I had a feeling that this thread would spark some reaction and that I would get some flak for it. I've no problems with that. I finished a game and then suddenly my mind started to wander and I decided to put those thoughts in a thread.
I must make a point though. I am not trying to say that Europeans haven't caused a lot of wrong in the world through the terrible processes of colonisation, but I was playing a game where Indians had been forced to leave their land and all for these horrid invaders who really had no right to the land. I then made a comparison with what Israel is doing to Palestine today. They are gradually stealing land from an indigenous population and the world just sits and watches. We went to war for WMD and yet we ignore the very same process that helped to create America today. I think part of that is a historical and current belief that the native Indians were primitive and that Arab lives simply aren't worth as much as Jewish lives.
I don't think that is a particularly controversial thing to say, and is all backed up by government action and policy.
We did seriously fook over the natives,badly and repeatedly. I'd venture that every established nation took shape over the backs of the indigenous. This Country, "founders" has been on both ends really. Why I always get a kick out of some folks losing minds over Immigrants.
#1 That was the way of the world back then...compare the US to Mexico, I bet Mexico's Natives WISH they had the chance to go on a Trail of Tears (IMO that was a horrible choice by our President one of the worst next to inturning the Japanese during World War II and giving Saddam Hussein and Pinochet power).
#2 That's always been the case...Irish, the Germans and Northern Europeans, then the Italians and Eastern Europeans...they all caught hell from the citizens of the US. It's no suprise to me.
I feel the need to discredit the vast bulk of a population that is forced to digest a god awful right wing media everyday. It's only in recent years that the US intelligentsia has started to come to terms with it own genocidal history. It still has some way to go considering all the romanticisation of the Wild West that emerged at the start of the 20th century through literature and cinema. It wasn't romantic, it was racist and genocidal. Again, I don't find that a controversial thing to say.
I regard the troops currently in Iraq as invaders and occupiers. Those who wish to liberate their country of such a force are obviously freedom fighters and those who argue their case through journals and articles are the resistence. We have no right to be there and the only people that have gained are those with sound investments in the military industrial complex, not Iraqi citizens who are forced to live in chaos and fear. We can all talk of liberation and freedom....but does the average Iraqi really have that today? Come on now. All this stealth and fire for a bunch of people finally snapping at all America had been doing to the world for the past 40 years?
Take the shame and move on. Don't try to bomb the rest of the world into the stone age.
Should never have gone there in the first place. There were other ways to go after Al Qaeda and those ways should have been exhausted before any invasion of another country. That's why we are are there 9 years later fighting who exactly?
Likewise, I don't hate you. We usually oppose each other on issues such as this, but I see no harm in pointing out the similarities in how supposedly superior cultures are allowed to steal the land of indigenous populations. Or even bomb others without due cause.
Yeah who are we fighting? Al Qaeda and the taliban. Ohh but my guess is you think we shouldn't be fighting the Taliban, correct? Yet the Taliban are a breed of pure evil (this isn't right wing media talking, this is the truth) that people like me and you can't even begin to comprehend. Heinous, heinous people who do awful things and live life completely backwards, yet since they weren't the ones who ran the planes into the building, I guess we have no business interfering with their way of business.
But let me guess, we played a huge hand into putting them into power, that was going to be your next argument right? Why does that matter though? We have put evil people into power before and had to remove them, the Taliban need to be eradicated. This is a simple fact. I believe this with all of my heart, there is no other way to go about dealing with them.
Iraq is a cluster fuck, I know this. Our military planning going into Afghanistan kind of sucked. That's a bureaucracy problem, we are not the bad guys in Afghanistan. Iraq is more murky, we were WRONG to go in there and because of that we have the blood of a country's civil war on our hands. Still, we aren't the only bad guys their either and if you truly believe we are then you are simply detached from reality. I guess you aren't fully to blame as what you are reading is from anti-Imperialists who are actually just anti-Americans and people who have likely never stepped foot in Iraq or Afghanistan in their lives. It's made clear by your posts too.
Last edited by amat; 09-23-2010 at 09:31 AM.
Well I don't really have much to say, but a chance to wind Miles up cannot be ignored.
First off, you say the Jews took the land from its owners. They didn't. The people who lived there did not own the land. It was originally a territory of the Ottaman Empire and was then taken over by the British, who set up a mandate to legally give the land to the Jews. They have MORE of a legitimate claim to their land then virtually any other nation as it was ratified in a court of law
Second there were no indigenous people. There never was an indigenous Palestine. They comprise many races, Greek, Egyptain, Syrian, Bosnian ,Druzes etc. In fact in 1920 over 50 different languages were being spoken in Palestine.
Thirdly, the Jews didn't expel the Palestinians the Arabs did! They wanted them out of the way so they wouldn't interfere with their Jew slaughterings.
Unfortunately that war didn't go so well for the Arabs and they lost horribly. The Jews understandably were rather distrusting of their neighbours from that point on.
#1 NO, we should have just stayed there in the 1980's and all this Al Queda, Taliban bullshit would have been avoided had we just given the Afghani people a hand in building their country after they got rid of the Soviets.
#2 Once again my issue with the way you are viewing this is that you judge the PAST by the morals and values we have TODAY. That is a flawed logic because the way we look at things today is incredibly different than the reality of life in the past. Now if we're talking recent past then there may be a little room for you to look at those events the way you're already looking at things.
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