Loading ...The Bitter Cry of the Children
July 20th, 2004 by SteveThere are, firstly, 2 posts you must read. The first is this one. After finishing that, continue to this one. Done reading yet?
If you aren’t sickened by that, well… you need a Human Rights 101 course. This is absolutely horrific and disgusting. Forget the legal issues. Forget how this would look. THIS IS WRONG! Children are being raped! Where are you, 101st Division of the Fighting Keyboarders? You argue we needed to invade Iraq for human rights (even though the real argument was wmd, but that is beside the point); ok, good, I’ll actually agree with that. But where are you when the American and American-controlled governments are instituting a system of torture, covering up the rape of children, and executing people without a fair trial? Isn’t this why we fought the war? To stop the creation of mass graves? To end the reign of terror of Saddam?
All we’ve done is replaced one brutal authoritarian for another. I suppose we shouldn’t be surprised, considering the United States has a long history of this (Shah in Iran, contras in South America, the numerous Vietnamese leaders we installed). We keep failing to learn one huge lesson of history: Democracy cannot be spread at gunpoint. But we keep trying, and we will continue to try, even if it means we run ourselves into the ground invading country after country. I earlier posted that I suspected Syria would be next; I was wrong. Iran is next. Even though the country does have minimalistic elections (more than Iraq had), no link to 9/11 (the White House is bsing. If there was a link, why has it taken 3 years to be “found”?), and some reform movements. They haven’t gotten anywhere yet, but what those reform movements need right now is international support, not a civil war like an invasion would cause.
Conservatives often cry “think of the children!” when they drum up support for censoring the airwaves or banning consensual relations between two adults. Well, now it’s my turn to call them out. You really want to think of the children? Either clean up the mess of an operation we’re running in there and have REAL elections, or pull our troops out. Don’t pussy-foot around with this bs about caucuses and “partial” elections. Think of the children. Stop the torture.
EDIT: And while we’re talking about mass graves…
Further Update: I see that the 101st has responded… by claiming essentially that those soldiers are just “a few bad apples.” For anyone pondering these claims, I suggest reading this article and finding more information on the Stanford Experiment and Milgam Experiment. Even assuming that the government was merely sitting back and not pushing this, “criminal negligence” is the term that comes to mind for me, especially considering these experiments were done over 30 years ago.
That being said, the further fact that the justice department has written several memos, at the Administration’s request, to find a loophole to torture and declare the President and those “just following orders” above the law smacks of foul play, as does Rumsfield signing off on the near-drowning torture methods.
Posted in Political |
July 21st, 2004 at 12:18 am
yea, i was reading something on the rapes and things going on the other day, and it’s disgusting, i swear. i seriously wonder about what else is going on over there that we don’t know about. we should’ve left a long time ago. no, scratch that. we should’ve never gone over there. that’s all i can think of to say.
July 21st, 2004 at 11:18 am
Democracy was spread to Germany, Japan, and Italy through military aggression in WWII. The people forced to live under Communist oppression in the USSR were liberated thanks to military pressure from the US. The slaves got freedom because of the Union’s victory in the Civil War, and blacks got democracy/civil rights because federal troops enforced the Supreme Court’s decisions (with guns). Your “long history” of only goes back 40 years, and even those examples are questionable. The Iraqi people are now free thank to the coalition, and soon they’ll be strong enough to sustain a “full” democracy. Terrorists and the fundamentalist-controlled nations that support them now know that they won’t be accepted in a free and peaceful world.
The lesson anti-war people should learn is that peace and freedom can only be achieved and maintained if evil authoritarians like Saddam Hussein are met with military aggression by righteous forces. Of course left-wing nuts in America who consider themselves “under American occupation” see their own country as an evil imperialist empire, so I can see why they would consider liberation by the coalition just as bad as rule under Saddam.
I don’t know any conservatives who have cried “think of the children.” The lady on the Simpsons says that, that’s about it. That line is pretty gay.
