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General Category => 3DHS => Topic started by: Mucho on January 06, 2007, 11:35:06 AM
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Arianna Huffington
01.03.2007
D.C. Notes: Murtha Again Taking the Lead on Iraq (36 comments )
Arriving on the Hill, Melinda and I made a beeline for the office of Rep. Jack Murtha, the man most responsible for the Democrats seizing control of the 110th Congress (other than George Bush, that is).
His office is filled with military memorabilia and reminders of the troops serving in Iraq: a civil war hat worn by his grandfather, who lost an arm in the war; dog tags from a soldier wounded in Iraq; a clock given to him by Missy Hall, whose husband was the first soldier from Murtha's district to lose his life in Iraq.
Murtha recently spoke at Missy's graduation from nursing school, and her Christmas card with her children is prominently displayed on his desk.
As always with Murtha, the first thing he wants to talk about is the state of our troops -- both in Iraq and when they return home wounded (and all-too-often neglected). He's particularly distressed about the way the last Congress cut funding for the treatment of traumatic brain injuries, which have been dubbed "the signature injury of the Iraq war." Murtha is a regular visitor to Washington's Walter Reed hospital, headquarters for the Defense and Veterans Brain Injury Center, and has seen first-hand the devastation wrought by these kinds of injuries.
When we asked about the likelihood of the president sending additional troops to Iraq, Murtha was adamant. "The only way you can have a troop surge," he told us, "is to extend the tours of people whose tours have already been extended, or to send back people who have just gotten back home." He explained at length how our military forces are already stretched to the breaking point, with our strategic reserve so depleted we are unprepared to face any additional threats to the country. So does that mean there will be no surge? Murtha offered us a "with Bush anything is possible" look, then said: "Money is the only way we can stop it for sure."
To this end, Murtha, the incoming Chairman of the House Appropriations Subcommittee on Defense, is planning to hold wide-ranging hearings, starting January 17th, that will focus on the depleted state of our military readiness , as well as contractor corruption in Iraq and Afghanistan. The goal is to turn the spotlight on how drained the military has become, and on how any talk of a troop surge is utterly irresponsible (as well as strategically misguided). "The public," he said repeatedly, "is already ahead of us on all this.
He says he wants to "fence the funding," denying the president the resources to escalate the war, instead using the money to take care of the soldiers as we bring them home from Iraq "as soon as we can."
Murtha's passion for our troops and the families they've left behind is palpable, and has left him energized and ready to, once again, lead the charge on Iraq.
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/arianna-huffington/dc-notes-murtha-again-_b_37750.html?view=print
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Does he have the votes to do it this way?
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Does he have the votes to do it this way?
I am not sure what you are asking. He IS the head of the committee that approves the funding so there are legislative manuevers he can use to block & delay . Dems are capable of that little trick of yours as well, you know.
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Just wondering. Most of the dems elected were centrists and most of the dems rejected were of the moonbat leftist variety. Will be interesting to watch it all play out.
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Just wondering. Most of the dems elected were centrists and most of the dems rejected were of the moonbat leftist variety. Will be interesting to watch it all play out.
People who oppose the war are no longer moonbats. They are now the overwhelming majority and you are the moonbats now.
http://edition.cnn.com/2006/POLITICS/12/18/bush.poll/index.html
And once a war is opposed , rarely makes a comeback. People can admit a mistake once, but not again on the same subject. You have lost.
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You have lost.
Don't see how.
I have been saying, along with Mikey, that the american people, have no stomach for worthwhile sacrifice, for years.
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You have lost.
Don't see how.
I have been saying, along with Mikey, that the american people, have no stomach for worthwhile sacrifice, for years.
Then why do you keep on bothering them with it? Actually, worthwhile sacrifices like WW II were supported and real sacrifices were made. Bullshit wars get bullshit sacrifices. Besides, what sacrifice have you made for your Fuehrer's war? You didnt even have to give up your beloved tax-cuts.
