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Politics : Moderate Forum -- Ignore unavailable to you. Want to Upgrade?

To: tsigprofit who wrote (9669)	4/26/2004 2:57:37 PM
From: epicure	Read Replies (2) \| Respond to of 20773

Only a very few are scum- I think. So it is ok to honor our military, but without blinding ourselves to the fact that the orders our military may be given, may be wrong. I think it is possible to keep these two ideas in one's mind at the same time.

To: tsigprofit who wrote (9669)	4/28/2004 4:35:11 AM
From: GUSTAVE JAEGER	Respond to of 20773

Re: We have a kind of worship of all folks in the military and police going on right now. Some are true heroes, no doubt about that, and some are criminal scum. And everything in between. Tim McVeigh was a decorated Gulf War veteran, and a model soldier. He was also executed for being the worst US mass murdered in history for the OK city bombing. Hero or villain? This question also applies to Israel... The US military somehow fell under the spell of Israel. Israel, as a jackbooted stratocracy entrenched in a hostile environment, as a Spartan garrison-state whose citizens, both male and female, are all reservists and share a common bunker mentality, is something of an utopia for your Pentagon brass... Military folks are basically "one-dimensional" brains, I mean, their only acid test/criterion is "force" --military force, that is. All the rest, all other criteria are dismissed as wishy-washy pussyfooting. According to the Pentagon hawks, there's no need for the US to finagle, to use carrot-and-stick diplomacy... A (big) stick is enough. Just look at the Israelis: everybody "hates" them, the UN, the Arabs, the Europeans,... they all keep lashing out at Israel's policy and yet, the Israeli bully doesn't budge. Why? Simply because Israel has the might --her opponents must abide by her will or face overwhelming retaliation... Both the US and Israel have embraced Caligula's motto: "Oderint dum metuant" translates, roughly, as "Let them hate as long as they fear." It was a favorite saying of the Roman emperor Caligula, and may seem over the top as a description of current U.S. policy. commondreams.org And that will spell the undoing of the US leadership because, unlike the US, Israel doesn't --and never did-- cater to humankind and to all countries... Israel has never fancied herself "the indispensable country" --she has contented herself with being a Jewish homeland. The Israelis don't care about being "hated" by the Arabs and other peoples --they'll just explain it away as "anti-Semitism". Besides, Israel's warmongering is restricted to her Arab neighbors, it's not intrinsically worldwide. And that's precisely why it's unwise for the US to ape Israel's paranoid behavior: the US can't treat the world the way Israel mistreats her Arab foes, if only because Caligula's motto is somewhat flawed... Indeed, they "hate" you... but do they "fear" you? To be sure, the Palestinians don't fear the Israeli might, and Iraqi insurgents don't fear their American occupiers... Gus