There’s no evidence that the rape and torture at Abu Ghraib was anything more than an isolated incident, and the “people” who did it should and will be severely punished. The coalition as a whole is very far from “instituting a system of torture.” Anyway, the sexual humiliation of prisoners that went on there is little compared to the torture and decapitations of innocent American hostages by Al Qaeda and the Iraqi insurgents, and it’s nothing compared to the sum of what happened under Saddam. The full extent of Saddam’s terror was hidden because self-serving Western journalists preferred to maintain good relations with Saddam’s regime to exposing the full truth to the world, and that’s why many Americans don’t understand how bad it really was.
Also, I don’t understand how you can be so offended by a kid being sodomized by a gay guy and at the same time be so accepting of gay people who do it to each other all the time. Personally, I’m sickened by both (of course i’m much more sickened by the gay rape of a kid, but still).
July 21st, 2004 at 6:46 pm
Wow… Eugene… I don’t know where to start.
Let me start with this quote: “The lesson anti-war people should learn is that peace and freedom can only be achieved and maintained if evil authoritarians like Saddam Hussein are met with military aggression by righteous forces.” How is starting a war really creating more peace and freedom? How is military aggression righteous against an opponent that never displayed aggression towards us righteous? If you want to get rid of evil authoritarians why do you support Bush? How is going to war bringing about peace and freedom? War just creates more problems. Democracy? Iraq’s Prime Minister executed 8 SUSPECTED terrorists. There was no evidence against them, but a witness said it was justified because the men were tortoured for 8 hours. Wow… that’s peace and freedom for you. And have you happened upon a little government document which… when de-fucked-up… said that there were more terrorist attacks instead of the Bush Administration’s previous claims that there were less. More terrorist attacks? Tourture? Unjustified executions? That’s peace and freedom for you… jackass.
I’m horriblely offended by your comparing the rape of little boys to same sex couples in the US… and I’m not even gay. Maybe you don’t know what rape means, and since I’m a nice guy, I’ve decided to take the time to try and explain it to you in the most simplistic way possible… Rape: The crime of forcing another person to submit to sex acts, especially sexual intercourse. Having two people… any two people… consent to a sexual act is not the same as the rape of a young boy. You are a pretty sad individual if you really think that it is just as bad. Why do you even care? I mean… if your not gay, your not going to be in any of those situations… so why even bring it up? What the hell was the point of it? That wasn’t any part of the discussion and you brought it up like it was. NOTE TO STEVE: I think Eugene is hiding something.
Eugene… hate to break it to you, but there are many people that cry: “Think of the children.” They may not say those exact words, but when people don’t like something… like… when they censor Howard Stern, make Michael Moore’s movies rated R (I’m still pissed about that), or when they… okay there was one more example, but I have a date with my girlfriend soon and I don’t have time to think of it.
Anyway… Eugene… there is so much more, but I only have time for one more thing. You said a lot, but never actually addressed the whole point. You were too busy talking about gays and how we liberated Germany in WWII to actually say anything constructive. I think the main point here is, how can we claim to be bringing peace, freedom, and human rights to these people when we are just doing it ourselves. You say that Saddam was worse… that’s just an admission of guilt. We are still in the wrong, and it doesn’t matter if Saddam did worse things, it’s wrong that we are even saying “well… his torture was worse that ours.” THE FACT THAT WE EVEN DID THIS SHIT IS WRONG! And you try and defend it. That’s bullshit. You talk about democracy, peace and freedom… but then you defend torture, rape, and mass graves by saying “Oh well… they do it too… and comparatively our torture is like a massage.” BULLSHIT. You are a shithole of a person if you think you can justify these acts. We aren’t trying to get even with terrorists, we are trying to bring peace and freedom, and you can’t do that if you are going to step down to their level and treat human beings like the shit spilling out of your mouth.
