Osama Bin Laden is dead

[♩♬🐸 Billy C ♯♫♩🐇]

I only referenced the Fallujah video to show how the great peacekeeper America is fighting its wars. And even if we are just talking about Afghanistan, tens of thousands of innocent civilians have been killed there since we invaded. And as long as people say that humans will never be at peace then that stupidly justifies our right to continue the killing. We cheer in the streets over the death of a former CIA asset who killed for us. We cheer in the streets when we kill a man who was supposedly making WMDs - when we gave him WMDs in the first place! I think my cynicism of the US government is justified.

Okay, back to the main board....and then we'll get to know world peace.....

I actually agree with this. I am against war and violence due to my personal beliefs. That said, Bin Laden is no different in my eyes than someone like Hitler.

[Mike's Beard]

Bin Laden was a pig. Obama is a pig - as was Bush. All killers of innocent lives. The only difference is Obama is not trying to kill me and my kind, given half a chance Bin Laden would have. We the people are just caught inbetween these lunatics war games.

[Chocolate Shake Man]

Bite me!

Well, you sure showed me.

[hypehat]

It's the rational discourse on this board I love 

Seriously, I'm not out there waving a banner and having street parties, but there was not exactly much ambiguity about this man and his crimes. Even if you disregard 9/11. And although I would have rather they caught him and given him a fair trial (although finding an impartial jury would have been a hell of a task), I can't claim too much heartache over his death. That's the way it is.

[Chocolate Shake Man]

And as long as people say that humans will never be at peace then that stupidly justifies our right to continue the killing

Agreed. Saying there has always been war and there has always been killing is hardly evidence to excuse it from happening nor does it say anything about whether it will continue to happen. You could have said the same thing about slavery. You could have said the same thing about excluding women from the public sphere.

If there is really one constant in human history, it is man's capacity to change.

[onkster]

There was a guy at the corner of Laurel Canyon with a sign reading "Well, war sure solved THAT!"

Well, I supposed it solved OBL. I hope the guy didn't mean that, by extension, it would solve everything.

[drbeachboy]

Bite me!

Well, you sure showed me.

Well, It seems very apparent that you don't like me. I definitely think your a dick-head. How's that? Clear enough? Better than "Bite Me"? You want a fight? I'm in a foul enough mood to give you one if that is how you want to play it. Plain enough for you now?

[Chocolate Shake Man]

Well, It seems very apparent that you don't like me.  I definitely think your a dick-head.

Honestly? I don't know who you are nor do I know a single thing about you personally. This is why I have never uttered a single word about you and instead have critiqued your ideas. The distinction that I make is clearly something you have yet to learn yourself.

[rab2591]

I find it funny that Americans are out drinking, partying, celebrating, etc, because this man died - yet our US government gave him his head start! We gave Saddam his head start. We instigate so much of this crap then ignorant Americans praise the deaths of these leaders without realizing what made these people leaders to begin with. We created these monsters - yet we are too ignorant to hold ourselves responsible. We are too busy drooling at Fox News and American Idol that we don't think long enough to put ourselves in the places of people who hear these bombs go off day after day. We don't think about the millions of children with PTSD in Iraq and Afghanistan. We don't think about the children in Fallujah who are born with birth deformities because we use uranium firepower. We don't think about the soldiers in Viet Nam who were directly effected by agent orange. We don't think about the American and Vietnamese children who are indirectly effected by agent orange. We just want an excuse to wave a flag in the air. *not saying that the people on this board believe this....but many Americans have no clue about the effects that these wars have had on innocent people.

Forgive me, I have a few beers in me tonight. I'm just fed up with the blatant ignorance of these Americans that think that Bin Laden was the root of the problem. If we want to get down to brass-tacks, we are the root of the problem. We start half of these problems, then we spend billions of dollars and thousands of lives to "solve" the problem....and then Americans praise our leaders for this....Yeah, God bless America

[drbeachboy]

I swear, I don't why we continue with arguing in this forum? We never seem to learn our lesson. We bicker, get pissed, and nothing gets accomplished from it. You know, I am 54 years old and I should know better. So, I apologize to you for calling you names, I lost my head.

