[Peace-discuss] [Peace] Fw: Money Can't Vote
C. G. Estabrook
galliher at illinois.edu
Thu Oct 21 09:19:23 CDT 2010
"They did! Thank goodness!" says the administration...
On 10/21/10 9:08 AM, David Green wrote:
> But Carl, somebody associated with the Tea Party said something hateful about
> blacks!!
>
> --------------------------------------------------------------------------------
> *From:* C. G. Estabrook <galliher at illinois.edu>
> *To:* Gregg Gordon <ggregg79 at yahoo.com>
> *Cc:* Peace-discuss <peace-discuss at lists.chambana.net>
> *Sent:* Thu, October 21, 2010 9:03:01 AM
> *Subject:* Re: [Peace-discuss] [Peace] Fw: Money Can't Vote
>
> On the Carter administration, see the famous interview his National Security
> Adviser gave to Le Nouvel Observateur in 1998:
> <http://www.globalresearch.ca/articles/BRZ110A.html> (in English)...
>
> "Q: And neither do you regret having supported the Islamic fundamentalism,
> having given arms and advice to future terrorists?
> "B: What is most important to the history of the world? The Taliban or the
> collapse of the Soviet empire? /Some stirred-up Moslems/ [sic] or the
> liberation of Central Europe and the end of the cold war?..."
>
> It's true that the US has been committing crimes in order to control Mideast
> oil since the Truman administration, when we saw that we could displace an
> exhausted Britain in the region. First, British oil companies were replaced
> with American ones, and concomitantly the US began the policy - which Obama
> continues - of controlling the countries of the region by alliance,
> subversion, or aggressive war (= what we were busily condemning German leaders
> for, at Nuremberg).
>
> Benchmarks are our destruction of democratic government in Iran (1953), which
> Americans have forgotten but the Iranians haven't; adoption of Israel as our
> "cop on the beat" (as the Nixon administration said) after they launched their
> 1967 war to destroy secular Arab nationalism; our sponsorship of Saddam
> Hussein in the Iraq-Iran war, 1980-88; our covert sponsorship of the
> religious-based Hamas to undercut the secular PLO; and Clinton's murderous
> sanctions on Iraq (by which he killed as many people as Bush did, many of them
> children whose deaths were "worth it," according to Clinton's Secretary of State).
>
> The US has consistently demanded control of Mideast energy resources since
> WWII, not because we need them - the US was a net exporter of oil until
> recently, and now imports less than 10% of the oil we use at home from the
> Mideast, mostly from our ally Saudi Arabia - but because control of world
> hydrocarbon supplies gives us an advantage over our real economic rivals, the
> EU and East Asia (China and Japan). That's what Obama (and other presidents)
> is sending Americans to kill and die for, so it's obvious that he like the
> others has to invent excuses, especially when two-thirds of the US public,
> even though they're being lied to, thinks the war a bad idea.
>
> When Al Qaeda launched their criminal raids on US cities in 2001, they were
> clearly and consciously staging a counter-attack to more than a generation of
> US crimes in the Mideast. They said at the time that there were three reasons
> for their counterattack: (1) the sanctions on Iraq, called "genocidal" by
> successive UN overseers; (2) the suppression of h the Palestinians by
> America's chief client, Israel; and (3) the occupation of Saudi Arabia (and
> the Muslim holy places) by American troops after Bush I's Gulf war, in 1991.
>
> It's not just those who point out that the Obama administration is, by and
> large, Bush's third term who note the continuity of US policy in the Mideast,
> which Obama if anything has intensified - as he said he would, as far back as
> his campaign for the Senate, when he discussed "surgical strikes" on Iran,
> still I think a real possibility, along with open war with Pakistan. BHO is
> down with the program, and only a few are criticizing it - of course many more
> in the country that in Congress.