July 22nd, 2004 at 4:07 pm
Euge, you have so little understanding of liberalism that it is mind-boggling. Your only knowledge of the world seems to come from Rush Limbaugh and Fox News. Seriously, there’s a real world out there that isn’t on TV and isn’t on the internet. There’s a world where people don’t get pissed off if a good teacher and coach is leaving, if their scanner breaks down, or if they have a cold. In that world, people are more worried about eating their next meal, finding medicine for their kids’ diseases, and not having bombs dropped on them.
From that perspective, there isn’t really much I care about. The economy could crash into a second great depression worse than the first, the entire American education system could fire all its librarians, and heck all it’s math, science, social studies, and english teachers to boot, and we could all go back to living in uneducated shantytowns working for slave wages to pay rent on ramshackle houses we would never own. And you know what? The world wouldn’t end. We would all still have our families, our friends, and our lives. But every time we drop a bomb in Iraq, every time we rape a man in a culture where homosexuality is worse than death, or we execute a man without a trial on the pretense of martial law, the world does end for someone. That’s what you don’t seem to get.
I would support anyone who could stop this. I would support an authoritarian or a libertarian, a leftist or a rightist, a republican or a democrat, A DEMOCRACY OR A DICTATORSHIP, if they would make that stop. The problem is, authoritarians, rightists, republicans, and dictatorships aren’t doing that. I certainly despise Kerry, but he promises to do that. And that’s why, for now, I am a Democrat. I hate towing a party line, but that’s the best thing I can do for the people in Iraq who we are murdering right now, and for what little my efforts will help, I will continue them.
Dave
July 25th, 2004 at 2:25 pm
I don’t even know where to begin. Why is it bad that women are being raped like the men? All you liberals call for equality, so why should rape of a male be different than rape of a female? The children, yes, should not be raped. No one should be raped, don’t get me wrong, but everyone makes this big deal out of it. Did it ever occur to you that it was only a select few soldiers and that they are being punished. I also wanted to say that the US government would not release a lot of the photos from the executions of Berg and Johnson, so why would they release a lot of the sodomy photos? No one wants to see that. No one needs to see that. Everyone is talking about Vietnam and South America. Don’t any of you watch movies? Haven’t any of you seen Black Hawk Down? While I’ve never seen the movie, I am nearly finished reading the book. It’s about a night in October in 1993 when an a simple mission went wrong and lasted all night. There were 2 downed helicopters and the bodies of the Americans were dragged through the streets. Hostages were taken and beaten. The soldiers were only in their early 20s at the oldest. Those guys are my age and suffering horrible injuries and the government didn’t care. The national security advisor was more concerned with Yeltsin fighting off a right-wing coup than the Americans who were dying. So before you start blaming the Bush administration realize you’re golden boy Clinton wasn’t doing so well either. Of course no one who isn’t a fan of cinema knows about that though because the story wasn’t told and America was kept ignorant. You know, I’ll never understand it…why does everyone keep having these insane political debates? By the way…Eugene is definitely not gay (yes, I would know) and you all need to stop bashing him for every little thing he says. He’s allowed to get mad because teachers are leaving and because he’s sick. The world won’t end…exactly. That’s the best part of America. We don’t have to worry about the constant threat of hunger for the most part. I know you’ll start talking about the poor in the US but think about it. You’re not living all that bad Steve so you can’t relate to the people who worry where their next meal will come from. The wonderful thing about America is that we live in freedom and that there are millions of people risking their lives to ensure you still have that freedom. You should be grateful for that instead of attacking military action. You’re just making up for some sort of inferiority complex you have that prevents you from truly being a man. Those of you who worry about the draft…don’t…there’s people willing to die for this country that you all seem to hate. Maybe you should grow a pair of balls and don’t give me BS about being anti-violence…we don’t live in the perfect world. War is inevitable. I leave with a quote from Cormac McCarthy in BLOOD MERIDIAN…”It makes no difference what men think of war…War endures. As well ask men what they think of stone. War was always here. Before man was, war waited for him. The ultimate trade awaiting the ultimate practitioner.” Ponder that for a while.
