be followed by concrete action.
The Department of Justice has the unique capabilities and direct authority to investigate police departments and enforce fairness, adherence to constitutional values, and the rule of law.
CALL AND EMAIL THE DEPARTMENT OF JUSTICE TODAY AND TELL ATTORNEY GENERAL HOLDER:
I’m calling today to ask the DOJ to complete a prompt and swift investigation into the killing of Michael Brown. Please follow up Attorney General Holder’s Missouri visit with concrete action to protect communities of color across the nation from racial profiling and police brutality and violence.
Call the DOJ at 202-353-1555 and email [email protected].
Mainstream media continue to obscure the reality of what is happening on the ground. They talk of “unrest,” as though the protesters were somehow at fault. The truth is police are attacking peaceful protesters.
Please continue to tell the truth about what is happening in Ferguson. Follow @theCCR for the latest news, retweet and share on Facebook, and talk to people in your community.
Sincerely,
Vince Warren
P.S. For those of you in the New York metropolitan area, please join CCR and Communities United for Police Reform this Saturday, August 23, at a march for justice for the victims of police murders. It will take place in Staten Island, where Eric Garner was killed by the NYPD last month with an illegal chokehold. The family of Michael Brown will be there as well. More information on the event is here. http://www.ccrjustice.org/get-involved/calendar/august2014marchjustice
Staten Island NY – August 23 March for Justice | Center for Constitutional Rights
http://www.ccrjustice.org
Over the past several weeks, people across the country have been outraged and heartbroken by the rec…
Start at home before going around telling the rest of the world how to live. We now have human right abuses going on in Missouri on a scale that hd led Amnesty International to send observers for the first time ever on US soil…and they have been pushed back from the combat zone along with journalists while the KKK has been welcomed by the police. All with surplus weapons from the buildup for the middle east wars and police training by the military. It is a giant scam to transfer extorted tax money to military contractors, set up a giant prison industries gulag staffed by slaves and establish a domestic police state at home and imperialist garrison state abroad. How far behind will our own domestic death camps be if we let this continue?
I don’t unerstand what you are uncertain about. Look at the troop and casualty levels on the German side in the east vs in the west. Look at the historical data on where the death camps were. Look which areas were taken by the Soviets vs which ones were take by the US and the Brits and when. The historical data is readily available. The war in the west was a sideshow and had very little to do with ending the holocaust. The holocaust was mainly taking place in Poland and accelerated when Soviet troops started advancing west and Hitler read the writing on the wall. Most of the death camps were in area that ended up being conquered by the USSR, not the Americans.
Could also be the latest incarnation of Nathan Norman/CLC.
Marlon,
“Libertaryans drive me crazy.”
–1st I will give you credit for a funny word-combo. There certainly are a few racists who seem to like the idea of Libertarianism (at least superficially) and this name seems to fit them.
However, to try to use this term against people because they don’t agree with you about using the violence of the state is ridiculous. If you are really opposed to anti-antisemitism or racism you would probably want to end the US policies that promote those items in our country and abroad. Even during WW2 we had plenty antisemitic and racist policies.
Here is another thought. Perhaps the way to end violence and genocide isn’t going to be accomplished through violence and hatred. Sure maybe we stopped Germany from committing even more mass murders during WW2, but what has been the result of our military interventions, our CIA involvement, and our foreign policy since then.
If you don’t see a pattern of racism, you probably haven’t looked very hard.
And before you decide to label me “antisemitic” you should take a look at my nose.
pf: US propaganda aside, he mostly did. The bulk of the war was always in the east.
Soviets were gaining ground and taking Poland. They would have died with or without the US.
me: Good for you that you’re so sure. I’ll stick with my uncertainty, since I’m not omniscient! 😉
ma: Surely there is a time when even a noninterventionist realizes that too many people will die if nothing is done.
me: There may be. The case needs to be made. You’ve not made it.
Marlon said: “So let the innocent Iraqi children get beheaded?”
I guess this is okay for Palestinian children.
Then, he said: “Did you…see what ISIS is doing to children? Where is your heart?”
My heart is with ALL children of the world, not just those who live every place but Palestine.
Chances are good it’s still Vernon/Randy. The writing style is the same.
Marlon sounds like Eric Dondipshit.
Is Marlon Areola an inside job? LOL
Or you could ask Goebbels about fooling people, as Marlon appears to be a cheap knockoff (military contractor shill grade).
Pays better, less risk.
And if you don’t support war stop paying taxes. I’m sure Marlon agrees.
