I can confess that I would have much preferred to hear “John Smith” than “Syed Farook.”
Hey, at least, I’m honest. I don’t want to see Trump’s smug face all over the media.
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Opinions, art, debate
Opinions, art, debate
I can confess that I would have much preferred to hear “John Smith” than “Syed Farook.”
Hey, at least, I’m honest. I don’t want to see Trump’s smug face all over the media.
Clarissa's Blog 
What we need to see is Obama’s face admitting that we’re at war, and stating that he’s going to quit hiding under the Oval Office rug while the world burns.
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Let’s not get too apocalyptic too soon. This is not even the first shooting this week.
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We know nothing of th motivations of the shooters.
If this a war, Dreidel, will you call for a draft of young men and women to go fight this war overseas? Will you want any family members over there fighting whoever ‘they’ happen to be?
This is your brain on Republicanism, folks. Any questions?
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It’s true, we know nothing yet. I thought things would be clearer this morning but I still couldn’t figure out from my news feed whether there were two shooters or three. Two shooters can mean mental illness, for instance. While 3 shooters make that an impossibility.
A draft is an even greater impossibility under pretty much any circumstances. I’d not waste any time discussing that.
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This is a war, Dark Avenger, but the all-volunteer force that has served the U.S. military since the mid-1970s has sufficient manpower to handle it, ergo no draft is needed.
This is your brain on Democratic liberalism, folks, can’t do simple math.
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“the all-volunteer force that has served the U.S. military since the mid-1970s has sufficient manpower to handle it”
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The voluntary military forces that we’ve sent to war since the all-voluntary force went into effect has won virtually all its tactical battles in direct combat. We lost in Iraq and are losing in Afghanistan because of strategic incompetence on the part of the military leadership, which is handicapped by severe restrictions on force application by our civilian Commander in Chief.
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“We lost in Iraq and are losing in Afghanistan because of strategic incompetence on the part of the military leadership, which is handicapped by severe restrictions on force application by our civilian Commander in Chief.”
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How you forgotten about Desert Storm, which the U.S. won handily? Remember Kosovo?
The all-voluntary force lost ONE war (the second one with Iraq), and are losing a second (Afghanistan) because of restrictions placed on our forces by a President who ran on a platform to end those wars, and refuses to accept the reality that sometimes war is a necessary evil.
ISIS is going to force our hand, sooner or later, and then either Obama (or his replacement in 2016) will have no choice but to allow our military (which is still the most powerful in the world by far) to fight with sufficient resources and overwhelming force to destroy our enemies.
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“How you forgotten about Desert Storm, which the U.S. won handily?”
Ah, well, if you consider those “victories”, then I’m sure that this kind of a “victory” can be achieved. Of course, the result was needing to go back and back and back to the site of the conflict with no possible end, but yay, victory.
This is an army that I do not believe will ever win anything because it never did win anything. Plus, there is an enormous reluctance on the part of the general public to enter into any war. A weak army, an incompetent military leadership, and a deeply consumerist, ignorant public with zero interest in foreign affairs – that’s a recipe for being trounced again and again in every possible military conflict.
“which is still the most powerful in the world by far”
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These statements are nonsensical. I’ve already rebutted them.
This was also more or less the situation in the U.S. before both WWI and WWII. In both wars, when accumulating hostile events finally convinced the U.S. public that war was essential, public opinion changed overnight and rallied around the President. The armed forces were rapidly built up, incompetent military leadership was replaced, and with help from our allies, we won the wars completely and quickly.
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“This was also more or less the situation in the U.S. before both WWI and WWII.”
The nation-state is dead, people. The kind of patriotism that led people to die enthusiastically and for free in massive numbers for a piece of painted fabric is dead. If you want to see that kind of patriotism, you can only find it among those who haven’t been fully admitted to the joys of liquid consumerist societies. And those people do not live in the US where everybody is traumatized by microaggressions and wrong pronouns.
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War against who? Even this travesty is indeed linked to terrorist activity (and I don’t think we should jump to conclusions) one of the suspects was an American citizen and the other was an immigrant from Saudi Arabia– one of our supposed allies.
This mentality of “war war war’ is a) outdated and b) the sort of shortsighted thinking that facilitated our stupid and catastrophic was against Iraq. People in this country “needed” a war after 9/11 so we willy nilly attacked a sovereign nation that had nothing to do with 9/11, causes massive civilian causalities and destabilized the entire region. I hope we have learned to avoid making that type of mistake in the future.
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“the other was an immigrant from Saudi Arabia”
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Well even if it is Qatar, my larger point still stands. Dreidel is calling for war and I’m curious who he thinks we should declare war against? Qatar? That would be a strange choice.
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Oh, I agree with you completely. I’m just confused about the details.
Nobody would attack Qatar which is a peaceful prosperous country that is one of the most stable in the region.
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Evelina, we’re at war against ISIS, which is not only slaughtering many people daily and taking over vast amounts of territory in the Middle East, but is also carrying out deadly terrorist attacks in Europe, and would like to do so in the U.S. (and perhaps already has). Additionally, through its perceived success against an impotent West, ISIS is gaining many recruits from various countries and inspiring “lone wolf” attacks.
We don’t need to specifically “declare” war against anything, certainly not a named country. (How did you come up with Qatar?) But we do need to stop denying reality, and to take the necessary military action in concert with our allies in Europe and the Middle East to destroy ISIS as quickly as possible.
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“How did you come up with Qatar?”
Does anybody even know yet if there was the third shooter? This is the most important question right now, I’d say.
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This has become so routine I don’t even care to argue about it anymore.
There are three possibilities.
1) Muslim: Navel-gazing about Islam and debate on Syrian refugees.
2) Anti-abortionist: Debate on domestic terrorism.
3) Other: Debate on guns.
We know all the arguments of each side in each debate. Nobody’s going to change their mind. Fuck it.
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So true. I’m also very tired of all 3 of these narratives. Maybe it would be better if his name were Vasya Petrov. That would make for something new, at least.
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Now that would be apocalyptic — especially if Russia shot down one of our airplanes over Syria, or vice-versa.
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It would be best if the name was something like Shlomo McGillicuddy Kawaguchi as that wouldn’t fit any particular narrative and the journalists might have to do their job for once.
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Then they would slip into the gun control narrative again.
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