July 25th, 2004 at 3:12 pm
I’m not sure what you’re saying here. What are you talking about? I’m attacking all rape. And raping of innocents is a big deal. “Remeber Belgium!”
Are they? Besides, you need to read more into the Stanford and the other Experiment.
They should release the photos. All of them. We deserve to see the photos. All of them. America needs to understand that war is not this shiny happy game.
Apocolapse Now comes to mind… as does Hearts and Minds. so does Fahrenheit 9/11.
*sigh* I hate Clinton. You don’t get that. At all. Just because I really dislike Bush’s policies, doesn’t mean I support the former president’s. Many of Bush’s foreign policies are similar to Clinton’s, especially ones that led to instances like Black Hawk Down.
You’re right, America was kept ignorant. Just like they’re being kept ignorant of what’s going on in Iraq. Hence this post.
Um… cause I like to challenge people’s perceptions of the world and I like having mine challenged?
I know he’s not gay. I never said that, or anything in response to what he said. Dave and Gero beat me to it.
You’re right, he is, but you misunderstood dave’s post; he was referring to himself, not Eugene.
That was Dave’s point.
Unlike the rest of the world, whose foreign aid we’ve cut off over the past few years, instead of increasing to give terrorists less ammunition to recruit.
I did. The poor in other countries has it a hell of a lot worse.
You’re absolutely right. I’m very well off. I worry about the people who have to worry about where their next meal will come from. Think about it.
I missed the part where Iraq was threatening my freedom… I do however recall my rights being taken away to keep me free…
Well maybe I don’t want to endandger the lives of the brave men and women in our military unless it’s absolutely necessary. And nice job with that ad homein attack on my manhood. When you have no logical arguments, insult. Smooth.
I do worry about the draft. And recruitment levels are at their lowest in recent years. And are you accusing me of hating the troops or hating my country? Both claims are obviously ridiculous. I don’t want to send the troops into danger, and I don’t want to see America embroiled in multiple-theater wars that stretch its military and increase the risk of terror attack.
tsk tsk. again with the ad homein attacks.
It’s not bullshit; I really am anti-violent. And you’re right, we don’t live in a perfect world. but some of us try to make it better and reduce violence and warfare. Especially unnecessary warfare.
And I leave you with a quote from former Luftwaffe commander, Hermann Göring: “Naturally the common people don’t want war; neither in Russia, nor in England, nor in America, nor in Germany. That is understood. But after all, it is the leaders of the country who determine policy, and it is always a simple matter to drag the people along, whether it is a democracy, or a fascist dictatorship, or a parliament, or a communist dictatorship. Voice or no voice, the people can always be brought to the bidding of the leaders. That is easy. All you have to do is to tell them they are being attacked, and denounce the pacifists for lack of patriotism and exposing the country to danger. It works the same in any country.” Ponder that.
July 25th, 2004 at 4:53 pm
…I second what Steve said.
July 25th, 2004 at 4:54 pm
Damn forgot my name on that last post… how foolish.
August 9th, 2004 at 12:18 pm
I think it’s “ad hominem”.
September 13th, 2007 at 10:39 pm
Steve, I like this post.
“You’re right, America was kept ignorant. Just like they’re being kept ignorant of what’s going on in Iraq. Hence this post.”
Just like your great democrats who call for the pulling of us troops out of iraq refuse to believe that general petreaus is telling the truth? Just like our MM is keeping america way from the truth? I know, i’ve been. how about any of you?
There are people out there who aren’t morally upstanding. They are dealt with. If you think the military is full of trigger happy idiots, well, you should join them as well because your an idiot as well. Enlist, find out for yourself. Or are you too scared? Then come back and talk this trash.
September 13th, 2007 at 10:41 pm
and that quote is nice. It’s too bad that it’s true. You have to lie in order to get pacifists mad enough to actually fight. They can’t do it themselves.