If you actually believed the shit you post here there would be no need for a driver since you would already be crazier than a fruitcake. As for “Libertaryans” we are disproportionately Jewish at a far higher rate than the population at large, and particularly many of the founders of the libertarian movement were Jewish. But if you are looking for national socialists look no further than Marlon’s “America Uber Alles” world invading and occupying rhetoric. Nationalize the economy to invade the whole world…sounds familiar.
Just trolling. Likely government paid troll.
Don’t be assinine. A lot of us are semitic, and no we don’t hate ourselves either.
And don’t pay for them.
Because it makes him and/or his employers more money and gives them more power.
Yeah, obviously they aren’t worth shit to a military industrial complex troll/shill.
With someone else’s money and lives.
When their funding is all volunteer or coming from you then talk.
Fixed.
Cheap, transparent propaganda,
Yeah, that’s worked so well in all the prior times the US regime has “fixed” the middle east. Or the midwest for that matter.
Excellent idea.
Bingo!
The US can’t fix anything. Stop trying to fix thing because it is only making things worse.
Right again.
Enough is enough already.
BS.
More BS.
Somewhere a lot less dark, dirty and stinky than your cognitive center.
Exactly.
Which was exactly what the US should have done.
Virtually none by the time US troops go to Germany.
US propaganda aside, he mostly did. The bulk of the war was always in the east.
Soviets were gaining ground and taking Poland. They would have died with or without the US.
Yep, that was an after the fact justification for the war.
Stalin killed even more Russians than Hitler did, though.
Exactly. Go join the Iraqi army or the IDF or what the fuck ever. Not in my name and not with my money.
No one from Germany was going to invade the US. They weren’t even able to take the UK. The declaration could have remained a formality if the US chose to ignore it.
The war with Japan was equally predictable and avoidable as well.
None. The Soviets “liberated” Poland and the bulk of the areas where he vast majority of Jews died, and very few (certainly not millions) were alive by that point. The US troops took over parts of Germany, where very little extermination was taking place (the death camps were mainly in Poland). And almost all of it was done before the Soviets and Americans reached the camps.
The troll’s alleged grasp of history is as bad as the troll’s alleged grasp of current events.
That’s a lie. ISIS are in fact Syrian rebels.
That part is true. And the US regime should stay the hell out.
WordPress settings. Only IPR editors can post images here. I can post images but can’t change the setting to let you do it.
On the issue that Marlon raises perhaps we should ask a holocaust survivor about the issue in Ferguson Missouri and if we should ignore it.
http://www.newsweek.com/holocaust-survivor-hedy-epstein-arrested-ferguson-protest-says-racism-alive-america-265703
Marlon… it also isn’t for putting to the compulsory use of idiots. Neither are my tax dollars.
If you are willing to fight then why are you here and not there?
No. Those who joined the military have already volunteered themselves. The military is for fighting. It’s simple. If you aren’t willing to fight then don’t join.
so any current member of the military who isn’t willing to go gets to opt out and you are going to use privately donated funds to finance sending those that volunteer?
“Libertaryans drive me crazy.”
Because we don’t go along with you neo-conservative empire builders?
How could we? you are already wacky?
Libertaryans drive me crazy.
Your comment is too asinine to continue this conversation. Bye..
Exactly Jill. You have no value for Jewish lives. You have no value for Christians. You have no value for children. Your indifference is worse than assistance to ISIS. The blood of the headless Iraqi girl wearing the blue dress is on your hands.
Marlon, I just wanted to know if you stood by your convictions, or were just trolling. I have my answer now.
LOL–the “antisemitic” card. That word has been so overused, and used so improperly, that it doesn’t mean anything anymore. .
Jill I figured you were antisemitic. It now makes sense why you would allow the Holocaust to continue without American intervention.
Since I’m not an ideologue I certainly will not go by myself. I’d have no problem sending in members of our all volunteer armed forces to eliminate ISIS and keep a small force to maintain stability as it was immediately before withdrawal. This saves lives in the long run. Don’t support it? Then don’t join the armed forces. This is what is necessary to end the genocide. Thank god Steve M was not in charge during WW2. Jews would be extinct.
Marlin,
Cool have a blast.
Marlon said: “I’ll pay whatever it takes and use how ever many of the all-volunteer military is necessary to stop genocide.”
So, can we expect you to go to Gaza soon, then?
Marlon, yes you have put a price on human life. You are arguing here instead of fighting over there. Your ethics says its ok to send other people to fight kill and die. its ok to spend other peoples resources but you wont do it your self.
