Sad News

Post by **Crankmas** » Thu May 13, 2004 3:19 pm

keep your advise to yourself cock sucker

Post by **Gretchen** » Thu May 13, 2004 3:30 pm

my question is why are civilians going into Afghanastan during this time of conflict. I understand some are making some major bucks by being there but are the risks worth it?

Post by **superjen** » Thu May 13, 2004 3:50 pm

Just read a great article in SI about Pat Tillman. He was actually in the military, though.

http://www.foxnews.com/story/0%2C2933%2 ... %2C00.html

This looks like a shortened version, but still a moving story. Life is too short to dick around with material possessions, prejudice, etc...

Post by **jefflehmkuhl** » Thu May 13, 2004 6:15 pm

Crankmas wrote:no Canada still sucks, aye

Since I have been on a spellcheck marathon lately...I believe it is eh not aye. Feel free to correct me if I am wrong Canadians

Post by **superjen** » Thu May 13, 2004 8:29 pm

jefflehmkuhl, see my last quote. and it is Canadiennes

haha

Post by **tomdarch** » Fri May 14, 2004 1:37 am

Gretchen wrote:my question is why are civilians going into Afghanastan during this time of conflict. I understand some are making some major bucks by being there but are the risks worth it?

There isn't a lot of money to be made in Afghanistan. It isn't a direct US occupation, it's under international control, so there is a much more open system for contracting and bidding. There's plenty of corruption there, but it isn't of the same scale (billions of dollars) as what's going on in Iraq. In large part it is because Arghanistan doesn't have oil like Iraq and it's location isn't as immediately 'geopolitically critical'. (In other words, it doesn't have neighbors like Iran, Syria, Saudi Arabia and Israel.)

Basically, Paul Wolfowitz and his neo-con and corporate buddies have big stiffies over Iraq and they are pouring literally hundreds of billions of our tax dollars through Iraq and into the coffers of corporations like Bechtel and Haliburton. But they don't give a s**t about Afghanistan, the suffering of its people, or the fact that it is the source of herion that kills more people around the world each year than died in the September 11th attacks. If we did give a damn about them, we would have put a lot more aid into the country when the Soviets pulled out, and we never would have had the whole Taliban + al Qaeda thing that happened there in the vacuum.

Bah! grumlegrumlegrumlegrumlegrumle

Post by **EL_TREVOR** » Fri May 14, 2004 2:00 am

whats going on in the world right now pisses me off , our soldiers are being murderd , and when we take a few of embarassing pictures our govt. shits a brick , when are we gonna grow some balls and finish what we started instead of sitting back and doing nothing . anyone have a say on whats goin on ?

avery

Post by **Yasmeen** » Fri May 14, 2004 1:05 pm

EL_TREVOR wrote:whats going on in the world right now pisses me off , our soldiers are being murderd , and when we take a few of embarassing pictures our govt. shits a brick , when are we gonna grow some balls and finish what we started instead of sitting back and doing nothing . anyone have a say on whats goin on ?

I don't understand how you can write off what went on at Abu Ghraib as "taking a few embarrassing pictures." What the American soldiers did to those prisoners was fucking wrong. Imagine for a moment, being taken into the custody of your enemies, stripped of your clothing to be made to feel even more vulnerable, your eyes covered so that you can't see a damn thing that is going on around you, hearing dogs snarl at you and not knowing if they're on a leash, having wires attached to your arms and genitals and being told that you'll be electrocuted if you fall asleep. Being forced into sexual acts with people you can't even fucking see. Not knowing, the whole time, whether they're going to torture you further, kill you, maim you...

Tell me this-- if those pictures had been of Iraqi soldiers doing that shit to American prisoners, would you feel the same way? That they were "just a few embarrassing pictures?" I doubt it. And I hate that we've made Iraqi people out to be some kind of sub-human entities... recently, a child was killed when a bomb landed too close to a school. It received a blurb in the paper. What if one of the American contractors who are over there had his/her child with him/her, and that American child were killed by a stray bullet from an Iraqi's gun? Our nation would be in an uproar!

What those vigilantes, or whatever you want to call them, did to Nick Berg was stomache-turning. I haven't even watched the video because the concept of cutting someone's head off as if it were a loaf of bread makes me weak, just thinking about it. My brother told me about the video he watched, and I couldn't even fathom that one human being could have it in him to do such a thing to another.

This attitude of "growing some balls to finish what we started" is exactly what is perpetuating this disgustingly out-of-control situation. I don't pretend to have an answer for what is going on. I think that some progress could be made if one side stops seeing the other side as a sub-human mass that needs to be conquered, but I don't know how that mindset would be achieved, nor what it would result in were we to achieve it. Until we do, though, this bullshit is going to continue. This child's game of tag and tag back with human life.

Post by **Christian** » Fri May 14, 2004 1:28 pm

aggression only breeds more agresson only love and compassion can slow the cycle of violence.
A

very good recent book on our role in the Soviet Afghan war as well as the rise of the Taliban and El Quaeda is "Ghost Wars".
Although the incessant but misguided comparison to the Vietnam War gets tiring the book "Decent Interval" by Frank Schnell(I think is his name) would remind us that once we make a policy decision to go into a country militarily we have made a long term commitment to those people. We can and should not just abandon those those Iraqis who invested their lives into our promise to help them be better off than they were under Saddam.
Yas I agree with you that we must not treat them as sub human or subjects. They just are and we just are.

Post by **Crankmas** » Fri May 14, 2004 2:16 pm

Seems to be a leadership vacuum, America can, should and is trying but the Bush administration lacks the tact, Kerry could well be a different suit but I fear he also lacks the skills and vision,sigh...