The horror of Sept. 11th, 2001

Yet some wars need to happen ...

Quote:

You don't want want to make a federal case out if it, but told me to shut up & buzz off, pretty directly .....

True. That's about it. I wrote what I wrote thoughtfully and for good reason, but I have no interest in furthering the matter.

Quote:

Could you point me in the direction of a few posts which demonstrate some examples of my "inappropriate behaviour", George, which apparently was so much more offensive to you than anyone else's .... & which caused to single me out for your special treatment?

No. I don't want to rehash it. Let's just say that your remarks were sufficiently more pointed and self-righteous and sufficiently less sensitive to the perceptions of many Americans to warrant my action. I would do it again.

Quote:

Maybe, just maybe, it's all in your head?

Undoubtedly some of it is. However it is my head and the only one I'll ever have.

No. I don't want to rehash it. Let's just say that your remarks were sufficiently more pointed and self-righteous and sufficiently less sensitive to the perceptions of many Americans to warrant my action.

However it is my head and the only one I'll ever have.

No one wins in a war, we all lose.

Americas Third World War

How 6 Million People Were Killed In CIA Secret Wars Against Third World Countries

John Stockwell, former CIA Station Chief in Angola in 1976, working for then Director of the CIA, George Bush. He spent 13 years in the agency. He gives a short history of CIA covert operations. He is a very compelling speaker and the highest level CIA officer to testify to the Congress about his actions. He estimates that over 6 million people have died in CIA covert actions, and this was in the late 1980's.

John Stockwell is the highest-ranking CIA official ever to leave the agency and go public. He ran a CIA intelligence-gathering post in Vietnam, was the task-force commander of the CIA's secret war in Angola in 1975 and 1976, and was awarded the Medal of Merit before he resigned. Stockwell's book In Search of Enemies, published by W.W. Norton 1978, is an international best-seller.

Yet some wars need to happen to protect others, not just Americans.

is that these are not wars. They are war crimes

Any reason they can't be wars AND war crimes?

From the beginning, it was clear that the U.S. was measuring its colonial aims in the same racist manner as its European counterparts. President William McKinley, in an 1899 meeting with a Methodist delegation, explained that-after much nightly pacing and prayer-he had come to a conclusion: Since the U.S. could not hand the Philippines back to Spain or turn them over to France or Germany, and since the Filipino people were "unfit for self-government," "there was nothing left for us to do but take them all, and to educate the Filipinos, and uplift and Christianize them." General William Shafter made clear the same year just what "uplifting" Filipinos would mean:

It may be necessary to kill half of the Filipinos in order that the remaining half of the population may be advanced to a higher plane of life than their present semi-barbarous state affords.

In its subsequent three-year war to subdue the archipelago and destroy the independence movement, U.S. forces conducted a scorched-earth policy that devastated the country and its people, the majority of whom supported the independence fighters. The populations of entire islands were herded into concentration camps, and hundreds of thousands were killed. One general reported that as many as 600,000 people were killed or died of disease on the island of Luzon alone-and an estimated 1 million Filipinos were killed, according to one historian.

"Kill and burn, kill and burn, the more you kill and the more you burn the more you please me," General "Howlin' Jake" Smith told his troops. An American congressman who visited the Philippines in 1901 reported on what these bloodcurdling pronouncements meant in practice:

You never heard of any disturbances in northern Luzon because there isn't anybody there to rebel.... The good Lord in heaven only knows the number of Filipinos that were put under ground. Our soldiers took no prisoners, they kept no records; they simply swept the country and wherever and whenever they could get hold of a Filipino they killed him. "

http://www.thirdworldtraveler.com/Civil_Liberties/Pearl%20Harbor_Internment.html

The racism against Japanese abroad reached genocidal proportions. In order to dehumanize the enemy and make killing in large quantities easier, Japanese were represented in the media and by politicians as "animals, reptiles, or insects (monkeys, baboons, gorillas, dogs, mice and rats, vipers and rattlesnakes, cockroaches, vermin-or, more indirectly, 'the Japanese herd' and the like)," according to one historian.

The commander of the Pacific forces, Admiral William F. Halsey, paraphrasing Sherman, said to a press conference in 1944, "The only good Jap is a Jap who's been dead six months." He added, "When we get to Tokyo...we'll have a little celebration where Tokyo was." Halsey's motto was, "Kill Japs, kill Japs, kill more Japs!"

