First, flashbacks: • Bush Approves Show Trials • US forces are shifting... you know to accommodate the new Cold War... • Rumsfeld allowed abuse to occur! And some more recent references: • Ron Paul Tops McCain in Cash on Hand • Another win for the Bush administration Okay, those last couple I included because I was having some trouble finding my own old posts making this point, so I was stuck going with something a little more recent. But what is that point? I'm sure there are plenty more. And, for the record, some of our members occasionally disagreed with references to the War on Terror and the Iraqi Bush Adventure as indicative of a new Cold War. Now, why would I dredge up these old quotes? Let us turn to Thomas Friedman, who wrote today for the New York Times, So ... uh ... does that mean it's on? ____________________ Notes: Friedman, Thomas L. "The New Cold War". New York Times. May 14, 2008. http://www.nytimes.com/2008/05/14/opinion/14friedman.html
And I am teared apart which side to take, because it would kill my soul if I was a traitor to my homeland I love...
no they don't mesh with reality. but than you have probably had you filled with god knows what kind on propaganda.
Indeed. Some people are all atwitter with joy at the prospect of pulling terms like "quagmire" and "cold war" out of retirement. ~String
There's always the option of moving back. Then you'd know and admit to the horrible things it's done. You don't see modern Germans and Japanese shying away from the truth. Draqon, if you want to continue posting with any respectability, you have to get off this old tune. Freedom, is freedom. There is not "western" version or "eastern" version. There is only the "freedom" that comes from well established and well recognized definitions of the term. Freedom means: the right to say, protest, worship and move about as one pleases. What other type of "freedom" are you referring to? The "freedom" to do what the state tells you to do? Here's the problem that we all have with you: you deny the reality. I mean, even my patriotic German grandfather was able to admit that Germans were wrong and did horrible things in WWII. My patriotic, American, father can admit that his fellow soldiers did horrible things in Viet Nam and that it was a political war that sold out young, American, soldiers. How is it, then, that you can be so blind to reality. You've constantly dispensed with peer-reviewed facts in favor of "I know what I know." Well, guess what, Draq, support those facts! Some of the publications I quoted say pretty bad things about the west and the US in general! So they aren't western propaganda-- they are politically neutral and fairly respectable sources that perform studies on all nations. The problem is that you love Russia so much that you won't accept her flaws. That makes you childish and quite stupid. This isn't harassment: this is reality. And you tend to avoid it because you think it makes you stronger. In fact, it makes you much, much weaker. It makes you very easily duped because you don't question a government which doesn't give a damn about you. It makes you a willing victim to a revised history and to a power that would sacrifice you--nameless--in order to preserve itself. It's sad that you don't recognize this. ~String
The Cold War stayed cold because large nuclear arsenals kept NATO and the Warsaw Pact nations at a strategic stalemate. On top of that we also had arguably a conventional stalemate with an overwhelming mass of Soviet armor staring across the Fulda Gap into West Germany, with superior NATO air power being the plausible counterforce to that. It was a struggle founded in ideology, yes, and I think you can say the same thing about the Global War on Terror (GWOT) but the parties in the GWOT don't share the same conventional parity that the WP and NATO did, and only one side possesses a strategic nuclear arsenal. While the GWOT does involve nations engaging each other via proxies, it isn't done on the same geographical distance as what happened in the Cold War. I think the Cold War reference is pretty lame, personally, and it smacks of the same intellectual laziness as the comparisons of OIF to Vietnam that people love to make. There are discrete comparisons to be made, of course, but it is much more productive to evaluate each conflict strictly on its own merits without tieing them to recent historical events that evoke strong emotions and derail an otherwise productive discussion.
It's just common sense. It's only the talking-head ideologues, in their unnuanced bullshit rhetoric, try to make these comparisons.
It's also not a good comparison because the Soviets and Americans were more civilized and reserved in their approach to each other. During the cold war, the worst thing to happen between the east and west was maybe capture and execution of a spy, and occasional military saber-rattling. Today we deal with an enemy that doesn't hessitate to blow up as many innocent civilians as possible anywhere at anytime. The U.S. is reserved and not even thinking of nuking radical islamists, would Iran or a radical islamist group hold back if they had nukes ? And to top it off, there's radical leftists that constantly spew spin-propoganda helping the terrorists. How would radical leftists react if NY city was nuked ? More than likely they'd blame GWB & the U.S. for it, rather than the terrorists that carried out the attack...
Propaganda like, maybe we should follow the constitution and the laws of our country? Whoa, that's radical!
I'm not going to go on a tangent course to respond to that, but your reaction is a typical and predictable one. The radical-left take any chance they can, and any contrived conspiracy they can, to attack the U.S. in this war. How many times have you heard a radical leftist condemn a terrorist attack that kills 100+ people ? NEVER How many times do radical leftists condemn the terrorists in Iraq that have killed so many innocent civilians there ? NEVER How many times have we heard radical leftists blame the U.S. for what the terrorists have done ? almost daily, and in every left-wing blog How many times have we heard radical leftists say something like "I hope the U.S. succeeds in bringing freedom and democracy to Iraq" ? NEVERRRRRR How many times have we heard radical leftists say something like "I wish the terrorists and insurgents in Iraq would stop killing and terrorizing the Iraqi people" ? NEVERRRRRRRRRRRR So in this "cold war" on terror, the U.S. actually has 2 enemys, the terrorists, and left-wing radicals who do whatever they can to derail the U.S.'s efforts.
