BS: I love my Country but.....

Subject: BS: I love my Country but.....
From: Tweed
Date: 08 Apr 03 - 07:28 PM

I ran across this story this evening at Truthout.com.

Tweed
(the whole site is kinda neat)

Subject: RE: BS: I love my Country but.....
From: katlaughing
Date: 08 Apr 03 - 07:55 PM

Thank you, Tweed, for both of the stories. Proof positive that it is not all black and white.

Subject: RE: BS: I love my Country but.....
From: GUEST,Lowkey
Date: 08 Apr 03 - 08:19 PM

A man's got to do what a man's got to do. But a woman's got to do what's right.

Subject: RE: BS: I love my Country but.....
From: wysiwyg
Date: 08 Apr 03 - 08:50 PM

There's stuff in there about lynching and other tactics for grabbing black-owned land that is EXCELLENT. Bottom right corner, in the ISSUES section.

~Susan

Subject: ADD: I Want My Country Back (Greg Brown)
From: open mike
Date: 08 Apr 03 - 09:43 PM

here is what Greg brown has to say...

I Want My Country Back
by Greg Brown
(The Mill 2-27-03)

I want my country back
and a good dream to stand up for
oh, you know these days well
I don't feel at home here anymore
Big big flag above the big big mall
oh, well you know these days oh
I don't feel at home here anymore
Homeland of Sojourner Truth and Chief Joseph before
and the quiet words of wisdom are drowned out by TV
and I don't feel at home here anymore
Blind engineer more on the train
oh and we want to feel at home here once more
I want my country back
and a good dream to stand up for
Got my hand over my heart
oh but I don't feel at home here anymore
I want my country back

Subject: RE: BS: I love my Country but.....
From: CarolC
Date: 08 Apr 03 - 09:59 PM

Check this one out. I won't make any claims about its accuracy, but it made me laugh:

Mentalspace

Subject: RE: BS: I love my Country but.....
From: Forum Lurker
Date: 08 Apr 03 - 10:16 PM

That ran in the Network section of the University of Minnesota Daily. No idea where it originated, though.

Subject: RE: BS: I love my Country but.....
From: wysiwyg
Date: 08 Apr 03 - 11:46 PM

... a forum that says "Say something explosive about this" under a bold head "Lob a Firebomb?" THERE"s peaceful for ya!

~S~

Subject: RE: BS: I love my Country but.....
From: CarolC
Date: 08 Apr 03 - 11:53 PM

Funny thing, Susan. I didn't see the forum at the bottom prior to posting the link to that site. JtS pointed it out to me. I would probably have tried to find another source for that initial bit had I known about the forum at the bottom.

Subject: RE: BS: I love my Country but.....
From: Troll
Date: 09 Apr 03 - 12:33 AM

I don't suppose she considered that the young Iraqi woman in the picture might already be dead; raped to death by Saddam Husseins goons?
Nah! It probably never entered her mind.

troll

Subject: RE: BS: I love my Country but.....
From: DougR
Date: 09 Apr 03 - 02:47 AM

Tweed: why don't you want the folks that live in Iraq liberated?

DougR

Subject: RE: BS: I love my Country but.....
From: GUEST,Redhorse at work
Date: 09 Apr 03 - 08:40 AM

Can we get our terminology right. Irag is currently conquered. When the Amercans and we British leave, and Iraq is in the hands of an elected Iraqi government, and is not compelled to spend its oil revenue on reconstruction by US companies, then it will be liberated. Iwant Iraq liberated. I question whether replacing an evil domestic dictator by a benign foreign general qualifies as liberation.

Subject: RE: BS: I love my Country but.....
From: Tweed
Date: 09 Apr 03 - 09:53 AM

DougR,
I hate seeing them oppressed by Saddam just like you do, but I can't shake the feeling that the Iraqi's will not be able to resist the temptation to subjugate themselves to some other f**khead that starts hollering from a pulpit or podium and get right back into the same fix again.
Also, I get pissed off when I start gettin' comfortable with thinking that the human race has evolved beyond blowing each other to smithereens and then this shit starts up all over again.

Stupid ain't it?

Yerz,
Tweed
And I do love my country more than you would ever suspect.

Subject: RE: BS: I love my Country but.....
From: DougR
Date: 10 Apr 03 - 02:07 AM

Tweed: I do not question your love of your country. Could be that you are selling the people of Iraq short, though, don't you think? Do you think they are incapable of governing themselves? If so, I think that is pretty cynical, and that is one thing you rarely see here on the Mudcat.

DougR

Subject: RE: BS: I love my Country but.....
From: Forum Lurker
Date: 10 Apr 03 - 10:55 AM

DougR-It's not an unreasonable worry. Look at how the Russians are adjusting to capitalist democracy after the Tsars and the Soviet system. It can be difficult to get a representative government when you don't have the tradition of citizen involvement. The Germans couldn't manage it the first time around, either.

Subject: RE: BS: I love my Country but.....
From: Walking Eagle
Date: 10 Apr 03 - 08:34 PM

Rarely see cynicism here on the Mudcat? Surely you jest!

Subject: RE: BS: I love my Country but.....
From: Bobert
Date: 10 Apr 03 - 10:33 PM

Yo Doug:

You don't know about Tweed. You don't know his son is in the in the military. Sometimes ya' gotta take folks at face value and not apply your own set of cicumstances and biases on others.

That's what Tweed was saying. What if the Iraqi's just elected another Saddam? It is not inconceivable in an area of the world that has been ruled for thousands of years by religious sects. There is a reason that Saddam was where he was. The US can not change the fundemental realities in a world that they do not begin to understand.

Bobert5

Subject: RE: BS: I love my Country but.....
From: Tweed
Date: 10 Apr 03 - 10:41 PM

Have you got television where you are Doug? Have you seen how these people are behaving tharselfs? They have stolen everything that they are gonna need to reconstruct the country and the government. They flit from one power figure to another (in this case from Saddam to Bush) at a moment's notice. Wait a minute....mebbe yore just pulling my leg here....you really think they can't find their asses wif both hands too don't ya? You had me going for a minute there you devil you! ;~)

Yerz, (torn between the real and surreal az always)
Tweed

Subject: RE: BS: I love my Country but.....
From: CarolC
Date: 11 Apr 03 - 01:33 PM

The reason Russia isn't handling democracy very well isn't because the people aren't ready for it. It's because the people who comprised the power elite who controlled all of the country's assets and resources while it was still Soviet Russia are the same people who immediately stole those assets and resources when the Soviet Union fell, and now own them privately. And the vacuume left when the Soviet government fell was filled to a great extent by organized crime. The only difference is that whereas before, the government paid lip service to making sure everyone got their basic needs met, now the government doesn't even do that any more.

Power seeks to protect and maintain power. That's what it does. I am hardly convinced yet that concerns for human rights and the welfare of the Iraqis has anything at all to do with the US and UK's motives for waging war there. If the Iraqis fare as badly as the people in the former Soviet Union have, all of the deaths of US and UK servicemen and women and of innocent Iraqis will have been in vain.