"...it's not the training to be mean but the training to be kind that is used to keep us leashed best." ~ Black Dog Red

"In case you haven't recognized the trend: it proceeds action, dissent, speech." ~ davidly, on how wars get done

"...What sort of meager, unerotic existence must a man live to find himself moved to such ecstatic heights by the mundane sniping of a congressional budget fight. The fate of human existence does not hang in the balance. The gods are not arrayed on either side. Poseiden, earth-shaker, has regrettably set his sights on the poor fishermen of northern Japan and not on Washington, D.C. where his ire might do some good--I can think of no better spot for a little wetland reclamation project, if you know what I mean. The fight is neither revolution nor apocalypse; it is hardly even a fight. A lot of apparatchiks are moving a lot of phony numbers with more zeros than a century of soccer scores around, weaving a brittle chrysalis around a gross worm that, some time hence, will emerge, untransformed, still a worm." ~ IOZ

Apr 14, 2010

Gee, someone wants to bomb Iran...



...and drill for 3000 days worth of oil off of American coastlines.

5 comments:

Andromeda said...

A rational person might look at that footage of EFPs, hear "This is what our troops are up against today", and wonder why we are over there at all, and see that video as nothing more than yet another very good reason to get the hell out of Iraq.

Instead, I guess it works on most people's emotions, which is the only language that the media and the politicians speak nowadays. It's fear-mongering, with a handful of patriotism and "support the troops" thrown in for good measure, designed to make you support things that are probably not in your best interests (nor in the best interests of the troops who are currently dying in Iraq and Afghanistan).

Andromeda said...

Also, on the topic of people supporting things that are not in their best interests, there's a great editorial on Al Jazeera English today entitled "Hypocrisy and the End of Empires: Is the US media's desensitising of wars abroad leading to growing populist hypocrisy?" which you might enjoy.

http://english.aljazeera.net/focus/2010/04/20104144134810956.html

Jack Crow said...

A,

I agree - this could provide an object lesson for why invading and occupying people usually requires unceasing brutality, and dehumanization, and still generally ends up failing (unless, like Roman and Persian despots, you just butcher or disperse whole populations).

But, instead, it's a drum up for "scary Iran" and "oil insecurity."

Ethan said...

That phrase "up against" makes me gag almost as much as "our troops."

Jack Crow said...

With you on that, E.