Marlon, you don’t get it it. When the US comes in with its bombers and drone missiles and backs one side of a civil war against another…. we make the horror caused by the ISIS seem like a Saturday afternoon matinee.
The statistics are really clear on this. When the US is involved in a middle east far more people die then when the US isn’t involved. Why do you want more people to die? Your ethics is saying more people being killed is better then fewer people being killed.
And at the same time you are willing to spend trillions of dollars that would be better used educating our population, building our infrastructure, hell building infrastructure in the rest of the world. Cleaning up China’s Coal burning plants to reduce Pollution will save far more people and cost far less and we wont have to have our boys go over and shoot their boys, woman, children and grandparents.
What don’t you get that you are proposing exactly what the ISIS wants the USA to do?
I don’t put a price on human lives. I’ll pay whatever it takes and use how ever many of the all-volunteer military is necessary to stop genocide.
Of course the US can stop it. Iraq was much more stable before we withdrew.
You might as well be helping ISIS. Your indifference toward the beheadings of Iraqi children and crucifixion of Christians is as bad as the Good Germans who stood by and allowed Jews to be slaughtered. Shame on you for choosing ideology over these lives.
what is particularly funny is that this thread is about the US not being able to stop anti-government demonstrators in one of our own towns. We cant create a just society here but some how using military force we will be able to make another part of the world peaceful.
You know I have just changed my mind. Maybe Marlon should lead a troop made up of Ferguson Missouri Police and give those ISIS thugs a good going over.
Marlon,
The US can fix it? How do you know this? if we could fix this why did we leave it broken the last time we waded into this mess. You want to fix it… just like we already fixed it? you pay for it. Not me. You write a check for 4 trillion dollars as a down payment and then you join the Army and you go fix it.
Personally I think you are a delusional nut.
Marlon, as several people have already suggested, may I add my own? Please, if the situation concerns you so much, go over there yourself and straighten them out. Don’t try to force us to become involved where we do not want to be. If people are volunteering and joining ISIS from the UK, Australia and elsewhere, surely you could also volunteer to go over there and stamp them out. I support Gary Johnson because he emphasizes defense of our freedoms in America rather than urging the US Government to start another war.
It doesn’t matter what US intervention caused. At this point it only matters what it can fix. Just because intervention may have caused problems doesn’t mean it always will. Take WW2 for example.
This is the problem when ideology clouds reason. Everything is not black and white. All intervention is not bad. All nonintervention is not good.
Surely there is a time when even a noninterventionist realizes that too many people will die if nothing is done.
The rate at which ISIS is causing people to die is insignificant compared to the rate at which we caused people to die in Iraq during our invasion.
Readers may wish to recall the claim that Panama had declared war on us, before we attacked and invaded the place. That claim was completely phony. ISIS appears in fact occupied with fighting Iraq and Syria, and retaliating against countries that bomb them. Us for example.
Steve M “Bingo”.
I don’t see China or Russia spending millions of dollars going into Iraq. They are just waiting for the United States to self-implode from the massive debit of trying to police everyone, here at home and around the world.
Those crazy fools in the Mideast have been killing each other for thousands of years. If they are killing Christians or Jews, they turn on each other.
I am waiting for some so-called Moderate Muslims to step up and say enough is enough. Instead they just stand by and watch it happen– in their own back yard or front yard.
by the way the Iraq war and occupation cost 4 to 6 trillion dollars. You want to sink our economy?
http://www.washingtonpost.com/world/national-security/study-iraq-afghan-war-costs-to-top-4-trillion/2013/03/28/b82a5dce-97ed-11e2-814b-063623d80a60_story.html
Marlon,
If the goal is to decrease deaths then you don’t repeat actions that increase deaths.
If you look at 2006 and 2007 from http://www.iraqbodycount.org you will see that the death rate is far less now then it was during the US surge. You don’t decrease civilian deaths in a civil war by increasing the violence. And you don’t do it by sending some body else.
If you feel that someone from the US has to go over there and kill more people to reduce the number of people being killed. Get your rear over there and do it.
Don’t send somebody else to do it.
ma: Meddling in Iraq and Syria will end the genocide of Christians and children.
me: Since that’s the case NOW, how’s it working so far? The US has been meddling for decades.
Do you not grok that it’s possible that US meddling LED to the Holocaust?
It’s our meddling that ended the Holocaust. Meddling in Iraq and Syria will end the genocide of Christians and children.
Did you click the link and see what ISIS is doing to children? Where is your heart?
