You might as well start arguing that the victim with the bat is now the bully cause the victim grabbed the bat from the real bully. If you notice Jack, historically the underdogs have been weaklings compared to the mighty and rich aristocratic oppressors of humanity. When the underdog becomes the top alpha dog, that doesn’t give you or anyone else free reign to say that Ali Kirsti is the intolerant fascist and not the ones who oppressed people like her in her birth country.

Good people don’t become mean and evil if they get power over evil people. And any real historical study will reveal that truely good and wise people do not get corrupted by power, otherwise Washington would have reigned as King supreme and there wouldn’t be an America.

That doesn’t happen very often, and neither does the liberation of crappy countries like Iraq or Afghanistan. When they do happen, people should encourage it, instead of trying to stop it, or trying to argue that America did an illegal and evil thing. They heap fantastical scorn upon fantastical fantasies when they then begin talking about looking out for the interests of the little guy who has nothing, against the big bad secret police dictatorships.

You’ll find little tolerance, Jack, for people who say freedom and economic prosperity is good but that if it comes from the US it then becomes invalid, from me.

Conned can prove he is calm and collected, to you jack, by telling everyone that he supports the liberation of Iraq from the oppressors, and (this is key) this was accomplished by American blood and toil not the freedom loving insurgents. Long wait , I expect.

To go back to the primary point.

Someone living in a fantasy world, harbors a deep hatred of anyone revealing that fantasy for what it is.

It’s a logic statement, jack. Logic statements, are logically, not mind reading mysticism. If you want to single out conned, go ahead. But don’t pretend I did that, since my statement applies to everyone that lives in a fantasy world. It don’t matter who you are jack, humans react in the same manner on the basis of a shared number of stimulis.

Remember the two rules of neo-cons

the brand new third rule. Everybody who agrees with uis right and good and clever.

Courtesy of conned. That might seem substantial or calm to you, Jack, but it is rather apparent to me that it is a fantasy world in which the liberation of Iraq by classical liberals sometimes now called neo-cons becomes not a liberation, but a doctrinaire and close minded war of exploitation.

If you want to defend conned, Jack, you have two obstacles before you. You have to explain how and why you took a general statement that applies to everyone, and applied it specifically to conned without any recognition of the fact that it can also apply to other people. The reverse logic then becomes, why did you accuse conned of applying to the standard, not why I applied my statements to conned. 2nd, why conned does not apply to the standards of living in a fantasy world by his own words. You don’t think he does, so obviously you should be able to explain why.

Last of all, I’d appreciate not putting words into my statements that weren’t there. That’s like getting nncon here to say that wars of conquest and exploitation are wrong, therefore nncon has said the Iraq War is wrong. Don’t attach logical conclusions to my logic, and act as if it follows. If I wanted to accuse conned of living in a fantasy world, I would have brought along direct quotes of conned. This characterization of yours, jack, is not based upon either good reasoning nor good logic. In fact, if you wanted me to accuse conned of living in a fantasy world, the best thing you could have done would be to get me on the defensive with an accussation that I accused conned of living in a fantasy world when you say his comments are calm and substantial. To which I would reply with the obvious rejoinder that they aren’t. But as a reminder, I didn’t start out on that path, jack, until you brought the subject up. So let’s be clear on who pulled the first hit.

Conned didn’t put illegal invasion in quotse, why should I?

it is unpopular because it was an illegal action

So as a summary. When I first brought up fantastical worlds, I was applying it in a very general manner. When you brought it up, you were thinking of conned because that was who you were replying to. Since I was replying to you, I wasn’t thinking of conned as much as you were. But I was thinking of conned when I replied to you, cause you accused me of specifying conned as living in a fantasy world, when I didn’t. So I obviously had to defend my statement both on what I meant by it and the accuracy of how it applies to conned.

It is not that the other side is wrong it is that they are; weak, stupid, cowardly, psychologically disturbed, incapable of putting together a proper argument etbloodycetera. – conned

Is my meaning clear enough now to avoid unintended distortions and misunderstanding? I prefer to avoid this in the future.

However I suspect that this “long war” business is going to drag out and get more complex and bloody and covoluted in a whole host of ways that none of us can guess at. This particularly applies if no serious attempt is made to engage with moderate islamic opinion in many parts of the world. onsistent beligerance will only push many muslims into the arms of the radicals.

It doesn’t necessarily happen as a result of “revolution.” Sometimes it occurs after dictatorial governments are defeated militarily as in the case of Germany, Japan, and now Afghanistan and Iraq.

I can undertand opposing wars in general and the Iraq War in particular. However, at some point it seems to me that those who oppose the Iraq War need to address the full picture of Iraq, not just those aspects that support their opposition.

Iraq is now a far more democratic and less oppressive country than it was before, and it appears to be getting better–knock on wood–at a steady rate.

Someone living in a fantasy world, harbors a deep hatred of anyone revealing that fantasy for what it is.

nnc is posting substantively and calmly.

Someone living in a fantasy world, harbors a deep hatred of anyone revealing that fantasy for what it is.

I like the
Velvet Revolution and the various “color” revolutions that we’ve seen in Europe and the Middle East.

I don’t think it would be out of line to call what is happening in Iraq a revolution either, assuming one is truly concerned about oppressed peoples taking action to free themselves and create non-oppressive, democratic governments–even if they do get help from the United States.

The Scots-Irish and immigrants of Germanic descent really contributed. Demographically, if we get all the dredges and exiles from Europe, and we combine a philosophy that says everyone is equal regardless of class or heritage, then we have a people willing to grab this belief without having to kill anyone for it for oppressing them.

It is a lot more peaceful to go out into the wilderness and risk life and limb to carve out a new future for you and your family, than it is to try to take away power and land from the ruling party back in Europe. Not always peaceful, but it is more peaceful than trying to fight a civil war in Europe.

So we got demographics. People who would rather run the risk of being eaten by a bear and killed by an Indian than stay in the class society that is Europe. Then we have the environment. a Harsh frontier which promotes individualism and not socialism.

The Founding Fathers, in a way, constructed a belief system that individuals could ascribe to. Not because they were forced into it, but because it benefits them. When the people freely enter into a contract that is of mutual benefit to the contractee and the contractor, there is much less instability and revolutionary tendencies.

The Anglo-Saxon argument has some merits. After all Canada and Australia, as former colonies, got their freedom, eventually anyway. So did India.

It’s not easy to get a revolution going if people are already satisfied. It is also hard to get individuals to buy onto the propaganda of socialism and revolution. Americans didn’t sign up instantly for the Revolutionary War for example. Individuals tend to want to check out the deal before buying into it.

When people live in decadent civilizations, or tribalistic cultures, it is easy for populist leaders like Chavez and Komeini and Mao to get power. You either have a bunch of college students that have relied upon their parents and their government for support. Or you have a bunch of people who don’t know any history cause they’re too busy starving, and desperate enough to buy into any hope by the communists.

There are anti-Revolutionary safeguards. Without those safeguards, revolutions tend to get out of control and catastrophically fail.