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Is Herb Stein's law Sustainable?<br>
<br>
<div class="moz-cite-prefix">On 08/15/2014 10:43 PM, Carl G.
Estabrook wrote:<br>
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Some cold comfort in Herb Stein's Law: “If something cannot go on
forever, it will stop.”
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<div>On Aug 15, 2014, at 8:56 AM, ewjohnson via Peace-discuss
<<a moz-do-not-send="true"
href="mailto:peace-discuss@lists.chambana.net">peace-discuss@lists.chambana.net</a>>
wrote:</div>
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<div bgcolor="#FFFFFF" text="#000000"> As long as Hillary
Clnton and Barack Obama are running around live and
loose,<br>
there is no such thing as Justice in the USA, <br>
there is only the mockery of Justice,<br>
and no one should be punished for any crime, <br>
small or great, as long as Obama is allowed to <br>
openly flaunt the law, <br>
spit on the constitution, and<br>
attempt to ride over every fundamental principle <br>
of determining + and -.<br>
<br>
Actually I don't know real outcome yet, as none of us
do...<br>
<br>
yet it has been observed...<br>
<br>
<blockquote><i>Though the mills of God grind slowly;</i><br>
<i>Yet they grind exceeding small;</i><br>
<i>Though with patience he stands waiting,</i><br>
<i>With exactness grinds he all.</i><br>
</blockquote>
<i><br>
</i>Or as another fellow Cicero might have put it in
longer but straighter words---<br>
<br>
<blockquote>"Look here, <br>
ya ignorant son-of- a-lab-rat.<br>
They aint No One gonna get away with this fo-ever.<br>
Quo usque tandem abutere yer dyin' podium, <br>
They ain't no more fuckin' tandem for you or nostra.
<br>
Our patience is completely down to Zero-minus.<br>
<br>
Time, <br>
and WE za people<br>
is gonna abutere on yo ass but good.<br>
Ni zenme Capisce, <br>
"kemo-sabe"?"<br>
<br>
</blockquote>
An other outcome is the he takes the whole ship down
with 'im.<br>
<i><br>
</i>
<div class="moz-cite-prefix">On 08/15/2014 08:10 PM,
David Johnson via Peace-discuss wrote:<br>
</div>
<blockquote cite="mid:53EDF8A0.7050205@comcast.net"
type="cite">
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<h1>Top 9 Reasons To Stop Bombing Iraq</h1>
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<div class="cat-date-line"><span
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all posts in Educate!" rel="category tag">Educate!</a></span>
<span class="cat-date-line3"> <a
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<span class="cat-date-line4">By David Swanson, <a
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August 14th, 2014</span><br>
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<p><big><big><strong>1. It’s not a rescue mission.</strong>
The U.S. personnel could be evacuated without
the 500-pound bombs. The persecuted
minorities could be supplied, moved, or their
enemy dissuaded, or all three, without the
500-pound bombs or the hundreds of “advisors”
(trained and armed to kill, and never
instructed in how to give advice — Have you
ever tried taking urgent advice from 430
people?). The boy who cried rescue mission
should not be allowed to get away with it
after the documented deception in Libya where
a fictional threat to civilians was used to
launch an all-out aggressive attack that has
left that nation in ruins. Not to mention the
false claims about Syrian chemical weapons and
the false claim that missiles were the only
option left for Syria — the latter claims
being exposed when the former weren’t
believed, the missiles didn’t launch, and less
violent but perfectly obvious alternative
courses of action were recognized. If the
U.S. government were driven by a desire to
rescue the innocent, why would it be arming
Israel, Egypt, Jordan, Bahrain? The U.S.
government destroyed the nation of Iraq
between 2003 and 2011, with results including
the near elimination of various minority
groups. If preventing genocide were a
dominant U.S. interest, it could have halted
its participation in and aggravation of that
war at any time, a war in which 97% of the
dead were on one side, just as in Gaza this
month — the distinction between war and
genocide being one of perspective, not
proportions. Or, of course, the U.S. could
have left well alone. Ever since President
Carter declared that the U.S. would kill for
Iraqi oil, each of his successors has believed
that course of action justified, and each has
made matters significantly worse.</big></big></p>
<big><big> </big></big>
<p><big><big><strong>2. It’s going to make things
worse, again.</strong> This bombing will
aggravate the Sunni-Shia divide, increase
support for ISIS, and create a lasting legacy
of hostility and violence. President Obama
says there is no military solution, only
reconciliation. But bombs don’t reconcile.
They harden hearts and breed murderers.