[18thofMay]

Everyone should read Eisenhowers final address.

[drbeachboy]

Also, those that don't read history are doomed to repeat it. You would think after two world wars that man would get his sh*t together and learn his lesson. Most of all these Middle East issues all arise from the immediate days following WW II. Land and Oil, all at the cost of human life. Shoot, we've known the immediate issues for 66 years, yet the same battles are still being fought and thousands upon thousands still die over it. Until power and greed is overcome, man will continue to fight to attain both.

[Jonas]

Everyone should read Eisenhowers final address.

tl;dr

[rab2591]

Everyone should read Eisenhowers final address.

tl;dr

ie: "In the councils of government, we must guard against the acquisition of unwarranted influence, whether sought or unsought, by the military-industrial complex. The potential for the disastrous rise of misplaced power exists and will persist."

[18thofMay]

Thats the part!

[rab2591]

Thats the part!

Thanks for referencing that speech - I had totally forgotten about it. Sad even a former president was wary about this power - now it's just a fact of life that the military does this crap....and the presidents go right along with it...and we Americans are powerless to stop it.
_____

I apologize for my rant above. Too much to drink tonight...I can get hot-headed about politics when sober - and really hot-headed when drunk LOL. I did mean what I said, but didn't mean to come off that harsh. Sorry again.

[♩♬🐸 Billy C ♯♫♩🐇]

No worries from my end...I agreed with what you said. I'm glad Bin Laden got what was coming to him, but I also considered Dubya a terrorist in his own right.

[18thofMay]

I agree. Cheney, Rumsfield and Bush should all be tried for war crimes. Zapata oil and all their dirty black water ops.

[Amy B.]

I find it funny that Americans are out drinking, partying, celebrating, etc, because this man died - yet our US government gave him his head start! We gave Saddam his head start. We instigate so much of this crap then ignorant Americans praise the deaths of these leaders without realizing what made these people leaders to begin with. We created these monsters - yet we are too ignorant to hold ourselves responsible. We are too busy drooling at Fox News and American Idol that we don't think long enough to put ourselves in the places of people who hear these bombs go off day after day. We don't think about the millions of children with PTSD in Iraq and Afghanistan. We don't think about the children in Fallujah who are born with birth deformities because we use uranium firepower. We don't think about the soldiers in Viet Nam who were directly effected by agent orange. We don't think about the American and Vietnamese children who are indirectly effected by agent orange. We just want an excuse to wave a flag in the air. *not saying that the people on this board believe this....but many Americans have no clue about the effects that these wars have had on innocent people.

Forgive me, I have a few beers in me tonight. I'm just fed up with the blatant ignorance of these Americans that think that Bin Laden was the root of the problem. If we want to get down to brass-tacks, we are the root of the problem. We start half of these problems, then we spend billions of dollars and thousands of lives to "solve" the problem....and then Americans praise our leaders for this....Yeah, God bless America

I would like to just point out to anyone reading this thread who may think otherwise that not all Americans were partying in the street after Bin Laden's death. Not all of us are simple-minded, blindly flag-waving people who don't crack open a newspaper or a history book. Many of us are well aware that the U.S. government has had blood on its hands numerous times. We know that the U.S. government has rallied American sentiment in battles against groups they had previously funded. Some of us hated Bin Laden and were devastated after 9/11 (especially those of us who live close to Ground Zero and the other sites) but are having a hard time celebrating the death of a human being no matter how horrible he was. And we know that while Bin Laden was at the center and apprehending him was necessary, his death probably won't change anything. Many people watch Fox News, but others listen to NPR or watch PBS, where there is much more critical analysis of what happened.

[grillo]

listen to NPR or watch PBS, where there is much more critical analysis of what happened.

No offense, but give me a break. Just because they tow the OTHER party line doesn't make them critical of anything. I don't see any of those NPR listeners out in the streets raging against the wars (count em...4) or complaining that the first thing Obomba did when in office is order drone strikes on Pakistan (that's war number 3 for those keeping count). The lame-stream media, right or left, is simply the lap-dog of the state.
Government has had 6,000 years to get it right but only leads people into more wars while slowly (or quickly) bankrupting those same folks, who think that because they were born on the land mass that the government claims to own it must be all right to be pushed around by their 'public servants'. Time to move on to a new paradigm folks and stop defending the violence and wickedness of the state.
just sayin...