MA, check out this flick:
http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0053084/
Doing nothing in Iraq and Syria is the right thing to do. As has been explained on this thread, it’s our meddling that has made things as bad as they are now. We cannot afford to go back to iraq (although we really never left).
George, based on your logic about Germany, we should now send troops to Iraq and Syria since ISIS has declared war on the United States.
Doing nothing in Iraq and Syria is like ignoring Germany’s declaration of war.
ma: How many tens of millions of more Jews and gypsies would have died had the United States not intervened in the Holocaust?
me: Unsure how many more millions of those groups were in Europe at the time. But we surely can’t know what would have happened had the US not sent forces to Europe during WWII. Conceivably FEWER would have been killed in the camps, as my recollection is the “Final Solution” was done near the end of the war when the Nazis were at their most desperate.
Perhaps Hitler would have kept focus on the USSR. Like Napolean found, attacking Russia over land can exhaust an army.
Readers who want to envision the last American invasion of Iraq on an individual Iraqi is dying basis, without the gory details of each death, have but to watch the execution film replay itself 700,000 times. The same replays also duplicate the Tokyo firestorm raid.
Furthermore, from the point of view of the American government the reported German acts against Jews, Gypsies, homosexuals, Germans of partly African descent, but mostly Jews, were not related to war causes or war plans. That was not what the war was about from our perspective. In addition, the Hitlerite barbarians killed twice to four times as many Russians as they did Jews.
Marlon,
libertarians tend to believe that individuals who want to interfere in the internal affairs of other countries should be free to do so. But, we libertarians tend to oppose, using our government resources to do so.
My personal belief is the US invasion and occupation of Iraq destabilized that area and created a situation where long held grievances are being fought out. We can go back in and create more chaos and kill a few hundred thousand more people (like we did the first time) and spend a few trillion more dollars blowing things up rather then using the money to build things here.
But what all the bombs, killer drones, foot soldiers can’t do is get people to live together peacefully. They have to figure that out themselves.
But if you want to go over there yourself (instead of sending someone like my son) to go kill a few people, I won’t stand in your way.
We did not intervene in the conflict. Germany declared war on us, to the great surprise of almost everyone including the German general staff, which was not told in advance.
How many tens of millions of more Jews and gypsies would have died had the United States not intervened in the Holocaust?
The Syrian rebels are actually fighting ISIS. There’s multiple sides to that conflict.
Why does this website not allow me to post images?
It would have been better to let Hitler and Stalin destroy each other. Stalin killed even more people than Hitler. When you add in Mao, Pol Pot and all the other mass murdering communists who came to power thanks to the US strengthening the Soviets in WWII it is not even close.
In the middle east the US has intervened repeatedly and shifted alliances many times. In fact ISIS grew out of rebels the US is backing in Syria, and that is far from the only US intervention in the middle east that has backfired. How’s that working out for us, and why would yet another US intervention be any different this time?
The reality is that like in Germany in the 1910s, we have already intervened in Iraq. The only way we finally ended the Holocaust was by intervening in Germany again.
Take an inconvenient look at what’s going on in Iraq and Syria:
http://www.catholic.org/news/international/middle_east/story.php?id=56481
If the US hadn’t intervened in Europe in the 1910s there would never have been a nazi regime in Germany. If the US stayed out of Iraq and Syria for the last 25 years there would be no ISIS in Iraq and Syria now. And if the US gets involved in Iraq again it will bite us in the ass … again. Stop letting cracked up monkeys with chainsaws do brain surgery. Get US policy makers out of the middle east and the rest of the world. BTW the weapons and tactics of war are now finding their way back to our streets by way of our militarized police. They don’t belong there either.
If we strengthen the Iraqi government to fight off ISIS, the genocide will end. Should the US not have intervened in Germany in the 40s and allowed all the Jews to die?
Stop the lies and exaggerations. US intervention is what led to this in the first place. More intervention will only cause more problems.
So even if we could prevent the genocide we shouldn’t because “America is the not policeman”? How many must die before you change your mind? 10,000? 100,000? 6 million?
The US is not, can not, and should never be the world’s policeman.
Attempts to the contrary cause far more problems than they solve.
Case in point: US invasions, occupation and bombing of Iraq.
So let the innocent Iraqi children get beheaded?
The much bigger and more immediate problem is police violence, they have killed and brutalized far more Americans under “questionable” circumstances than jihadists ever have. By far.
As for the miidle east: stop sticking our nose in it. Duh!
Please tell what you will do about a more immediate problem called ISIS. They are beheading children and Americans on the street.