Bigmack
Bigmack's JournalI like to think of our country as - generally - good and benevolent....
.. and that things like the atrocities of the Vietnam War and those of the Iraq and Afghanistan wars are anomalies.
Then I read a little more history... and have my doubts.
Not that we don't do good... stopping Hitler has to be one of our finest hours, for example. The Marshall Plan literally saved Europe after WWII.
It's just that when we are racist, cruel, and imperialist, we never seem to learn that those things just aren't us... or I hope those things aren't us. And then we do it again.
I'm reading "Imperial Cruise" by James Bradley. He's the author of "Flags of Our Fathers"... his father raised the flag on Iwo Jima.
The major US political and educational figures around the turn of the 20th Century were incredibly racist. They used the term "Aryan" constantly, and spoke of the "manly" act of war.
The Filipino Insurrection was a nightmare, with US troops killing men, women, and children by the hundreds of thousands. The water torture was the favorite method of interrogation. Politicians, including Teddy Roosevelt, spoke casually about the "Pacific Niggers".
Substitute "ragheads" and "waterboarding", and add some high-tech weapons, and you have the current wars.
We are either a flat-out racist, imperialist nation... or we are a benevolent nation that forgets its humanity at regular intervals.
I want investigations!
I want investigations of the deaths of 62 Americans in attacks on US diplomatic facilities since 2001. I want to know why they didn't have enough security, and everything else related to those attacks... and deaths.
I'm willing to let the chips fall where they may.
I want a full Congressional investigation of those two deaths during the Obama presidency and the sixty during the Bush presidency. After all, the death of an American diplomat in 2002 is no less a tragedy than the death of an American diplomat in 2012.
I want a full investigation of the IRS situation, too. I want to know who knew what and when. I also want to know what the IRS found when they checked out the 501(c)3 & 4 status of those rightwing groups.
I'm willing to let the chips fall where they may.
I want to know how a Repub - Bush appointee - head of IRS didn't know about all the shenanigans. I want to know if the IRS was used by the Rove machine to target the loose Teabagger cannons on the Right.
I want a full investigation!
Then, of course... I'd like the fucking Congress to back to the real work of getting us out of the political septic tank we're in.
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Member since: Mon Apr 12, 2004, 08:50 PMNumber of posts: 8,020