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<<I have been saying, along with Mikey, that the american people, have no stomach for worthwhile sacrifice, for years.>>
You're on your own on this one, BT, I never claimed the American people have no stomach for worthwhile sacrifice. Just that they're smart enough to know the difference between what's worthwhile and what's bullshit.
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You're on your own on this one, BT, I never claimed the American people have no stomach for worthwhile sacrifice. Just that they're smart enough to know the difference between what's worthwhile and what's bullshit.
Sure you did. Referring to Viet Nam and now Iraq.
We can debate whether the cause is worthwhile, There is no debate as to when the going gets tough, the vast majority of americans sit on their couch and complain about a lack of freebies.
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You're on your own on this one, BT, I never claimed the American people have no stomach for worthwhile sacrifice. Just that they're smart enough to know the difference between what's worthwhile and what's bullshit.
Sure you did. Referring to Viet Nam and now Iraq.
We can debate whether the cause is worthwhile, There is no debate as to when the going gets tough, the vast majority of americans sit on their couch and complain about a lack of freebies.
But YOU are content with your beloved taxcuts, no?
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But YOU are content with your beloved taxcuts, no?
I am absolutely pleased with any tax cuts i recieve. I'm also happy when chicken goes on sale. My understanding is you are a high dollar earner. I assume you return any nasty tax break you got back to the treasury?
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<<Sure you did. [complain that Americans have no stomach for worthwhile sacrifice] Referring to Viet Nam and now Iraq.>>
For the record, BOTH Viet Nam and Iraq required sacrifices from Americans for causes that were not worthwhile. WWII demanded sacrifices for a cause that WAS worthwhile. Americans had no stomach for massive sacrifice for either Viet Nam or Iraq because both causes were based on lies and bullshit and deliberate deception of the American people, which many Americans ultimately came to see right through. WWII was a truly noble cause in which, correspondingly, the American people were virtually unstinting in their sacrifice.
<<We can debate whether the cause is worthwhile . . . >>
Somewhere else, whenever you're ready. The issue in this thread is what I said about American's will to sacrifice in worthwhile causes, and you clearly misquoted me. I did not say what you claim I did. I would never impugn the willingness of the American people to sacrifice in a worthwhile cause. There would be no factual or logical basis for any such statement.
<< There is no debate as to when the going gets tough, the vast majority of americans sit on their couch and complain about a lack of freebies. >>
I don't think so at all. That's complete and utter nonsense. I believe that in WWII, although late entrants to the fighting, the American people performed magnificently and heroicly on both the home front and the battlefield. As a causus belli both Viet Nam and Iraq are crocks of shit. The American people gave them the support they deserved. They're much smarter than you are, BT.
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Then educate me. Why was the causus belli just for WWII and not for Viet Nam? There was the america first crowd during WWII, part of the reason we entered late, why were they wrong?
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<<Then educate me. Why was the causus belli just for WWII and not for Viet Nam? >>
WWII was a war that the U.S. entered late between Nazi Germany and its allies on the one hand and France, Great Britain, the USSR and their allies on the other. The causus belli was German aggression which would have led to the domination of Eurasia by the Nazis and their takeover of the British and French Empires. This would have inevitably led to the domination of most of the world by the Nazis which most people generally would tend to view as something very, very bad. If you don't understand that, I would suggest some basic courses on European history in the 20th Century, but it's a huge topic which is not of much interest today simply because it is so widely understood. Most Americans would have considered Nazi domination of the planet a bad thing.
Viet Nam was primarily a struggle for national independence from the French Empire, which FDR had supported in principle, having told the Allied European colonial powers (Britain, France, Holland, Belgium) that their colonialism was contrary to the principles of national liberation for which America was fighting in WWII and that consequently the U.S. would not support their postwar efforts to retain their colonies by force. Although France continued to fight the NLF (the communist-led National Liberation Front) after the war, a symbolically important battle loss at Dienbienphu convinced the French to pull out in stages, leaving the North in the hands of the NLF and the South in the hands of a puppet government they had hand-picked prior to their departure from their former colonial collaborators, most of whom were Roman Catholics in a predominantly Buddhist country. In short, what happened was that the French puppet government, having practically zero popular support, with the help of influential RCC and anti-communist pressure groups in the USA, managed to sucker important American politicians into supporting their so-called anti-communist struggle as part of the Cold War. Elections were to be held two or three years after partition, but the South, with U.S. support, cancelled the elections, which the NLF would have won in a landslide, due to the popularity of Uncle Ho (Ho Chi Minh.)
