DGG wrote:
Tim Daneliuk said:

nothing any well paid shill wouldn't say.

If I'm being paid, then someone owes me a great deal of money.
A "shill"? For whom exactly? I despise the Right, but the Left
terrifies me.


I regrettably stumbled onto this post, and after laughing for 30
minutes, decided to address the oppressive blather.

It is not. In the early days of what would become WWII, the Left argued
as you have - "There's no serious threat to us. It's just asinine to
worry about it." Fast forward 15 years. Hitler and Stalin are
responsible for something on the order of 100 *million* deaths in total.
History is full of other such examples of what happens when you
ignore evil.

And in what possible way does this relate to an impotent US sock
puppet like Saddam Hussein? Or are you setting the stage for a dialog
on the invasion of Iran, Pakistan, Afghanistan, or perhaps Canada.

What a convenient snipping of the original text you've done.
The comment was in context of the previous poster arguing that
the threat from the asymmetric warriors wasn't all that great.
My response was a demonstration that large storms start with
small raindrops and was in a far larger context than just Iraq.
But then, preserving context would undermine your ability to bellow.


We shouldn't ignore evil? What about Darfur, et al.?
Funny, I don't see any Warships racing towards Africa - or DC.

Because, at least for the moment, the Darfur is not yet incubating
anything that will threaten us. I'm not for the eradication of
*all* evil - that's impossible - only the evil than can and will
threaten us.


Today's threat isn't just an Islamist Terrorist threat per se.
Today's asymmetric warriors are testing the waters to see if they can
bring down a superpower. What ties them together far more than religion
is their tribalist mentality - of which there is plenty to go around on
the planet. The combination of a suicidal eschatology and a tribal
mentality, fertilized with global communications, transport, and
technology, will inevitably follow the same course as pre-war Hitler and
Stalin. The task today is to prevent the snowball from rolling down the
hill before it gets so big it cannot be stopped.

Your arguments over minutia are irrelevant in light of the fact that
we invaded a sovereign country that in no way threatened the US or its

Except for the part were the leader of that nation plotted to assassinate
a sitting US President, which should be grounds alone for a violent
response upon that leader's person and government. I'd feel the exact
same way no matter *who* the US President in question was, whether I liked
him or not.

neighbors, to overthrow a leader who had been propped up by decades of
support from the both the magnanimous right and the quivering left.

And the Syrians, and the French, and the Germans, and the Russians,
whose sum total of support *vastly* exceeds the support the US briefly
provided and then withdrew when Sadaam's excesses became clearer.
Do you froth as incoherently when these nations come up in conversation?
You should, they are far more culpable than the US is in this matter.
The world is more subtle than you paint it.

Who had absolutely no involvement in 9/11, no WMDs, and did not harbor
or embrace terrorists. And in spite of warnings from far more

Except, of course, his direct support for killing Jews. Oh wait,
I forgot, that doesn't count as "terrorism". Strapping C4 to
your child and having them explode themselves among other children
is a noble act of a "Freedom Fighter". Making war on civilians
*intentionally* is OK as long as you are a despotic regime and
not likely to vote in the next US election.

You must share with us your access to the alternate universe which you
inhabit. Many nations believed the threat from Iraq to be real as
regards to WMDs - the fact that this turned out to not be the case in no
way undermines the judgments made - internationally and openly - at the
time of the decision. IIRC, something like 98 of the US Senators saw it
that way. And before you huff and puff about the "lies" that got us
there, you might want to explain how - if W and his bunch actually lied
and this were demonstrable - how it is he has not been impeached. I
know, I know, The Rest Of Us are too stupid to see your "truth" and
could not be trusted to demand that impeachment if proof of lying were
demonstrated at any significant level. Here is a small clue: Truth in
geopolitics is not absolute, it is a probability that varies with time
and new information. But it's just too much fun to paint everything in
stark black and white, it certainly requires less analysis and
brainsweat.


intelligent and reasonable thinkers than the triad of morons who now
occupy DC, we have killed tens of thousands of innocent civilians and

Oh, that's right, when we *unintentionally* kill civilians during
wartime - having given the target government repeated opportunities
to stand down while we sat on their borders indicating our intent,
that's a moral horror. But when the target of our military operations
kills thousands of his own, funds the suicide bombing of civilians
in another country, invades his neighbors, and kills his domestic
political rivals, that's just fine with you. It's so much more
fun to amplify the accidental byproduct of war and ignore the
conscious acts of brutal dictator. One shudders to think what your
larger ethical system embraces.

unleashed a bold new generation of US hating terrorists and

Because were were deeply beloved prior to the war in that region.

theological war upon Iraq, if not eventually the entirety of the
Middle East. Left wing "talking points?" Perhaps because it is fact.

Nothing you've said is a fact. It's a loathsome foaming at best.

And all the bombastic, self-righteous slights you can muster won't
change hard facts. You can only hope to confuse or suppress those who
dissent; ergo we have your presence here.

I've been "here" for many years. And I've never (as best I can recall)
started an OT political thread. But I will not be silent in the face
of a lot of bad thinking that has the potential to damage my and my
family's future. That means I fight back - hard - against the perverse
and suicidal ideas expressed by people like you. You want to kill yourself,
be my guest, just don't block traffic. But I rather enjoy this republic
and would like to pass it along to future generations.


Your deeply held fantasies about how the world *ought* to operate are at
odds with considerable historical evidence to the contrary. You can
begin self-remediation by admitting out loud that "Evil" is a real thing,
and that, left to its own devices, it will grow.

Fantasies, hah! This from the Mad Hatter himself. Specious arguments,
Strawmen and subtle ad hominem attacks are apparently your trademarks.

