Je Suis Charlie
Posted by: Iver van de Zand on 07 January 2015
!
Wolfowitz, Kristol, Brzezinski, Libby, Kagan, Nuland, Krauthammer, et al are evil people with no moral compass. And the lies are as profuse here as in the Russian press.
Russia has its version & we have ours. And then there's the truth.
DrMark,
Krauthammer is just a writer on the right with whom you obviously do not share views. Does that make him evil with no moral compass?
That very short list is not anywhere near exhaustive.
I see him as an apologist for them, so he is as culpable as they are - he should be exposing their crimes not excusing them. He is very much in favor of the unipolar world view of US hegemony over the entire planet...which is the primary tenet of neoconservative foreign policy.
I'd say it's a good shout we're as much responsible for the terrorism there as the terrorists. We broke the country, it's government and all it's functionality which left a vacuum.
I remember the warnings before we went to war and they went unheeded. Act first and we'll cross that bridge when we come to it. There's no arguing the situation in Iraq is infinitely worse than what it was before we stormed in there. That's before we even start on Libya and call me Dave wanting to bomb Syria.
Why are we as a population of white Brits not expected to have to go around making public apologies to the Muslim people for the actions of the government we vote and pay for in the way they're expected to come out and decry and apologise for every terrorist attack like the one's who attacked Hebdo? I find it a bit of a double standard.
Virtually everyone outside Bush, Blair and various neocon lickspittles agrees that the 2003 invasion of Iraq was a catastrophe, but I find your statement puzzling and rather egregious. While Western foreign policy and aggressive Israeli expansion has undoubtedly exacerbated tensions, it is not the cause of IS, or Al Shabaab, Boko Haram or the Taliban (although AQ is different). I find it puzzling that people like you and Dr Mark are happy to condemn the West for its incompetence and meddling, which is fair enough; yet are far less vocal in condemning those who perpetrate these atrocities - and to say "we are as responsible for terrorism as terrorists" demonstrates either a wilful blindness or moral vacuity, or both. The greater problem is a ghastly, arid and seemingly unreformable religious extremism which poisons minds and is deeply anti-human, with its treatment of women, gays, unbelievers, apostates and now, humanity's common cultural heritage.
A quick question for you - I don't think any reasonable person expects Muslims to "apologise" for the atrocities committed in their religion's name; but a similarly reasonable person might have cause to wonder whether the real double standard is from those Muslims who seem happy to march against cartoons of their 'prophet" but who remain strangely silent on massacres committed in the name of Islam - most of whose victims are, ironically, Muslims.
It's been posted here before, but this thoughtful article from The Atlantic magazine could be worth half an hour of your time:
I think what we see from people who follow ISIS is a literal take on their holy book. No more, no less.
We used to have a literal take on our holy book too but this has been watered down somewhat over the centuries which makes me wonder which side can credibly claim to be adherents to the words of their god. I don't see how people can half follow a religious book claiming to be the work of their god or prophet but that's another argument.
There's no doubt that the 'good' books have some fairly extreme tenets and teachings but how do you argue with believers? It's impossible because they operate by blind belief and not by logic or evidence based reasoning. They believe they're doing their gods work and living by his teachings. It's crazy but that's beliefs for you.
I'm also a bit wary of getting on the home teams newly found moral high horse after all it's not that long ago where we shot people with shell shock, chemically castrated gays and deemed it appropriate to gave women the vote. We chemically bombed tribes people in Iraq to teach them a lesson.
In my life time domestic violence was once accepted by the authorities and the marital rape exemption was not removed by law until 1991 (ironically being a legacy of our religion), previously being generally accepted. We had the brutal torture of the Mau Mau and anyone who thinks that was isolated in our empire is possibly naive. We had government involvement in extra judicial killings in Northern Ireland just a few decades ago and I don't know about anyone but I expect far more from a proclaimed democracy than a gang running wild in Iraq.
Wolfowitz, Kristol, Brzezinski, Libby, Kagan, Nuland, Krauthammer, et al are evil people with no moral compass. And the lies are as profuse here as in the Russian press.
Russia has its version & we have ours. And then there's the truth.
DrMark,
Krauthammer is just a writer on the right with whom you obviously do not share views. Does that make him evil with no moral compass?
That very short list is not anywhere near exhaustive.
I see him as an apologist for them, so he is as culpable as they are - he should be exposing their crimes not excusing them. He is very much in favor of the unipolar world view of US hegemony over the entire planet...which is the primary tenet of neoconservative foreign policy.
Would you add Leon Chomsky to your list or is he more 'your cup of tea'..
Who on earth is Leon Chomsky???
Who on earth is Leon Chomsky???
Sorry I meant Noam Chomsky, who is among other things an intellectual thinker in USA who is known for his certain views which are considered by some as a being on the left side of politics. Reading in between the lines of Dr Mark's posts I think he may embrace Noam Chomsky views on American politics and foreign affairs but I may be wrong.
Noam Chomsky = waste of space.
shouldn't that "of" in "falls of" be "off" ?