Thus the real objective of US interference in Viet Nam was to prevent the free elections promised to its people, which in itself was distasteful to many Americans. The official causus belli was the fake attack on American warships in the Tonkin Gulf, which many Americans knew or suspected from the beginning was faked, much the same way as the "threat" of Saddam's "WMD" was faked years later.
Both Viet Nam and Iraq were sparked by manufactured causes, and in both cases the American people were lied into war by deceptive and manipulative politicians. Although many Americans are ignorant, belligerent, racist ass-holes ready to kill and torture brown-skinned or dark-skinned people for no good reason and believe everything their government tells them because of their sheer stupidity, many Americans are good, smart, decent people who can sense when their government is lying to them, have no real desire to kill people just because of their race or religion and will rightfully resist any call to sacrifice in a cause which, whatever their government tells them, they realize is a crock of shit. Even the moron racist ass-holes at some point when the government's lies become more and more apparent, finally start to realize that they have been had, and begin to waver in their support of a campaign which they had been led to think would be a cakewalk. Since it is from these moronic ass-holes that most of the government's troops will come when the smarter half realizes that the cause is no good, these guys are the first to see the real results of the government policies coming home in coffins and wheelchairs, and this could be considered a part of the Great American Awakening, when the entire nation slowly comes to realize that, once again, their leaders have turned out to be a bunch of lying bags of shit with nothing left to offer and no more promises that anyone is ready to believe in, not even the morons. This is when the plutocracy that really rules the country comes to the conclusion that the plug has to be pulled come hell or high water. The game is up.
There was the america first crowd during WWII, part of the reason we entered late, why were they wrong?
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<<There was the america first crowd during WWII, part of the reason we entered late, why were they wrong?>>
Well, they were pretty much of a mixed bag. Some of them remembered the lies of British propaganda from WWI, which got America into that war. (German armies raping nuns, bayonetting babies, etc.) All the propaganda stories of German WWI soldiers were pure bullshit concocted by the British to get America into the war on their side, assisted by various American war financiers, including J.P. Morgan, who had billions invested in British loans and stood to lose every cent if Britain were defeated. So there was distrust of British influence and of "international banking" influence. U.S. involvement in the war could only benefit the British and French and their maintenance of their unjust empires. War could only benefit the "international bankers" (a.k.a. "the Jews," in some circles) who had again loaned huge sums, now at risk, to Great Britain, and furthermore had an added incentive in this war to see that Germany would lose the war.
There was also a strong American tradition of noninvolvement in foreign struggles. Europe, the decadent "old world" was an example of everything that America had wanted to escape from: religious hatred and persecution, dictatorships, rule of kings (and the wars they entailed), the class system, oligarchies - - nothing good could come of involvement in the quarrels of these people, they were all more or less equally bad and thankfully an ocean separated them from the U.S.A. so there was less reason than ever to care about what those morons were doing to each other. Europeans were evil, they were born evil, they would die evil and whatever they did to one another, however regrettable it might be, was to be expected and was inevitable.