Lest you've forgotten, there are plenty of people in the world, and
many in this country, who might just consider the US in it's various
incarnations the embodiment of evil. History reveals proud traditions

And they are uniformly fools. The US unquestionably has acted badly
from time to time. It has also made honest mistakes insofar as no one
can have omniscience as to what needs doing in a complex and connected world.
But the sum total of US sins, pales by comparison to the horrors of even
just the last century. Let me help with your deficient understanding of
history and context and point out the Hit Parade Of Evil from the 20th
Century. Then you can reply with how Eeeeeeeevil the US is by comparison.
(Numbers are estimates and slightly debatable since no one knows for sure):

Aggressor Victim # Civilians Killed

Japan China 25-35 Million
Russia Ukraine 15-25 Million
Germany Jews & Others 7 Million
Cambodia Cambodia 1-2 Million
N. Korea N. Korea No one knows for sure

And the hits keep on coming. If you total up the war dead, Stalin and Hitler
alone are good for something in the neighborhood of 100 million dead.

Meanwhile, who did the US primarily take up arms against? Lessee,
Japan, Russia (indirectly), Germany, Cambodia (indirectly), and N. Korea.

of witchburing, slavery, rape, torture, beheading of troops and
civilians who failed to work productively enough to suit their
benevolent masters, near extermination of the native population of

Are we talking about the tribal slave traders in Africa who sold
their captors to the Europeans? They bear a moral burden many times
that of *any* Western slaving nation AND are still doing it. Our
fine friends in the Muslim Arab world still get good deals on African
slaves from ... Mauretania. Where is your moral outrage in this
matter? Oh, I see, the sins of our former selves - long in the
rearview mirror - are far more worthy of your fulminations than
what is going on *right now*. Because ... ideology always trumps
Reason.

North America and theft of their lands by force - all of which are

Ever bother to read the history of the Plains Indians? They were
easily as savage to each other as any European was. Hardly the
"Noble Savages" portrayed in the Left Madrassas.

hallmark milestones in the development of this country. Not so
different from the bulk of human history, but hardly anything to crow
about either.

You cannot "crow about" what you barely understand. It is indisputably
true that our European forefathers acted with great malice and violence
against the groups you mention. But your abbreviated understanding
of "human history" misses the essential point. Slaving and brutality
have been a part of *every* major culture in recorded history. What
makes the West unique is that it *ended* these behaviors and did
so permanently and durably - something *no* other major culture can
claim. That's primarily because the Judeo-Christian roots of the
democratic West came with the burden of a conscience. In less than
300 years, the US, in particular, ended behaviors that had gone
on for at least the previous 10,000 or so recorded years. So, yes,
our forefathers did, at one point, act horribly. But their *ideas*
led them away from those horrors in relatively short order in the scheme
of things. (See what happens when you actually learn to think about things
instead of just parroting what you read in the latest Noam Chomsky
toilet paper?)


So I relent: I admit out loud that "Evil" is a real thing, and that,
left to its own devices, it will grow.

But, oddly, that seems not to bother you all that much.


A self-righteous, self-appointed moral compass for the rest of the
world? Don't make me laugh any harder than I am already. Mostly a

Absolutely not. We ought oppose evil when it threatens us. Otherwise we
ought offer advice and trade, no more.

bunch of avaricious, self-interested, domineering, immoral hooligans
who will do or say anything to achieve their personal agendas. Now I
admit, these are survival traits in a dangerous world, but I damned
sure don't want anyone who embraces these qualities as a neighbor.

Absent some level of self-interest, you won't have any neighbors.
More correctly, they will not have you as a neighbor. Self-interest
is mandatory for even simple survival. It would appear that
you'd like to survive (presumably) but don't want to do any of the
necessary messy work to do so. Worse still, when others do it for you,
you rage at them for not providing you with your imaginary world
in which no one does anything and everyone lives happily ever
after. There is a place like that, but I don't think you can
get there ... it's on the Disney Channel.


And all the more reason to boot the lot of these maggots out on their
collective asses. To paraphrase Robin Williams, "politicians are like
diapers - they should be changed often and for the same reasons."

That's certainly true, but changing parties never really changes
the politicians very much does it now? When Clinton was in power,
he had the opportunity to short circuit a lot of what's gone
one the past five years. But he was just too busy getting his
groove on to be bothered. So you tell me which is worse.
A President who abdicates his oath to defend the nation or a
President who makes questionable decisions in the consequent
aftermath when preemption is no longer possible? Oh, I forgot,
we suck no matter what we do.


And this is the foulest load of **** I've smelled in 50 years.


Think-tanks filled with propagandists bent on fabricating plausible
arguments for any atrocity, masters of media manipulation, oppression

Yeah, like building schools where there were none before, like feeding
the hungry, clothing the poor, providing medical care all around the world
from the coffers of the American wage earners. We really do suck.

of dissenting voices, baseless slanders, billions in wasted taxpayer
revenue, cronyism, callous disregard of all life, feigned pandering to

Except of course when the life isn't quite out of the bottle yet, then
there's no problem whacking it is there?

self-seeking religious elements, spin and more spin. I haven't heard
an iota of truth from these ignorant cowards yet. The only consistent

It is doubtful you would be able to discern any moment of truth in
between gasps of foam. It is one thing to be critical of a nation's
faults and leaders. I am so critical on a regular basis regardless
of which party is in power. It is quite another to be so ego-obsessed and
cocksure that you can only reach the puerile conclusions above.


behaviors exhibited by this administration and its cheerleaders are
greed, deception, and self-preservation.

And that's the truth. Phhhhhhhtttttt......
Bye, Bye...


One can only hope ...
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Tim Daneliuk
PGP Key: http://www.tundraware.com/PGP/