So when do I get my apologies from all the right-wingers (who never bothered to go there) who said I was wrong about Afghanistan?
P.S. I’m listening to pundits on Democracy Now discuss this (no, I’ve never once been invited to speak to Amy Goodman) and laughing. Why didn’t the media pay attention to Afghanistan all these years, they ask. They still aren’t! I’ve offered my Afghanistan cartoon blog to hundreds of newspapers and TV outfits; only half a dozen have expressed interest in live coverage from the front during August, which will be the hottest month of the war.
21 Comments.
When Bush was president, I heard a lot of lefties telling us Bush took his eye of the ball, and Afghanistan was the was of choice, starting with Barry.
I remember, Ted. Just don’t call me Winston.
Ted – when are you going to accept that no one cares about this shit? The average American – both left and right – could not fucking care less about Afghanistan or anything that goes on there. My Lai massacre happened there? So what. A My Lai massacre has been happening once-a-day you say? Who gives a fuck! As long as I have my NFL, NASCAR, lots of beer and porn and a steady 9-5. War crimes you say? Big fucking deal. That’s war you know. Shit happens. Just give me my Jersey Shore and McDonalds and I’m happy.
That’s the mindset Ted. Simply put – no one gives a fuck. If they did, none of this would have gone unpunished and the war would be brought to a halt. It’s a hard pill to swallow, but humans – especially Americans – simply do not give a fuck about stuff like this.
It’s all like Patrick Batemann’s confession.
>>>When Bush was president, I heard a lot of lefties telling us Bush took his eye of the ball, and Afghanistan was the was of choice, starting with Barry.>>>
That’s absolutely true, Highway. But Ted was never one of those. He was against this war from beginning.
Unfortunately, many of those left-of-center believed that we were liberating Afghan women by throwing out the Taliban. What they didn’t know is that the Northern Alliance, now in power since 2001, wasn’t any better when it came to women’s rights than the Taliban. In fact, in many respects they were worse. They had committed atrocities against women in the 1994-1996 civil war, and when I mean atrocities, I mean stopping a car on the highway and ripping open a pregnant woman’s belly. I mean mass rapes in a former movie theater. And that’s just the tip of the iceberg, when you include the total devastation they wreaked during that time.
Women were not required to wear the burka before the Taliban, but most did voluntarily because it was that bad. And they didn’t need the Taliban to tell them not to leave the house–they were too scared to.
In any case, the very same people who committed said atrocities above are now in the Afghan Parliament, if you can call that a parliament. A brave Afghan woman by the name of Malalai Joya stood up in front of this gang and called them out for what they were, and she was kicked out as a result. So much for democracy.
But back to your statement. It was mostly Centrist-Democrats who castigated Bush for being “distracted” from Afghanistan by Iraq. It was Liberal-Democrats lost support for the war early on, when they realized the situation for Afghan women wasn’t improving. It was Leftists who basically saw this as just another imperial adventure by the United States.
Wait a minute… Aren’t you going to pounce on Wikileaks like the rest of the “alternative” leftist media (cough, Mother Jones, cough)? Especially one like, who doesn’t believe real investigative journalism can be found on the ‘net, but rather only in the establishment paper media.
exkiodexian says:
I think that people do see the atrocities of war and do care, but that they can’t envision any alternatives. So they put up with the “necessary evil.” A big shortcoming of the peace movement is its failing to explain that there are better, more effective approaches to conflict resolution.
Lee,
A big shortcoming of the “peace movement” is that it effectively ceased to exist as soon as their man was in office. Of course, I’m talking about the fake, Democrat-run “movement” not genuinely peace-loving activists.
Same thing applies to the Tea Party movement, quickly being co-opted by the Republican leadership. They’ll protest big government and runaway spending just until Saracuda’s in office (shudder!). Then, they’ll love every bloated budget Her Majesty comes up with, especially if it includes more military adventures.
Pardon my cynicism.
I’d love to protest the war, but unfortunately/fortunately I have a job and a son to feed.
I would love to protest the war too, but I have a job and a son and daughter to feed and I just washed my hair.
A peace movement comprised of the independently wealthy has not materialized.
Everyone has jobs, and no time to be informed much less be involved. What happens if you work less? Well, there likely will be no job for you. Your employer cannot compete with his cutthroat competitors if he can’t squeeze you. The only answer is to increase mandatory paid leave across the board. That way, your employer does not have to worry about being less competitive because his competitors will be nailed to a cross if they break the rules. let’s start with 30 hour work week with two months mandatory leave. Things would change very quickly. China would be forced to fill the global empire shoes (suckers), then we can go back go lending instead of borrowing.
Yeah Angelo, I know every occasion is a good one to prop up some light-hearted socialism, but that doesn’t answer my question, which again is: why was there a “peace movement” when Bush Il-Jong was in power and none now that the exalted Peace Nobel prize winner is in office?
Why stop so short, BTW? With a 10-hor week and six months vacation you’d have full employment in the USofA!! Yay!
The credit card peace movement.
…is the reason the bush protesters are gone. Anyways, I just remember them getting beaten and carted off to peir 57, so that no one could see them. Hell, they even kept records on poor Ted, among many, many others (and that’s just the NYPD.).
“Mother Jones” only masquerades as a leftist media. I don’t give it the time of day. Too many other people do, unfortunately.
It’s worth pointing out that wiki links is no different than any other huge collection of information. If no one is getting paid to sift through it, it is just like the mountains of FOIA documents from the past 30 years which prove corporations have been directing national policy through various forms of institutional capture. Or the mountains and mountains of health journals arguing over the health effects of asbestos, or whatever you like.
Free information is nothing new. Btw, we can’t really consider wiki links free because the source was governent funded. I suppose the latest is an arguement for public broadcasting, if anything.
😉
Btw, we can’t really consider wiki links free because the source was governent funded
Angelo, sometimes your irony is too subtle to notice on first read. Wait, that was meant to be ironic, right?
Wiki Leaks founder is a product of University of Melbourne. University of Melbourne is government funded.
Given the economically disastrous decision to privatize parts of the military, it’s anyone’s guess whether the source of the leak was a government employee or not. It is worth noting that his decision was not influenced by the profit motive or consumer choice, but, rather, something else.
Wiki Leaks founder is a product of University of Melbourne.
I would contend that Julian Assange is not a product, but rather an individual human being, and a product of his parent’s shmoozing rather than standard curriculum at anyinstitution of so-called learning.
But, in as much as his healthy mistrust of government and officialdom being a result of his run-ins with the state I guess you might have a valid, though crooked, point.
He is just a person. His education, however, would not exist without state funding. He describes corporations as mini fascist states. His mistrust of the govenment, like ours, exists insofaras democracy doesn’t. I like his intentions, but I think the guys he wants to make nervous can live with him, just like they can live with all of the truth piles out there in the world. At best he will provide more work for PR professionals.
The media is failing to provide info. Everyoneis talking about how forcing dispersal of ownership will lead to content which is conducive to democracy. Actually, it’s the other way around.