[drbeachboy]

@ grillo
While I totally agree with you in principle, do you really expect a paradigm shift? As you stated, this crap has been going on some 6000 years (essentially Civilization) with no end in sight. Though there are many in this world that abhor violence and war, there are just as many (and in higher authority) who use it to justify their power and greed. I see this all as the nature of man. While I agree that man can change for the good, he can just as easily be corrupted. We have seen this happen over and over throughout history. I am just not convinced that enough human beings are on board for this change. As history has shown, it takes so very few to corrupt all that is good.

[rab2591]

listen to NPR or watch PBS, where there is much more critical analysis of what happened.

No offense, but give me a break. Just because they tow the OTHER party line doesn't make them critical of anything. I don't see any of those NPR listeners out in the streets raging against the wars (count em...4) or complaining that the first thing Obomba did when in office is order drone strikes on Pakistan (that's war number 3 for those keeping count). The lame-stream media, right or left, is simply the lap-dog of the state.
Government has had 6,000 years to get it right but only leads people into more wars while slowly (or quickly) bankrupting those same folks, who think that because they were born on the land mass that the government claims to own it must be all right to be pushed around by their 'public servants'. Time to move on to a new paradigm folks and stop defending the violence and wickedness of the state.
just sayin...

Very good post.

PBS was very critical of the Bush years (I highly recommend Frontline's Bush's War: http://www.pbs.org/wgbh/pages/frontline/bushswar/view/ - a very good look at the politics behind the wars in Afghanistan and Iraq)...but Grillo is right, they are the lapdog for the left....very little criticism is thrown at Obama from PBS even though he has carried on many of Bush's policies (policies that Obama said were criminal at one time (the wars, The Patriot Act)). Same with regards to FoxNews - they praise Bush for the wars, but lambast Obama for continuing them.

The Right and Left are two sides of the same coin. Nothing has changed in Washington in the last 10 years:

- many democrats keep voting for the wars (even though they apparently disagree with them).
- Many vote for the Patriot Act (even though they agree that it is unconstitutional).
- Republicans refuse to do anything about the border problem (though they promise every election season that they'll do something).
- Our peace-loving president bombs countries without the consent of our representatives (even though he said himself "the president does not have power under the constitution to unilaterally authorize a military attack" - and later went on to say that it is criminal to attack someone who is not an imminent threat to national security).
- Our national debt is $14,000,000,000,000.00 and rising fast - and our 'representatives' fight rabidly over $250 million in cuts while we probably spend that much in a day just on the wars.

Anyone looking for decent news sources: check out truth-out.org (very left-leaning independent news site), infowars.com (very right-leaning news site), rt.com (very anti-American-policies news site). Every one of these sites has an agenda - but it's nice to get a well rounded look at the world news without it being filtered and spoonfed to us by MSNBC or FoxNews.

[bgas]

Osama Bin laden's Dead
No no no no
he's outside, looking in

[Jason]

"If the Nuremberg laws were applied, then every post-war American president would have been hanged." - Noam Chomsky

Food for thought...

[Chocolate Shake Man]

The Right and Left are two sides of the same coin.

I agree with a lot of what you're saying except I would qualify the above statement and suggest that the Left is not on the "same coin" as the right, in the United States. Rather, there is no left at the political level whatsoever, after years of  being de-legitimized and decimated. At one point in the US there was actually a Socialist Party of America, which itself was an amalgam of two left-of-centre political organizations. The party had a considerable degree of popularity. Today, it would be unthinkable to run as a Socialist and believe you had that capability of getting a million votes. So because the actual left has been destroyed in the US, the Democrats function as "the left" because, as a centre-right party, they represent the farthest you can go to left in the US that is acceptable.

I am also skeptical of your suggestion that infowars is a "decent news source" when it typically acts as an industrialized distraction machine which serves the interests of the powerful just as much as your mainstream news outlets.