Numerous top U.S. officials admit that much of
what the U.S. military does generates more
enemies than it kills. When you continue down
a path that is counterproductive on its own
terms, the honesty of those terms has to be
doubted. If this war is not for peace, is it
perhaps — like every other war we’ve seen the
U.S. wage in the area — for resources,
profits, domination, and sadism? The leader
of ISIS learned his hatred in a U.S. prison in
Iraq. U.S. media report that fact as if it is
just part of the standard portrait of a new
Enemy #1, but the irony is not mere
coincidence. Violence is created. It doesn’t
arise out of irrational and inscrutable
foreignness. It is planted by those great
gardeners in the sky: planes, drones, and
helicopters. A bombing campaign justified as
protecting people actually endangers them, and
those around them, and many others, including
those of us living in the imperial Homeland.</big></big></p>
<big><big> </big></big>
<p><big><big><strong>3. Bombs kill.</strong> Big
bombs kill a lot of people. Massive bombing
campaigns slaughter huge numbers of people,
including those fighting in the hell the U.S.
helped to create, and including those not
fighting — men, women, children, grandparents,
infants. Defenders of the bombing know this,
but ignore it, and make no effort to calculate
whether more people are supposedly being saved
than are being killed. This indifference
exposes the humanitarian pretensions of the
operation. If some humans are of no value to
you, humanitarianism is not what’s driving
your decisions. The U.S. war on Iraq ’03-’11
killed a half million to a million-and-a-half
Iraqis and 4,000 Americans. A war that puts
fewer Americans on the ground and uses more
planes and drones is thought of as involving
less death only if our concern is narrowly
limited to U.S. deaths. From the vantage
point of the ground, an air war is the
deadliest form of war there is.</big></big></p>
<big><big> </big></big>
<p><big><big><strong>4. There are other options.</strong>
The choice between bombing and doing nothing
is as false now as it was in September. If
you can drop food on some people, why can’t
you drop food on everyone? It would cost a
tiny fraction of dropping bombs on them. It
would confuse the hell out of them, too — like
Robin Williams’ version of God high on pot and
inventing the platypus. Of course, I now
sound crazy because I’m talking about people
who’ve been demonized (and personified in a
killer straight out of a U.S. prison). It’s
not as if these are human beings with whom you
can lament the death of Robin Williams.
They’re not like you and me. Etc. Yadda.
Yadda. But in fact ISIS fighters were sharing
their appreciation of Williams on Twitter on
Tuesday. The United States could talk about
other matters with ISIS as well, including a
ceasefire, including a unilateral commitment
to cease arming the Iraqi government even
while trying to organize its ouster, including
an offer to provide real humanitarian aid with
no nasty strings attached, but with
encouragement of civil liberties and
democratic decision making. It’s amazing how
long minority ethnic groups in Iraq survived
and thrived prior to the U.S. bringing
democracy, and prior to the U.S. existing.
The U.S. could do some good but must first do
no harm.</big></big></p>
<big><big> </big></big>
<p><big><big><strong>5. There are now enough weapons
already there to practically justify one of
Colin Powell’s slides retroactively. </strong>The
U.S. accounts for 79% of foreign weapons
transfers to Western Asia (the Middle East).
The war on Libya had identical U.S. weapons on
both sides. ISIS almost certainly has weapons
supplied by the U.S. in Syria, and certainly
has weapons taken from Iraq. So, what is the
U.S. doing? It’s rushing more weapons to Iraq
as fast as possible. Americans like to think
of the Middle East as backward and violent,
but the tools of the violence trade are
manufactured in the United States. Yes, the
United States does still manufacture
something, it’s just not something that serves
any useful purpose or about which most of us
can manage to feel very proud. Weapons making
also wastes money rather than creating it,
because unaccountable profits are the single
biggest product manufactured.</big></big></p>
<big><big> </big></big>
<p><big><big><strong>6. This is going to cost a
fortune.</strong> Bombing Iraq is depicted
as a measure of great restraint and
forbearance. Meanwhile building schools and
hospitals and green energy infrastructure in
Iraq would be viewed as madness if anyone
dared propose it. But the latter would cost a
lot less money — a consideration that is
usually a top priority in U.S. politics
whenever killing large numbers of people is
not involved. The world spend $2 trillion and
the U.S. $1 trillion (half the total) on war
and war preparations every year. Three
percent of U.S. military spending could end
starvation on earth. The wonders that could
be done with a fraction of military money are
almost unimaginable and include actual defense
against the actual danger of climate change.</big></big></p>
<big><big> </big></big>
<p><big><big><strong>7. Bombs are environmental
disasters.</strong> If someone photographs
a big oil fire, some will give a thought to
the environmental damage. But a bombing
campaign is, rather than an environmental
accident, an intentional environmental
catastrophe. The poisoned ground and water,
and the disease epidemics, will reach the
United States primarily through moral regret,
depression, and suicide.</big></big></p>
<big><big> </big></big>
<p><big><big><strong>8. There go our civil
liberties.</strong> Discussions of torture,
imprisonment, assassination, surveillance, and
denial of fair trials are severely damaged by
wartime postures. After all, war is for
“freedom,” and who wouldn’t be willing to
surrender all of their freedoms for that?</big></big></p>
<big><big> </big></big>
<p><big><big><strong>9. War is illegal.</strong> It
doesn’t matter if the illegitimate government
that you’re trying to dump invited you to bomb
its country. How can anyone take that
seriously, while the U.S. installed that
government and has armed it for years, as it
has attacked its people? War is illegal under
the Kellogg Briand Pact and the United Nations
Charter, and pretending otherwise endangers
the world. Domestically, under U.S. law, the
president cannot launch a war. While the
Senate has been silent, the U.S. House voted
two weeks ago to ban any new presidential war
on Iraq. Offering Congress a slap in the
face, Obama waited for it to go on break, and
then attacked Iraq.</big></big></p>
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