Just to give everybody something else to foam at the mouth about......

Is he talking about that war that the US lost, got 50,000 of its people and at least 500,000 of the other guys' people killed, crushed the country's collective psyche and was ultimately proven to be completely unnecessary, since the domino theory was a load of bollocks?

How can you take seriously a guy that justifies the Vietnam war in 2003?!?

[quote]mastronikolas says war is bad:
He wasn't really justifying the war, just talking smack on some protesters. I will give you though that he would have made a better argument had he left some of that shit out.

He appeared to be talking about the nature of the protestors and not the war.

He conveniently left out that the percentage of "anti-war supporters" quickly grew far beyond that stereotypical demographic, and rather than use picket signs, they sunk the approval ratings of the administration which finally coerced them that the majority of the country wanted to be out of that absurd war.

Well, when you call all those that protested the Vietnam war "pinheads" and then go on to collectively demean them, it implies that they were wrong to protest.

I still have huge problems with his argument about effective, focused violence not leading to more violence.

Let's assume that focused violence means hitting the enemy's military so hard that all military personnel are dead. What about civilians? Isn't it foreseeable that more violence could spring from them? If anything, 9/11 showed us that military might is not necessary for striking at your foes.

Or is he advocating blowing entire countries up, women and children included? And, even then, what about reprisals from other nations?

You can't kill everyone.

I like how they include his bio as though it adds credibility to his arguments. Like Dr. Phil and his PhD. This guy raises a point or two, but in the end, the essence of what he argues is dangerous, feeble-minded, conservative hooey. And that 'hooey' would be well-written political dogmea dressed-up as salty, tell-it-like-it-is, sagacity. Humanism for the dishuman and the dumb.

The man rants-off against every anomy the American right every dreamed existed. The legendary dopey academic; the mystical kingdom of benevolent America; Jimmy Carter and is merry men; phantom foreigners who are basically evil; the ubiquitous-yet-undefinible tin-eared college peacenik; more academic sprites, magically 'justifed' racial profiling, and a ghost-army sentimental tripe seemingly summond from the ghost of Charles Dickens. Utter bullshit.

He's just another smarty-pants member of the intellectual elite. I got my PhD in book readin': THE TURNER DIARIES, THE PROTOCOLS OF THE ELDERS OF ZION and RAISE THE TITANIC.

Why Clarence, no filthy wool-gathering academic is gonna slip-past your edu-cated readin' eyes. I bet yousa veri-fiable expert at spottin' them know-it-all betwetting Marxists, what with all those Tim Clancy books you've got on tape.

Says, I hear Osama's got a sleepin' cell in that California College, heard its bein lead by filthy socialist commie named bin Readin. Yah heard?

While I think terrorism is one of the more base ways to wage a "war", I think that the good general confuses the level-headed argument of "to stop terrorism, we must understand the root causes" with the hopelessly naive uber-leftist argument he poses above.

Yes, I support a war on terrorism, but as the redoubtable DaveB points out above, violence has a limited range of effectiveness. Once we UNDERSTAND why terrorists are, we can combat them with current "traditional" methods and attempt to attack the root of the hatred.

Already well-addressed by smarter people above.
Yes, that stuff started under Carter, but forgive me if I get hopelessly partisan here, it appears that the situation under 12 yrs of Reagan/Bush didn't improve it (hate to seem hooked on the Dem/GOP thing, but does anyone doubt that the good general leans heavily to the right?).

When it all came out after 9/11, the FBI and CIA DID fail us, due partly to interdepartmental rivalry and partly to thinking solidly inside the box. Hoover's dead, I think we can consider putting all our intelligence eggs in one basket, if for no other reason than to put ALL the information regarding threats to the US in one set of proverbial hands.
Yes, the terrorists are bankrolled by the rich, and even include many members; but without the poor, the disaffected, and the desperate, people willing to die for the cause could be far harder to find.

Face it: how many Americans REALLY are willing to put their money where their mouths are and lay down their lives for a "cause"? Not to damn many, because we are all fat and happy and lead lives better than that of a HUGE chunk of the world.
Well, my policy is never to say never. But he does make some good points, although he sounds like a closed-minded asshole while doing it, which sort of defeats the point ("Boy general, the condescending and snide way you addressed the issue makes me want to be JUST LIKE YOU")

I think lots of people in the US could use this fucking reminder. It's the National Anthem, take your goddamn hat off, at least.

While I'd hardly call moral relativism "immoral" (despite what Rush says, the concept is reasonable in many, if not most, cases), I do think it's become a reductio ad absurdum of itself.

"We're good, they're evil, nothing is relative."

I have a question for everyone. Does what we did to the Native Americans more "evil" than what the hijackers did on September 11th?

My answer would be that it all depends on whose perspective you look at it from. I think someone being evil is definately relative. There are many people in this world that would have great justification at looking at us as evil. I don't though. This country has done great things for me, but trying to say that someone else can't look at us as evil is just stupid.

And I'm not sure what his point is about the terrorists being rich. OK, these rich guys bombed us, so we're going to bomb a bunch of starving civilians? Wha?

I think his point was that it wasn't poor, helpless people that attacked us, it was the rich. A lot of people say if we just threw a bunch of money at a nation, we wouldn't be attacked. We've thrown billions at the Saudis, and they still attacked us. A good part of this is because of forces the Saudis in particular unleashed when they were building their power base, not because of the economic situation.

This is more of the "Nationalism" bullshit that is going on. Scary. I see his points, but he's a fuckwit with an ego. Doesn't seem like peace and love are on his mind or that he would want the end product to be that.

I'd like to see one person who said 'throwing money at a country will make things better'. More to the point, people are saying we should spend money to improve the infrastructures of nations. To being medicine and food to the poor. Most importantly, to do these things without asking for favors in return. I think that's what people are saying will help.

I'm all for improving the conditions of other people, just as long as that money/food/etc doesn't end up going to their leader(s) instead, a la Iraq and Somalia.