America Divided

[Avatar4321]

Originally posted by OCA
Here is my problem: why because its an election year do we have to postpone business? Why are we not stomping ass the election be damned? Bush cannot afford for anymore weeks like the past one to happen. I remind everyone that this country elected Bubba twice, don't delude yourselves into thinking Kerry can't get elected. That would be a friggin disaster.

I agree. we cant delude ourselves. anything can still happen but i think Bush will win and win in a landslide. Look at the polls in California this week. Kerry might lose Cali. The press is pushing that this is a tight race. and it is a tight race in all the wrong state. its a tight race in the states that should go to Kerry in a second. We live in dark times but there is hope for the future.

 

[nycflasher]

Originally posted by insein
I know alot of people will breathe easier on Nov 3rd though when we don't have the real fear of KErry being our President. Now thats Terrorism.

Um... no it's not. Comparing an election in a free country to the systematic, brutal murder of Americans? Get real.

You survived 8 years of Clinton. Key word being SURVIVED.

 

[nycflasher]

Originally posted by Avatar4321
I agree. we cant delude ourselves. anything can still happen but i think Bush will win and win in a landslide. Look at the polls in California this week. Kerry might lose Cali. The press is pushing that this is a tight race. and it is a tight race in all the wrong state. its a tight race in the states that should go to Kerry in a second. We live in dark times but there is hope for the future.

Which states do you think "should go to Kerry in a second?"

 

[insein]

Originally posted by nycflasher
Um... no it's not. Comparing an election in a free country to the systematic, brutal murder of Americans? Get real.

You survived 8 years of Clinton. Key word being SURVIVED.

Now who can't take a joke.:

 

[Avatar4321]

Originally posted by nycflasher
Which states do you think "should go to Kerry in a second?"

California, new Jersey, New York. Any of the Gore states really.

 

[nycflasher]

Originally posted by insein
Now who can't take a joke.:

I was waiting for that.
I think I made a good point, though.

Just like I wouldn't accuse the girl at Mickey D's of being racist because she forgot to put milk in my coffee

 

[Bern80]

Originally posted by nycflasher
I think I first realized how divided our country was after the last Presidential election. I didn't realize that half of the country saw things so differently from me.

It's a shame we don't have more options in terms of leadership.
I'm real sick of the two-party system.

I think a lot of young people (don't jump on it if you are, i am too) have ideas about how to rung the country. some good, some bad. I don't know how it happens, but those that make it into government office of one type or another seem to get politicized and afraid to rock the boat.

If I were president(puffs out chest) I would just to completely start from scratch.

 

[nycflasher]

Originally posted by Bern80
I think a lot of young people (don't jump on it if you are, i am too) have ideas about how to rung the country. some good, some bad. I don't know how it happens, but those that make it into government office of one type or another seem to get politicized and afraid to rock the boat.

If I were president(puffs out chest) I would just to completely start from scratch.

I hear ya. Politicians can be so stale an unengaging, especially to the youth movement who can get fired up real easily when they smell hypocricy or hidden agendas.

It is unfortunate that politicians get their hands tied so often by loyalties to campaign contributors or those who hold political leverage over them.

I'd like to start from scratch, too. Let's go old school, like back to the Constitutional Convention :ali:

 

[Bern80]

Maybe, well not maybe, probably has a lot to do with the buearacracy(anybody not how to spell that?) I think are people that really do want to make major changes, but there is so much red tape in the way that it is overwhelming.

 

[nycflasher]

Originally posted by Bern80
Maybe, well not maybe, probably has a lot to do with the buearacracy(anybody not how to spell that?) I think are people that really do want to make major changes, but there is so much red tape in the way that it is overwhelming.

bureaucracy...tough one

change takes way too long, but it is the one constant in this life

 

[Gop guy]

Originally posted by OCA
GOP, no offense but the threads the last couple days are way out of your league. Lol, yeah and emoticons won't cut it here.

Hey OCA, keep underestimating me. You think I take this place very seriously?

I'm a much better debater in person than on some message board in cyber space.

Shame you won't be able to see that for yourself.

When I wish to debate for real, you will know it.

 

[nycflasher]

Originally posted by Gop guy
Hey OCA, keep underestimating me. You think I take this place very seriously?

I'm a much better debater in person than on some message board in cyber space.

Shame you won't be able to see that for yourself.

When I wish to debate for real, you will know it.

Go away pretender!!!
Just kidding.

