Some thoughts the day after 9/12/06

I did not see The Path to 9/11. I still do not believe a docudrama this close to the event and a midterm election was appropriate, but at least in theory this is a free country. Of course if people were not so gullible it would not really matter. When my son was very young I stressed over and over again not to believe what he saw on TV or in the movies. I even stress that the news was to be viewed skeptically. I probably ruined GI Joe for him since I always stressed that you cannot throw that much ammunition around with out killing and maiming people.

In other Dog bites man news

Mr. Bush says that if we do not defeat terrorist now the will nuke us in the near future. He continues to spout the main stance of the Republican Be afraid, very afraid. He seems to be of the idea that a bullet can defeat and idea. In other words he is, as always clueless. Take his latest jag of comparing the war on terror with WWII. This much better than when he compared it to the crusades but totally wrong. In fact given that we are now saying our mission is to bring democracy to the Mideast, the crusades is probably a better comparison. Certainly a comparison to the cold war is better than WWII. What Mr. Bush is trying to do is link this to the last good war to improve his ratings.

But let us take his comparison. What exactly is the same? Pearl Harbor and 9/11? Pearl Harbor was a sneak attack (inadvertently since we were suppose to know about the declaration of war ahead of it). Bin Ladin had declared war on us well before 9/11. Bush and company were notified that there would be some sort of an attack well before 9/11. The attack on Pearl Harbor created a real security crisis, while 9/11 was incidental. By that I do not mean that it was not a major tragedy, something that we should always remember and do what we can (within the constitution) to avoid in the future. I mean that at no time was it a threat to the security of the US. Bin Laden was never going to overthrow our government or destroy our 200 million plus people. Bin Laden has no battleships, no million man army, no railroad guns, NO NUKES, no air force, no tanks, and no aircraft carriers. In short he has no means to bring down the US without our compliance. It is Bush, not Bin Laden, who has decided to infringe on our rights with warrentless eavesdropping. It is the Parks commission, not Bin Laden, that is keeping people out of the Statue of Liberty.

Where are the bond drives, draft, taxes, and scrap metal drives of WWII? If this is the same as WWII, why have we not turned our entire economy over to a war economy?

Then let us talk prisoners of war and war criminals. During WWII we treated German and Italian POW’s better than we treated blacks in our country. After the war the war criminals were tried in an open court before the whole world. Care to contrast that with our current treatment of POW’s and war criminals?

Did we defeat fascism? If you mean that we defeated the Axis powers, then you bet we did. If you mean that fascism was no longer capable of overthrowing a modern nation, absolutely. If you mean that we removed fascism from this planet, absolutely not. There still many people who see Hitler as a hero. We have all heard of white power and Aryan groups. The fact that they have not committed a major act of terrorism is most likely because they have a greater grasp of reality then the radical Islamic.

More dog bites man news.

The pentagon started that major drive in Baghdad last month and reported that they had cut the violence in half. Turns out that they did not need more troops to do this, all they needed was a sharp pencil. They accomplished the reduction by not counting whole categories of violence that they had previously counted. This administration continues to prove out the old riddle –

How do you know the administration is lying?

Answer – Their lips are moving.

Franklin Delano Roosevelt - We have nothing to fear but fear itself.
The Republican Party - Fear everything

American Motto - Old - Land of the Free Home of the Brave
New - Land of the spied upon Home of the Chicken