Some America Firsters, like Lindbergh, one of the founders, saw the pro-war movement as primarily inspired by the Jews for selfish reasons of self-protection and felt that the Nazis represented "The Wave of the Future," the title of a book that either he or his wife, Anne Morrow Lindbergh, had written to extol the virtues of Nazi Germany and its leader Adolf Hitler. This segment of America First saw the Jews pretty well the same way that Adolf Hitler saw them, as a parasitic race of evil-doers who lived only to exploit and cheat the straight-talking hard-working "Aryan" races and were a spreading cancer which really needed to be excised the sooner the better. Henry Ford, like Lindbergh a great admirer of Hitler and the senior Nazi leadership (and a campaign contributor as well) had similar thoughts on the issue and even paid to distribute The Protocols of the Elders of Zion (faked "minutes" of purported meetings of Jewish world leaders to plot world domination) in Germany as he had done in the U.S.A.
Other America Firsters like Col. Thompson of the Chicago Tribune were anti-British AND anti-Semitic. Thompson, I believe, because of his Irish background. Many other America Firsters were Irish-American. To America Firsters like these, (as to many French Canadians) Hitler was a double blessing, one who would take care of BOTH the English and the Jews at the same time. Going to war against Hitler would have been, for these guys, an act of major insanity.
So who were America First? A pretty mixed bag. Mostly, IMHO, bad guys.
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There is the underlying theme of isolationism during the european phase of wwii and vietnam. What business was it of ours what went on there. And to many, subjugation to communist rule was just as bad as subjugation to nazi rule. It would seem a war against communist subjugation would be as just as the war against the nazi's.
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Some of them remembered the lies of British propaganda from WWI, which got America into that war.
Funny, and all this time I thought it was German U-boat attacks on US shipping that got us into that war.
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<<There is the underlying theme of isolationism during the european phase of wwii and vietnam. What business was it of ours what went on there. And to many, subjugation to communist rule was just as bad as subjugation to nazi rule. It would seem a war against communist subjugation would be as just as the war against the nazi's. >>
Well, in the case of Viet Nam, there wasn't really an issue of "subjugation" to communism. The South was committed to holding free elections and its government had cancelled them. Even Eisenhower had to admit that the elections were cancelled because Ho Chi Minh would have won at least 80% of the vote. Going to war to prevent this struck a lot of Americans as contrary to the principles of self-determination and national liberation that were what they had supposedly been fighting for in WWII.
Europe was a slightly more complex matter. As I've pointed out before, the U.S.A. did NOT declare war on Germany even after they had declared war on Japan after Pearl Harbor. FDR had campaigned on a promise to keep America out of the war in Europe and most Americans wanted him to keep that promise. The real issue I see here is why did America get behind the war effort in Europe after Hitler declared war on them?
I would say a big part of the answer is leadership. FDR was a powerful and eloquent leader of enormous talents and abilities, greatly admired (I think it's fair to say, adored) by large segments of the general population, not maybe so much the editorialists and the national leaders, but by the working man and woman, the tenement dwellers, the dirt farmers, etc. They didn't trust the rich and famous (Lindbergh, Ford, Rockefeller) but they did trust FDR. Bush, I hate to say it, is a twerp -- a bungling, arrogant, smirking, inarticulate moron - - who immediately inspires dislike and distrust in half the population at first glance and by his lying ways and his bluster and boasts, slowly alienates everyone else over time. He couldn't lead America into an acceptance of a war even if the cause had been a good one. In the case of Iraq, there was no good cause. it was all lies and bullshit.
FDR had to convince the American people that the war against Japan and the war against Germany were one and the same thing. And I have to say that it must have been a very hard sell. And he also had to convince America to agree with Churchill that the war in Europe would have to come first. THAT was leadership. Pure leadership. It helped immensely, of course, that it was Hitler who declared war on America. Coming on the heels of Pearl Harbor, it was easy to argue that Germany and Japan were acting in concert. I would say that FDR as a statesman saw the menace of Germany and the need to crush it, and because of his genius as a leader, he was able to communicate that urgency to the American people, who liked, trusted and followed him. He did not lie to them, he did not boast prematurely of victories in front of "Mission Accomplished" banners, he didn't lie to them as to the amount of sacrifice that would be required. Unlike Bush, he was both a great man and a good man. The people did not refuse any sacrifice. He made them see the justice of the cause. No lies or bullshit required.
