insurgents surged

[Plane]

http://news.yahoo.com/s/nm/20070129/wl_nm/iraq_dc



One of the killed was a Messiah.


Lets keep up with him on the third day.

[sirs]

5 US casualties in the same fight. Guess we lost. Let's pack it in. The antiwar folks won.

Come-on Bt, you realize this doesn't fit the template.  If we can't show a military action that completely wins the war, it is by desigm an utter failure & a waste of money/lives.  It must also be demagogued & diminished.  Playbook 101 in the Anti-war course syllabus

[Michael Tee]

<<5 US casualties in the same fight. Guess we lost.>>
 
Your short-term memory seems to be pretty good, BT.  Too bad you can't say as much for the long-term. 

Some of us can remember back to Viet Nam days.  2,000,000 Vietnamese dead.  57,000 U.S. dead in the same war.  Guess you lost.

It isn't only the body count, BT.  It's how many the U.S. can lose before the urge to bug out becomes overpowering.  My guess is that your magic number is now a whole lot lower than it was in Viet Nam.  The American people are stupid, sure, that goes without saying, incredibly stupid (otherwise how would they have Bush as their "President?") but they do learn a little bit each time they get fucked over, and in Viet Nam they seem to have learned a lot.

[BT]

I don't know if they are stupid, i mean we aren't canadians ya know. But we are soft. We have short attention spans and can't be bothered with shared sacrifice. That's for the other guy.

[Plane]

<<5 US casualties in the same fight. Guess we lost.>>
 
Your short-term memory seems to be pretty good, BT.  Too bad you can't say as much for the long-term. 

Some of us can remember back to Viet Nam days.  2,000,000 Vietnamese dead.  57,000 U.S. dead in the same war.  Guess you lost.

It isn't only the body count, BT.  It's how many the U.S. can lose before the urge to bug out becomes overpowering.  My guess is that your magic number is now a whole lot lower than it was in Viet Nam.  The American people are stupid, sure, that goes without saying, incredibly stupid (otherwise how would they have Bush as their "President?") but they do learn a little bit each time they get fucked over, and in Viet Nam they seem to have learned a lot.

Do you have admiration for the leaders that can devote the lives of millions of their people to their ideas? 

[Michael Tee]

<<I don't know if they are stupid, i mean we aren't canadians ya know. >>

Well, Canadians just elected Stephen Harper, the almost-Bush, as their Prime Minister, so I don't know that they are the gold standard in smartness.  But in all honesty, I could never see a Bush equivalent being elected leader here any time soon. 

<<But we are soft. We have short attention spans and can't be bothered with shared sacrifice. That's for the other guy.>>

Aww, there you go again, BT, selling yourselves short.  I'd say you're capable of magnificent sacrifice, but only in a good cause.  Plenty of Americans have built-in bullshit detectors that tell them when a cause is really no good, but they're outnumbered by the morons, there's the tragedy.  Till the death toll reaches some level where even some of the morons start to realize the whole thing's a crock.

[BT]

I'd say you're capable of magnificent sacrifice, but only in a good cause. 

Yeah helping establish democracy after disposing a ruthless thug who thumbed his nose at your precious UN is such a bogus cause.

Just like WWII

[Michael Tee]

<<Do you have admiration for the leaders that can devote the lives of millions of their people to their ideas?  >>

If you are referring to the Revolutionary Communist leaders of China and Viet Nam, or even to the original Bolsheviks, I would say yes, of course, I admire them as great leaders and great inspirational figures, but I would think that your question is kind of insulting to their rank-and-file.  You seem to be implying that they (the rank and file) are mindless zombies whose lives are "devoted" by their leaders to the cause, without their free will entering into it at all.  I don't know where you get that idea from, but there were plenty of committed Communists who devoted their lives to the cause from their own convictions and of their own volition.  I was privileged to know some people like that who participated in the struggle here in North America in the 1920s, 30s and 40s,  and the idea that anyone other than they themselves "devoted" their lives to anything is just preposterous.

[Michael Tee]

<<Yeah helping establish democracy after disposing a ruthless thug who thumbed his nose at your precious UN is such a bogus cause. >>

Grow up.  And get real.  They're building a puppet state, with permanent military bases for themselves on its soil and any attempt to establish a "democracy" is an afterthought and a PR stunt.  They've already at a stroke of the pen dismantled the entire socialist structure of the country without ever putting it to a vote, just like they kept any Ba'ath candidate from participating in their phony "election."  The "ruthless thug" at his most ruthless was the boon companion, client and henchman of the very same people who later "disposed of" him, who, BTW and as you well know, don't really give a shit for the UN and have thumbed their own noses at it on occasions too numerous to count.

See, most people have figured this out for themselves by now but you can't accept it.  So you choose instead to slander your own country, by claiming that its people shirk sacrifice even for a good cause.  Bullshit.  It's a lousy cause and everyone knows it now.  Too bad they're so fucking stupid that it took them this long to find out.

[sirs]

You seem to be implying that they (the rank and file) are mindless zombies whose lives are "devoted" by their leaders to the cause, without their free will entering into it at all.

You mean like Democrats?

[BT]

They're building a puppet state, with permanent military bases for themselves on its soil and any attempt to establish a "democracy" is an afterthought and a PR stunt.

They are closer to establishing democracy than they are building permanentbases. But don't let facts influence your biases.

That would be inconsistent.

And americans are soft. They are Passive spectatators in the game of life. They critique from the bleachers and change the channel when they are bored.

Everyone is in favor of ending hunger. How many do anything more than talk about it?

[Plane]

<<Do you have admiration for the leaders that can devote the lives of millions of their people to their ideas?  >>

If you are referring to the Revolutionary Communist leaders of China and Viet Nam, or even to the original Bolsheviks, I would say yes, of course, I admire them as great leaders and great inspirational figures, but I would think that your question is kind of insulting to their rank-and-file.  You seem to be implying that they (the rank and file) are mindless zombies whose lives are "devoted" by their leaders to the cause, without their free will entering into it at all.  I don't know where you get that idea from, but there were plenty of committed Communists who devoted their lives to the cause from their own convictions and of their own volition.  I was privileged to know some people like that who participated in the struggle here in North America in the 1920s, 30s and 40s,  and the idea that anyone other than they themselves "devoted" their lives to anything is just preposterous.

   Not even by half are the people who died in the cause volenteers.

    I have had conversations with Koreans who told me of how their Fathers were drafted to serve n the Japaneese army , and also conversations with attack aircraft crews who told me of how they could see drivers on the Ho Chi Minh trail straining at their chains trying to get away from their burning trucks . History records that Stalin gave orders that any who surrendered would be condemmed even if all ammunition was spent.

      Being forced to fight is a common part of the human condition , we may nt see it this way in our democratic tradition , but the majoriy of human history is undemocratic.

[Amianthus]

Everyone is in favor of ending hunger. How many do anything more than talk about it?

I donate to food banks all the time.

It was even easy to do in Minnesota - they had pre-bagged packages of food at the grocery store. You picked one up and they rang it up when you went through the line, then the store had the bag of food sent to the local food bank.