>
>
> On 10/21/10 8:05 AM, Gregg Gordon wrote:
>> Well, that strikes me as quite a stretch to lay responsibility for the Iraq
>> and Afghanistan wars on the back of Jimmy Carter. I could take your logic
>> just a small step further and put it on FDR. Or William McKinley. Or James
>> K. Polk. Plus it ignores the question of why three subsequent Republican
>> presidents failed to end it, as your premise indicates they should have
>> done. It is a sad fact that since the disastrous and misguided McGovern
>> campaign (God bless him), Democrats have been so bullied and intimidated by
>> charges of being anti-military (not that there's anything wrong with that)
>> that they too often feel compelled to prove they have gonads. I thought
>> Clinton kept Saddam around just to have somebody to bomb when he needed to
>> look tough. That's murderous and deplorable and certainly won't get him into
>> heaven, but that's the political landscape we find ourselves in. Deal with
>> it. Anyway, wealth and power breed arrogance. Americans, like the British,
>> Spanish, Romans, and every great empire before us, think we should have our
>> way just because God obviously loves us so. (If He didn't, we wouldn't be an
>> empire.) That's human nature, and liberals are just as susceptible to it as
>> conservatives. More often than not, Democratic militarism just takes the
>> form of seeing to it that veterans actually receive the benefits they've been
>> promised, for which they get no credit whatsoever. And "spineless" is not
>> the same as "evil" in my eyes. The "spineless" need to be encouraged. The
>> "evil" need to be stopped. Who can blame the Democrats for being spineless?
>> Who's got their backs? The left?
>> I'm a Bernie Sanders kind of guy. I don't really consider myself a Democrat,
>> but I caucus with them because I think the alternative is so much worse. But
>> if you /really/ can't see /any/ difference between, say, Karl Rove and Dennis
>> Kucinich, I'm not going to waste any more time arguing with you. You're not
>> serious.
>>
>> --------------------------------------------------------------------------------
>> *From:* C. G. Estabrook <galliher at illinois.edu>
>> *To:* Gregg Gordon <ggregg79 at yahoo.com>
>> *Cc:* Jenifer Cartwright <jencart13 at yahoo.com>; Peace List
>> <peace at lists.chambana.net>; Peace-discuss <peace-discuss at lists.chambana.net>
>> *Sent:* Wed, October 20, 2010 11:09:24 PM
>> *Subject:* Re: [Peace-discuss] [Peace] Fw: Money Can't Vote
>>
>> First, Iraq and Afghanistan are both part of what the Pentagon calls "The
>> Long War" (for oil) in the Mideast. So far, the US has killed a million
>> people in Iraq under Clinton (whose Secretary of State said that the tens of
>> thousands of dead children were "worth it"); a million under Bush; and
>> apparently hundreds of thousands in AfPak under Bush and his third (Obama) term.
>>
>> That falls short of the perhaps 4 million we killed in SE Asia, but of course
>> Obama's escalated murders in SW Asia are in no way justified by being fewer
>> in number than Kennedy-Johnson-Nixon's in Vietnam.
>>
>> It's difficult to determine when the Long War begins, but it takes a tick up
>> in the Carter administration when Carter (and Obama's) adviser Zbigniew
>> Brzezinski sends Osama bin Laden and friends into Afghanistan (before the
>> Russian invasion) "to give the Russians a Vietnam of their own," as he said
>> at the time, in the most expensive CIA operation to date.
>>
>> If a Republican administration after 2012 brings Obama's AfPak war to an end,
>> then we'll have a third example of a Democratic war concluded by Republicans
>> in as many generations. But that may not be likely. The news suggests that
>> the Obama administration is looking to expand the war with an attack on
>> Pakistan and/or Iran. It certainly isn't looking to abandon the world's
>> greatest energy-producing region.
>>
>> Control of Mideast energy resources has been a cornerstone of US foreign
>> policy since 1945. Obama is simply lying when he says the war is to "stop
>> terrorism" - it obviously increases terrorism - but he has to lie, because
>> the only Constitutional authority he has to wage war in the Mideast is
>> Congress' "Authorization for the Use of Military Force" of September 2001 -
>> which is directed against terrorism.
