| Kasz216 said: The Hamas one is true. Was withdrawn... not shortly after... it took a few weeks of Obama talking up Israel. The Castro one did exist too... http://www.politico.com/blogs/bensmith/0508/Castro_blasts_and_praises_Obama.html I heard of terrorism before the gulf war. Though we also screwed around in the middle east a lot before then as well. I mean Kennedy for one set up Iraq for genocide. Nixon I think was another who screwed around in Iraq. There are probably more. The Gulf War was actually a good war... even most of the middle east wanted Iraq stopped. Including Iran. They were happy we got involved there. Our relationship with Russia collapsed right after WW2? Our relationship wasn't great with Russia during WW2 other then having a common enemy. Aside from which... the USSR was a horrible inhumane regime that was likely at least as bad as Nazi Germany. Stalin has a much worse head count then Hitler. Amusingly though I do think the current president should meet with Hamas. Democratically elected government and all. |
My point on the Gulf War is more that we left troops stationed on holy land after the war was over, which REALLY pissed a lot of people off. That is why Osama bin Laden, who supported and fought with the support of the US before then, became a terrorist. Its really risk to leave troops in a foreign country, ESPECIALLY when religion gets involved. This was really one of the core reasons behind the big rise in Jihad in the last decade or two.
The Iran Contra thing was just bad all around.
I am not in the least bit surprised we have been messing around in the Middle East that long either for political or finacial reasons or both.
I agree the USSR was a a horrible regime, but I guarantee relations between the US and the USSR would have been a lot smoother if we were mutually dependent on each other's economies.
A modern corollary is the US and China. China still does a lot of questionable things, and their record on human rights and abiding by a modern standard of law in which people aren't unreasonably accused of things they didn't commit and given almost no chance to exonerate themselves is just plain awful. Hell, if you deny that you committed a crime they take it like you have insulted the government in claiming that the government could make a mistake. This is gradually improving, but there is still a lot of work to do.
The US does plenty of questionable things too, for that matter, we just see things through our own form of shaded goggles.
But the US and China get along pretty well. You know why? Because our economy's are intertwined. We can't fuck with them and they can't fuck with us because it will fuck both of us. That is really the best part of the global free market. This is why we really don't even need to get involved militarily in the Middle East. Its like trying to build a network of ropes that bind you together with a hammer. Its just not the most effective way to do it.
We had two bags of grass, seventy-five pellets of mescaline, five sheets of high-powered blotter acid, a salt shaker half full of cocaine, a whole galaxy of multi-colored uppers, downers, screamers, laughers…Also a quart of tequila, a quart of rum, a case of beer, a pint of raw ether and two dozen amyls. The only thing that really worried me was the ether. There is nothing in the world more helpless and irresponsible and depraved than a man in the depths of an ether binge. –Raoul Duke
It is hard to shed anything but crocodile tears over White House speechwriter Patrick Buchanan's tragic analysis of the Nixon debacle. "It's like Sisyphus," he said. "We rolled the rock all the way up the mountain...and it rolled right back down on us...." Neither Sisyphus nor the commander of the Light Brigade nor Pat Buchanan had the time or any real inclination to question what they were doing...a martyr, to the bitter end, to a "flawed" cause and a narrow, atavistic concept of conservative politics that has done more damage to itself and the country in less than six years than its liberal enemies could have done in two or three decades. -Hunter S. Thompson