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<<Funny, and all this time I thought it was German U-boat attacks on US shipping that got us into that war.>>
There were a lot of things. U-boat attacks and British propaganda were both factors.
But the subject of this thread was America First and why IT opposed U.S. entry into WWII. If you review their material, they didn't want to be suckered into war by British propaganda, which would take in both the fake atrocity stories and the Zimmerman-Carranza telegraph. They were looking for reasons not to get into WWII, not analyzing all the causes that got the U.S. into WWI.
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The US got into WWI because of the Brits. JP Morgan loaded them a lot of money for weapons. When it became clear that if they did not win, he could kiss his sweet fortune goodbye, weapons were secreted on civilian passenger liners, such as the Lusitania.
The US was suckered into WWI by Morgan, the yellow press and propaganda. The US had no real reason to get involved.
The Germans then sank the Lusitania, giving rise to pro-Brit propaganda.
Most of the Germans in the US were pacifists, and many were rural. They had left Germany precisely NOT to fight in previous wars. Most English Americans were not pacifists and were more urban, so they won out.
Had WWI not ended in such a disaster for Germany, Hitler would not have come to power.
Hitler was seen in the 1920's and early 1930's as a REFORMER. He built autobahns, emphasized athletics, technical advancement and German self-sufficiency. The heroes of the 1920's were engineers and scientists, who would share their ideas and creations with the common man. Herbert Hoover was seen as a highly competent, highly compassionate engineering genius. Lindbergh was seen in the same light: poor farmboy becomes genius, causes civilization to advance.
Anti-Semitism was hardly new in Germany.
Could it have been true that the Kaiser lost WWI because Jewish bankers refused to lend him more money? There are several factors here: first, did they actually control sufficient funds to have made a difference; and second, did they deny the money to the Kaiser at all? There is not a lot of evidence that either was the case.
WWI was a war of attrition: the Allies and the Germans fought to a bloody draw in the trenches, and only when the Americans arrived .did anyone have an advantage.
Of course, most German Jews were not bankers and a majority were every bit as patriotic as Gentile Germans, so blaming all of them for the loss of the war, as Hitler did, was irrational. But it seems that a majority of the German people believed that Germany had been betrayed by the Jews.
A better argument is that the German aristocracy started a war that could have been avoided easily with diplomacy. Some Serbs could have been rounded up and executed for assassinating Franz Josef, and the entire mess could have been resolved within months, mostly bloodlessly.The best defense against terrorism was then, as it is now, good police work.
The Kaiser, the Czar, and the Austro-Hungarian Emperor were mostly to blame, and all were duly deposed, and every one of their empires lost territory.
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<<Could it have been true that the Kaiser lost WWI because Jewish bankers refused to lend him more money? There are several factors here: first, did they actually control sufficient funds to have made a difference; and second, did they deny the money to the Kaiser at all? There is not a lot of evidence that either was the case.>>
That was a new one for me, XO. The usual bullshit was that the Jews administered the stab-in-the-back so that their more financially powerful British banking relatives would be able to suck the blood of the German workers through reparations payments following the war. There was a powerful and growing socialist and communist movement which was international in nature, the extremes of which were recognizing class loyalties as more binding than national loyalties. So the war, which like all wars, was fought for the benefit of the ruling classes of all the combatants, was fueled by the blood of the proletariat of all combatants. Instead of the proletariat killing each other off for the benefit of the ruling class (usually the bourgeoisie) they should refuse to fight each other at all and concentrate on assisting each other to seize the power in each of the combatant nations. The right-wing argument was that the leadership of the international socialist movements was mostly the Jews and their dupes, who by "blood" belonged to none of the combatant nations but to their own supra-national nation which had no land of its own, but was distributed, parasitically, in the bodies of its hosts, which it was consuming from within. This was basically the myth of "The International Jew," the title of Henry Ford's book, which was said to have had a major influence on Hitler, and popularized in the U.S. by Father Coughlin, a Roman Catholic priest whose weekly radio show reached millions and, like Hitler, was one of the early adapters of radio as a means of spreading political ideas.
