And if any body thinks the US has always acted in its best interests...remember covert action in Chile in the 70's anyone? Mr Pincohet and hiw we supported his gov't, the enginered the coup that brought him to power? "Mothers of the Disappeared" anyone??
The thing is, we act as if nobdoy else in the world has ever expirienced terroris,. This might be a balspahemous thing to say, but what about a place like Britian which ahs gone through 30 yrs of the Troubles?? Regardless of your opinion on the Troubles, the Peace process or what side you come down on that issue, the fact is, most of the time even the British gov't made a stab at keeping up appearances, for those who were later found to be innocent, or minor offenders in the scheme of things..they got a "trial" (a public ceremony in which they were ventually acknowledged by the gov't to be human beings worthy of a trial), and some have even been released. For some, there has been a form of closure.
The fact is, the Brits did NOT try to make these people "disappear." They still existed. And we are talking about a situation in which daily, citizens of NI and Britian lived, (during the worst time of it) in conditions similar to Israel's. And no one was safe.
Coukd America handle a situation like that? Hell, we had enough to cope with in the "long hot summers" of the 60's. And that was domestically induced, by nothing more than angry citizens. The Panthers et al were NOT a terrorist group, nowhere near what the bad old IRA or Al Queda were. What would America do then? Turn the entire country into an armed camp, and arrest thousands of people every week? The fact is, dozens of countries around the world have to deal with terrorist groups operating within their borders all the time, blowing up buildings and bombing buses and even killing gov't officials randomly, and those countries do not enact laws or behave like we are. Northern Ireland? Spain? etc. We think that because we are America, we have the "moral right" to be different than anyone else becuase, well, we're America. So what? What's America? America's only claim to importance of any sort at all is, IMHO, that little scrap of paper quoted up above. And the minute we deviate from that in any lasting and substantial manner, then we're not worth a lump of dog poop.
Well, guess what: as so many commentators have said recently (shc as Lech Walesa) we can go on "being America: but increasingly, the rest of the world has given up on us and just don't care. They're going on building their world, and it;s going to be a nasty surprise when one day we wake up and relaize just what these bling, arrogant stuoid fools have got us into.
The bottom line is, we are supposed to be the moral standard bearer of thr world. And if our civil rights laws and judicial system survived such a threat to our country as Pearl Harbor, then it can DAMN WELL survive this.
Food for thought: Why is Bono walking around these days wearing a STRAW cowboy hat?
The thing is, we act as if nobdoy else in the world has ever expirienced terroris,. This might be a balspahemous thing to say, but what about a place like Britian which ahs gone through 30 yrs of the Troubles?? Regardless of your opinion on the Troubles, the Peace process or what side you come down on that issue, the fact is, most of the time even the British gov't made a stab at keeping up appearances, for those who were later found to be innocent, or minor offenders in the scheme of things..they got a "trial" (a public ceremony in which they were ventually acknowledged by the gov't to be human beings worthy of a trial), and some have even been released. For some, there has been a form of closure.
The fact is, the Brits did NOT try to make these people "disappear." They still existed. And we are talking about a situation in which daily, citizens of NI and Britian lived, (during the worst time of it) in conditions similar to Israel's. And no one was safe.
Coukd America handle a situation like that? Hell, we had enough to cope with in the "long hot summers" of the 60's. And that was domestically induced, by nothing more than angry citizens. The Panthers et al were NOT a terrorist group, nowhere near what the bad old IRA or Al Queda were. What would America do then? Turn the entire country into an armed camp, and arrest thousands of people every week? The fact is, dozens of countries around the world have to deal with terrorist groups operating within their borders all the time, blowing up buildings and bombing buses and even killing gov't officials randomly, and those countries do not enact laws or behave like we are. Northern Ireland? Spain? etc. We think that because we are America, we have the "moral right" to be different than anyone else becuase, well, we're America. So what? What's America? America's only claim to importance of any sort at all is, IMHO, that little scrap of paper quoted up above. And the minute we deviate from that in any lasting and substantial manner, then we're not worth a lump of dog poop.
Well, guess what: as so many commentators have said recently (shc as Lech Walesa) we can go on "being America: but increasingly, the rest of the world has given up on us and just don't care. They're going on building their world, and it;s going to be a nasty surprise when one day we wake up and relaize just what these bling, arrogant stuoid fools have got us into.
The bottom line is, we are supposed to be the moral standard bearer of thr world. And if our civil rights laws and judicial system survived such a threat to our country as Pearl Harbor, then it can DAMN WELL survive this.
Food for thought: Why is Bono walking around these days wearing a STRAW cowboy hat?
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