 

[Bullypulpit]

Originally posted by OCA
You know i'm pissed today, but its suddenly starting to transition over to sadness. I, in my lifetime anyway, have never seen America so divided, its sickening. I just don't understand, 9/11 was close to uniting us but there were still some detractors and now we've got this guy who it appears was taking a chance on making a buck for his family(albeit in a dangerous place) and he gets whacked for it. STILL Americans are divided and playing the blame game. I don't know, I don't think this country will ever be united on anything and i'm beginning to think it might've seen its better days.

Look at who's sitting in the Oval Office...A smirking, grinning sociopath.

 

[OCA]

Originally posted by Sir Evil
Bully, anything to take a shot at Bush huh? so who would be in the office that would have this poster feeling different?

Don't worry about Bully, thats just the way he is. Notice he's never ever said whom he supported or would support, just that he hates everybody kind of like Big D.

 

[007]

Originally posted by OCA
Don't worry about Bully, thats just the way he is. Notice he's never ever said whom he supported or would support, just that he hates everybody kind of like Big D.

We'll have to ask him one of these days what it feels like to be worthless.

 

[insein]

Originally posted by nycflasher
I was waiting for that.
I think I made a good point, though.

Just like I wouldn't accuse the girl at Mickey D's of being racist because she forgot to put milk in my coffee

I don't recall ever saying that. But hey she probably would have been accused of being a racist if she were white and did put milk in a black man's coffee. The world is freaking nuts today.

 

[OCA]

People,
When did America get so fucked up? Its not the Iraq war so much i'm talking about because we've been fucked up for many years now. OJ gets off, 2.00 a gallon gas, Iran-Contra, Bubba-Lewinski, fucking death row inmates get stays of execution like they are getting popcorn, abortion, consideration of homo marriage, Trent Lott, Robert Byrd, priests abusing little boys, political fucking gridlock, drug epidemic, politicians and judges who openly flout the law, rampant crime up the ass, Vietnam and now Iraq which i'm still a supporter of but fading fast because of inaction by our leaders.

Hell how many of us know and socialize with our neighbors? There used to be a time in America where neighbors gathered on Sundays and partied with one another, thats down the shitter.
I don't know maybe i'm just spouting but America seems to be going in the wrong direction, we seem to be headed down the shitter. Can someone right the ship?

 

[Annie]

Well OCA, this probably isn't going to make you feel better, but it may well be the core of the problem:

http://www.spectator.co.uk/article.php?table=old&section=current&issue=2004-05-15&id=4605

Hoping for the worst
Toby Harnden talks to an anti-war journalist who wants to see more Iraqis die — so that Bush will be thrown out in November Baghdad

There was something pitiful about the US army’s attempts to show off Abu Ghraib to reporters here. Like package tourists, we were shepherded past smiling young soldiers wishing us ‘good morning sir, ma’am’ to a hastily-constructed new visitors’ centre and then a pristine hospital where we were met by a surgeon called Good and a Lieutenant Colonel Proper.

Outside, hundreds of inmates swarmed towards our air-conditioned bus as we were briefed on how well Saddam Hussein’s former prison is now being run after the publication of the rather, er, regrettable holiday snaps taken by the first lot of Americans to run the place.

In the interrogation centre, Colonel Foster Payne explained that the eyebolts on the floor were used to restrain inmates only in exceptional circumstances and it was important to realise that Abu Ghraib was an ‘intelligence-lucrative’ environment.

Our chief tour guide was Major General Geoffrey Miller, Abu Ghraib commander and formerly the top guard-dog at Guantanamo Bay, aka ‘Gitmo’, the extended Caribbean vacation destination for many of those captured on battlefields in Afghanistan. Unfortunately, or appropriately, he looks like a brutal parade sergeant from one of those 1980s Vietnam films, and talks like one too. ‘There’s two types of people in this world,’ he drawled at us. ‘Texans and those who want to be Texans.’

In the newly painted block 1-A, one of the five women — of 3,200 inmates — wailed and accused her guards of inserting a pen inside her. Miller, through gritted teeth, urged us to clear out. ‘You’re violating our requests now,’ he barked. ‘We’ve asked you to move on.’ Moving on is not going to be easy for any of us. The New Yorker’s Seymour Hersh, the reporter who broke the story of the My Lai massacre in Vietnam, is drip-feeding us with new images each week.

There seems to be no story about torture — real, imagined or invented — in Iraq that won’t be covered exhaustively and breathlessly. We know more about Specialist Lynndie England, the West Virginian with the dog lead, than we ever wanted to. A month ago, no one would have listened to the female detainee’s abuse claim; now, few would not believe her.

But what do the abominations perpetrated at Abu Ghraib really tell us about Iraq and the faltering American-led project to plant the seeds of democracy here? And why are so many people who were against the war, or are incapable of viewing any American action as anything other than evil or stupid, greeting each fresh revelation with an almost indecent glee?