The big argument the Germans had going for them was that the war ended with German troops on French territory, not vice versa, so that the "victorious" German army won the war but was "betrayed" by stab-in-the-back German civilians and their "communist" revolutionary activities, which were actually just a front for the international Jewish banking network.
Of course, the reality was that the Jews in each of the combatant nations shared the benefits or the burdens of that nation's fortunes, however it would be less evident in the defeated nations that the Jews there were suffering like the rest of the population, since the Jews, probably due mostly to their cultural traditions, were always better at looking out for themselves than the general population and were better prepared to deal with the adversities of the defeat. But that's a pretty boring story. The idea of a world-wide conspiracy of hook-nosed aliens is much more entertaining and gives the average guy leading a dull miserable existence an exciting fantasy role to play, like a science fiction hero, he can combat these alien infiltrators and save his "race" (without any physical danger to himself) by joining the Nazi Party, getting a uniform, marching like a soldier and having a beer or two with the guys. His racial identity alone gave him instant drinking buddies, a role to play, a mission in life and a clearly delineated hierarchy of quasi-military ranks through which he could progress if so inclined. The marketing was absolutely brilliant.
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I find several relationships between the US and Germany rather fascinating. The VW (formerly the Strength-through Joy) car was a modern version of the Model T (the people's car), the Autobahns, which was patterned on the Pennsylvania Turnpike, was admired by Eisenhower so much that it was recreated in the US as the Interstate Highway system. Bismarck's old age pension system was reborn in the New Deal as Social Security. In many ways, Nazism attempted to provide the Germans with opportunities that had been enjoyed by German immigrants to the US.
Hitler's extensive public employment program to resurrect the German economy preceded FDR's various New Deal programs, like the CCC, the NRA and the WPA. Of course, FDR did not dispossess the Jews to pay for his programs.
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The Germans then sank the Lusitania, giving rise to pro-Brit propaganda.
The sinking of the Lusitania in 1915 led to a promise by Germany to no longer target civilian ships.
In 1917, Germany sunk 3 US merchant vessels, and the US declared war. However, even at that point, most of the US population was still against the war, and would continue to be against the war until 1918, when Germany sunk a US troop ship, killing 2,179 American soldiers. At that point, the US population became angered at Germany, and began supporting the Great War.
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However, even at that point, most of the US population was still against the war, and would continue to be against the war until 1918, when Germany sunk a US troop ship, killing 2,179 American soldiers. At that point, the US population became angered at Germany, and began supporting the Great War.
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It would make perfect sense for the Germans to sink a troop ship, being as the troops were clearly headed to fight German troops.
The drive to provoke the people of the US against the "Huns" was a triumph for propaganda. Mitchell Palmer, Wilson's Attorney General, was a master of this propaganda. There was a drive to ceasae instruction of the German language i9n all public schools, not only as a language of instruction in such places as Wisconsin, but as a foreign language.
Thousands of German families changed their names. Sauerkraut became "Liberty cabbage", frankfurters became "liberty sausage", and hamburgers became "salisbury steak'.
It was every bit as stupid as Juniorbush's crap about how "they hate our freedoms" as a motive for 9/11, and renamoing french fries as 'liberty fries'.
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I find several relationships between the US and Germany rather fascinating. The VW (formerly the Strength-through Joy) car was a modern version of the Model T (the people's car) . . .
The most interesting thing I found in German-American relations was the effect of the failed 1848 revolutions in several German states. I read somewhere that the failed revolutions sparked a huge exodus of democrats and revolutionaries from Germany to the U.S.A., where they participated effectively in various democratic, populist and revolutionary movements. However, at the same time, they left a correspondingly huge "democrat deficit" in Germany. They and the descendants they would otherwise have produced in Germany were missing while the Nazis rose to power and basically by their absence eased their path. In theory, had they been able to contribute to the domestic anti-Nazi forces, Hitler might have been stopped in his tracks.