>>
>> Something positive to do: years ago, there was a great debate in America,
>> "How do we get out of Vietnam?" The best answer was given by Herb Caen:
>> "Ships and planes." Load up the troops and bring them home. The Russians did
>> - and survived and prospered from the end of their war.
>>
>> Eventually we did, but it took two presidents' being driven from office and
>> (even more important) a revolt of the American conscript army to do it.
>>
>> Regards, CGE
>>
>> On 10/20/10 7:15 PM, Gregg Gordon wrote:
>>> So I conclude from your statement that you don't consider either Iraq or
>>> Afghanistan to be "major" wars. So why are you so worked up about them? I
>>> think you're just still mad at Lyndon Johnson.
>>> And please, don't accuse me of being some kind of racist who doesn't mind us
>>> murdering brown people. That is /so/ lame. It's just that not all of us
>>> see the world in as simple terms as you seem to. Simple solutions are nice,
>>> but they're mainly for the simple-minded.
>>> All I'm saying is if you're so gung-ho on stopping the war, why don't you
>>> come up with something positive to do (as opposed to sniping from the
>>> sidelines) that might help get us closer to that goal? We'll all get behind
>>> you.
>>>
>>> --------------------------------------------------------------------------------
>>> *From:* C. G. Estabrook <galliher at illinois.edu>
>>> *To:* Gregg Gordon <ggregg79 at yahoo.com>
>>> *Cc:* Jenifer Cartwright <jencart13 at yahoo.com>; Peace List
>>> <peace at lists.chambana.net>; Peace-discuss <peace-discuss at lists.chambana.net>
>>> *Sent:* Wed, October 20, 2010 5:10:40 PM
>>> *Subject:* Re: [Peace-discuss] [Peace] Fw: Money Can't Vote
>>>
>>> You are aware, are you not, that America's major wars since WWII - called by
>>> synecdoche "Korea" and "Vietnam" - were started by Democratic
>>> administrations and ended by Republican administrations. Since the current
>>> Democratic administration has greatly expanded the killing in AfPak, it's
>>> hard to argue that they're going to reverse their policies. Voting for them
>>> is an acquiescence to those policies.
>>>
>>> To say of Obama and the Democrats, "Let them kill some Asians, because they
>>> might do some good someplace else," is at best a counsel of despair, if not
>>> an outright criminal attitude. Particularly when it seems that they're
>>> doing precisely the wrong things elsewhere, too - not surprisingly, because
>>> they're working for the owners of the banks, the insurance companies, the
>>> oil and construction companies, etc. --CGE
>>>
>>>
>>> On 10/20/10 4:48 PM, Gregg Gordon wrote:
>>>> Maybe because there are other important issues that she /does/ agree with
>>>> him on. The only way you're going to find a candidate you're in 100%
>>>> agreement with is to run for office. If support for the war is an absolute
>>>> deal breaker for you, fine. Not everybody sees it that way. But if you
>>>> think the war will end sooner if more Republicans get elected, I think
>>>> you're out of your mind.
>>>>
>>>> --------------------------------------------------------------------------------
>>>> *From:* C. G. Estabrook <galliher at illinois.edu>
>>>> *To:* Jenifer Cartwright <jencart13 at yahoo.com>
>>>> *Cc:* Peace List <peace at lists.chambana.net>; Peace-discuss
>>>> <peace-discuss at lists.chambana.net>
>>>> *Sent:* Wed, October 20, 2010 4:33:52 PM
>>>> *Subject:* Re: [Peace] [Peace-discuss] Fw: Money Can't Vote
>>>>
>>>> This guy supports the war. I can't see why anyone on an anti-war list would
>>>> contribute to him.
>>>>
>>>>
>>>> On 10/20/10 4:28 PM, Jenifer Cartwright wrote:
>>>>> Another request for help...
>>>>> I love this guy!
>>>>> --Jenifer
>>>>>
>
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