This Makes Me Ill

Sad to say, that was a different America in a different world in a different time. I found this documentary to be really eye-opening on the specific differences. Maybe you can put it in your Netflix queue:

http://www.amazon.com/Why-We-Fight-John-McCain/dp/B000FBH3W2/ref=pd_bbs_sr_1?ie=UTF8&s=dvd&qid=1197254991&sr=8-1

 

Not to be argumentative, but I'd submit that provocation, like beauty, is in the eye of the beholder. Sure, we can say we did nothing to provoke it. Those who carried it out, while we don't agree with them, tell a different story, and our behavior since then has on some levels validated their views.

 

I've seen it - in fact at Sundance when it debuted in 2005. While many were lactating over it I found it a bit to pat and simplistic.

 

FB,

I understand where youare coming from, and I kinda sorta agree. All I am saying is that if you go to war, you go into it to win the war, not win the hearts and minds of the psychos you are fighting by being nice to them.
If you go into a war, you do so with whatever means necessary to make sure the casualties of your men and women are less than that of the enemy.
You don't send them into harms way to shake hands and kiss babies. You send them in there to take care of business in the quickest and most efficient way possible.

 

Who's the enemy?
If you don't determine that, clearly and definitvely and most of all honestly, then the whole function of your war will be to make more of them.
And, anyway, this is off the point of Mr. Gee's post with which you disagreed.

 

Simplistic in what way? And compared to what?

 

I'm getting my mind around Boom at Sundance.
I knew there was a reason for Uma's sly smile that year.

 

I'm picturing a pair of very large Ugg boots alighting from a Hummer limousine and tracking snow down a red carpet.

 

Great post.

 

On the hunt for a Christmas tree today, I drove by the maximum security federal prison a few miles outside the city I live in.

My first thought? I wonder what government-sponsored shit goes on in there that would make me ashamed to be an American? I wondered what ways our nation is abrogating our Constitution within those walls? I know there's been terrorist suspects held there, I wonder if water-boarding or other tortures goes on within a bike ride of my home?

I wonder if I'm not unlike a (racially-pure by Nazi standards) German citizen, circa 1938, and that's my Dachau. Just out there, out of sight and out of mind for those who go about their day-to-day lives, but where illegal and very possibly horrible things are going on in our blissful and immoral ignorance.

It scares the hell out of me and I don't want to be the person claiming I didn't know anything about it when the shit hits the fan, a la those post WWII Germans. If torture is being practiced by our government, anyone who had a role in it needs to answer for it.

It's time for everyone in our country to stand on our supposed morals instead of paying lip service to it.

 

Well then instead of going for your tree you should have pulled up to prison and asked to inspect it.

 

In a way, Boom, you're right.