The Marine magazine Leatherneck concurred. Under a caricature of an insect with slanted eyes and protruding teeth and the caption "louseous Japanicas," the magazine explained:

Extensive experiments on Guadalcanal, Tarawa, and Saipan have shown that this louse inhabits coral atolls in the South Pacific, particularly pill boxes, palm trees, caves, swamps and jungles. Flame-throwers, mortars, grenades, and bayonets have proven to be an effective remedy. But before a complete cure may be effected, the origin of the plague, the breeding grounds around the Tokyo area, must be completely annihilated.

The war had a brutalizing effect on the soldiers involved. Life magazine even published a full-page photograph of a blonde woman posing with a Japanese skull sent by her fiancee.

This was not an isolated case. Edgar L. Jones, a former war correspondent in the Pacific, listed some of the atrocities committed by American forces in the Pacific:

We shot prisoners in cold blood, wiped out hospitals, strafed lifeboats, killed or mistreated enemy civilians, finished off the enemy wounded, tossed the dying into a hole with the dead, and in the Pacific boiled the flesh off enemy skulls to make table ornaments for sweethearts, or carved their bones for letter openers.

Ibid

[Because you know you don’t have a leg to stand on.

Though what caused your ugly little outburst, in the first place, is still something of a mystery to me.
So many other posters to this thread expressed views that were not so different to mine, many posted a lot more comments, but did you respond to them in anything like the aggressive & personal way you attacked me?

I'm really sick of you doing that, George.

I think just about all of it is in your head, George.

Lately A2K hasn't been consistently logging me in when I open the site and, because of that, I just saw JTT' s last posts (I usually don't because I have him on ignore). I think JTT is an asshole. Perhaps that will give you some satisfaction.

... I just saw JTT' s last posts (I usually don't because I have him on ignore). I think JTT is an asshole.

Please stop the fighting! No one wins in a war, we all lose. Yet some wars need to happen to protect others, not just Americans.

trying2learn wrote:

Yet some wars need to happen ...

There are those that will never believe that to be a true statement, no matter the circumstances.

The sum total of Ms Olga's contributions on Sunday, Sept 11, with one that came on the Monday. Take a little time and read them, then go back and read some of the people she addressed, like Finn.

Why aren't there people here honest enough to tell Gob that he is absolutely full of ****? Read what others wrote, read what Robert Gentel wrote and yet, we don't find Gob addressing those folks. I wonder why.

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Post: # 4,727,977

Fair enough, wandel.
I will not comment any further until later on.

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Is it only non-Americans who feel obliged to comply with this reasonable request?
I have absolutely no wish to add to anyone's grief today.
I have said I will respect your wishes, wandel, and I will.
But in the meantime, we non-Americans are supposed to sit by respectfully and read this venomous bile about "squashing cockroachs", "Australians" & the rest .... ?

Good grief.

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I made no comment what-so-ever about any of my comments on this thread being "thumbed down" (although it's happened), Finn.
It is no big deal. It happens all the time.
Yes, I am respecting wandel's wishes.
There are recent posts here I want & intend to respond to, but I've said I won't do that today. And I haven't.
It's you who can't bring yourself to comply to wandel's request.
It's you who can't help yourself.
Get a grip.

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Coming from you & what you have actually been posting here today, Finn, that is a somewhat disingenuous comment.
The request was not that anyone outside of the US refrain from posting here today.
The request was to refrain from political debate today, out of respect for people who are mourning their loss today.

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But I don't think much about you at all, Finn!

Apart from the fact that you have contributed to making this thread a rather ugly place today ....

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So, wandel ....
..... it was perfectly OK to call various posters : "a hypocrite", "a cretin", "cockroaches" which needed to be "squashed", a "left-wing slug", a "crimped sole miscreant" .... because of the "callousness of a few posters"?

Right.
I see.

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Monday Sept 12

To be fair, I've noticed (on this thread & quite a few others recently) a definite change of attitude on the part of many American posters here....
Compared to some of the most torrid & really ugly exchanges during debates at the height of "the war on terror", it is very heartening to see.

I salute those of you who might not have commented at all in the past & now do ...& those of you who have made some (possibly quite painful) revaluations & have posted your thoughts here ... & those of you have come out on the side of humanity, as opposed to "my country right or wrong" patriotism.

Of course, there are still those die-hards who will never acknowledge that "the war on terror" has caused much more harm & suffering than good ... and will argue forever that the Iraq invasion was totally defensible ... or that anyone who disagrees with them must be some sort of left wing slug ... or even worse, an Australian!
But thankfully, they are looking more & more like out of touch anachronisms.

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