The other day, while taking a break by the Al-Hamra Hotel pool, fringed with the usual cast of tattooed defence contractors, I was accosted by an American magazine journalist of serious accomplishment and impeccable liberal credentials.

She had been disturbed by my argument that Iraqis were better off than they had been under Saddam and I was now — there was no choice about this — going to have to justify my bizarre and dangerous views. I’ll spare you most of the details because you know the script — no WMD, no ‘imminent threat’ (though the point was to deal with Saddam before such a threat could emerge), a diversion from the hunt for bin Laden, enraging the Arab world. Etcetera.

But then she came to the point. Not only had she ‘known’ the Iraq war would fail but she considered it essential that it did so because this would ensure that the ‘evil’ George W. Bush would no longer be running her country. Her editors back on the East Coast were giggling, she said, over what a disaster Iraq had turned out to be. ‘Lots of us talk about how awful it would be if this worked out.’ Startled by her candour, I asked whether thousands more dead Iraqis would be a good thing.

She nodded and mumbled something about Bush needing to go. By this logic, I ventured, another September 11 on, say, September 11 would be perfect for pushing up John Kerry’s poll numbers. ‘Well, that’s different — that would be Americans,’ she said, haltingly. ‘I guess I’m a bit of an isolationist.’ That’s one way of putting it.

The moral degeneracy of these sentiments didn’t really hit me until later when I dined at the home of Abu Salah, a father of six who took over as the Daily Telegraph’s chief driver in Baghdad when his predecessor was killed a year ago. It was a — sadly — rare opportunity to speak to ordinary Iraqis in a social setting.

As the lights went out for the third time that evening, we discussed what life after Saddam was like. It was possible to talk freely now, said his sister Jenan, but the Americans had not yet brought either peace or democracy. Two months ago, the family had been forced to raise $40,000 for the release of her abducted brother-in-law.

She had decided not to apply for a job at the new American Embassy because of the dangers. ‘My friend worked as a translator for the Coalition,’ she said. ‘One night her car was ambushed by the resistance and they killed her with a bullet to the head.’ This week, a neighbour’s three-year-old daughter had been kidnapped. All Jenan longed for was stability.

Iraq is so dangerous now that hardly any television journalists venture out of the Al-Hamra or the Palestine Hotel, where lager and post-barbecue spliffs help relieve the tension of being in a war zone. There are insurance problems and the brooding, ex-SAS bodyguards forbid any excursions. The dirty little secret is that the endless ‘stand-ups’ you see on your screens are based on no reporting at all. Those of us who work for newspapers grow our Shia beards or, in the case of the women and the occasional John Simpson wannabe, wear hijabs and trust in fate, our relative anonymity and the skill and bravery of Abu Salah and his kind to get us to Najaf and Fallujah without being summarily executed. But what we can accomplish is limited.

Into this journalistic vacuum it is all too easy for the prejudices of the press corps — tourists looking through telescopes — to flow more freely than ever and the resulting reports to be distorted and incomplete. After the horrifying videotape slaughter of Nick Berg, there will be even greater reluctance among Westerners to leave their fortified hotels and compounds.

Whatever we thought about the war before it was launched, it is imperative that the forces of Arab nationalism and Islamism that now threaten to destroy Iraq are defeated. If America fails in Iraq it will be all of us in the West, not just Bush, who will suffer. But those who would be most in peril, of course, would be the Iraqis, who deserve better than to have their country treated as an electoral playground by the American Left or Right. To wish otherwise is as sick as the grins on the faces of the Abu Ghraib torturers.

Toby Harnden is the Middle East correspondent for the Daily Telegraph.

 

[OCA]

This anti-war reporter has it all backwards. Americans want, are yearning for this president to institute some swift and decisive action to bring this thing to an end. Does he realize this? That is the 1,000,000 dollar question. I fear that he doesn't, and I base my fear on what the troops are doing in Iraq. We are reluctant to engage the enemy if at all, we are handing over key position to the Iraqi army, WTF? Like these guys are going to get the job done, I can just hear the terrorists now, "oh its a brother lets give him our kalashnikovs" lol. Unless something happens between now and then and the more things spiral out of control flip flop Kerry gains all the more momentum. I will not be able to deal with a president Kerry! Mr. Bush please attack now! Please sir!

 

[Annie]

Oh I agree with you regarding the reporter. As I said before, this is the type of thinking that has dominated our news reports and newspapers for at least 50 years. Your earlier post about what you see wrong in society, you don't have to look much further.