Said the New Yorker's David Remnick to PBS's Charlie Rose, in audio played by Rush Limbaugh, who proceeded to do the very thing Remnick sought sympathy for: hammer him from the right:
You know what's rooted in this wanting to understand? 'Cause, frankly, I don't care why people commit crimes. I frankly am not interested. They're perverts, they're psychopaths, they're sociopaths, I don't care why they did it. I want 'em punished. But these guys want to find out because in their minds there must be some justification for it. There's gotta be some reason they did it that makes sense. And then they make the move into what is it about us that they hate? Or what is it about America that they hate that would justify this? And we do seminars, "Why do they hate us?" Seminars, trying to examine why sociopaths, psychopaths hate us. Or, in this case, a couple of radicalized Muslims.
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218 comments:
«Oldest ‹Older 201 – 218 of 218We asked them to turn over bin Laden and they requested evidence of his complicity in 9/11, (just as we would ask for such evidence if asked to extradite someone in our country to another country).
Hmmm...how did the FBI and CIA know that it was bin Laden so early on? Was it classified info? Did it turn out to be wrong? I forget, did any of the hijackers get traced back to Afghanistan?
What Cook is a describing back then is a stalemate situation, with us accusing the Taliban of harboring killers based on classified info, and with the Taliban refusing to cooperate & saying "fuck you." Gee, I wonder how that would have played out without our intervention? probably more terrorist attacks launched from the safe haven of Afghanistan with the "Robert Cooks" cheerleading: "you go Binnie!"
Baron Zemo's blessings not withstanding, you're becoming the worst of the worst.
I forgotten to care about or follow Cook's latest opinions--is he now apologizing for the Boston bombers as well?
I haven't come up with a sufficiently evil celebrity voice with which to mock Cook.
"America is the greatest purveyor of violence in the world today."
No, comrade Bob, that would be radical Islam.
I'm curious to know about our empire.What lands do we hold? How many people do we enslave?
Robert, ironically, highlights the very problem he's trying to wish away with the following quote: "You know, the way you would want to take up arms and kill if the Russians or Chinese invaded America or bombed your loved ones from afar with drones."
Where were the German, Japanese, and French suicide bombers after World War II? Where are the North Korean or Vietnamese or Panamanian or Serbian suicide bombers? (Yeah, I know some Soviet-backed nutcases occasionally managed to kill an American soldier or embassy worker here or there.)
For that matter, the Soviet Union behaved significantly worse in the middle East and much of the rest of the world than we ever did; why were they almost completely spared? (Yeah, I know the Chechens have attacked Russia on several occasions; kind of hard to avoid with them being in Russia. But why would the Chechens attack Boston and not Moscow? Why did a bunch of Saudi nationals on 9/11 attach the World Trade center and not the Kremlin or the House of Saud?)
The US isn't and never has been the largest purveyor of violence in the world with the possible exception of the closing days of the second world war, and that only by historical coincidence. We're just an easy target (and we're also not likely to deliberately kill your friends and family.
Chickelit,
Baron Zemo blesses Robert Cook?
There's an anonymously-sourced story that's been out there for decades that back during the Beirut hostage-crisis period, one of the militant groups took a Soviet 'diplomat' hostage. The group released him very quickly when the Soviets began sending them variously freshly removed parts of loved ones.
If we really were as nasty as people like Cook claimed, we could solve all these problems a lot quicker and easier. It's because we've been trying to be the good guys (ie, build a functioning democratic society to avoid creating another Somalia and avoid a real humanitarian crisis by building basic infrastructure like roads and schools that the locals didn't have to begin with) that we've had all these problems.
Nasty's easy. What worries me is that next time something like 9/11 happens, we'll chose the easy nasty route.
What Cook is a describing back then is a stalemate situation, with us accusing the Taliban of harboring killers based on classified info, and with the Taliban refusing to cooperate & saying "fuck you." Gee, I wonder how that would have played out without our intervention? probably more terrorist attacks launched from the safe haven of Afghanistan with the "Robert Cooks" cheerleading: "you go Binnie!"
Or maybe Cook would have preferred that we offered evidence from our sources at the time within Afghanistan. Yeah, outing our spies would have verified our accusation and led to those spy's deaths at the hands of the Taliban. But according to the "Robert Cooks" of the world that would have been "fair play" because the Taliban were the underdogs after all -- allied with bin Laden and other "native" Afghanis who were only defending "their" territory.
"President Roosevelt, can you provide proof that our glorious Imperial Japanese Navy attacked Pearl Harbor? It was likely those devious British that wanted to god you into a war with us."
Hyperbole is taking something to the extreme. I realize use of a hyperbole often suggests not a true belief in the extreme. I suspect if you, Inga, want others to give you the benefit of doubt, you might consider not being so judgmental of others.
A history lesson concerning the Spanish Inquisition. Napoleon used the Spanish Inquisition to justify his invasion of Spain. Over the centuries the Spanish Inquisition resulted in less than ten thousand deaths--about three to six thousand according to Wiki. Napoleon knocked off that many on a good afternoon. So far as torture goes, the tortures that the French troops and Spanish guerrillas inflicted on each other show what remarkable progress 18th century man made over his medieval counterpart.....So far as the Crusades go, they were a walk in the park compared to the Mongol conquest of the near east......Cook is not an ignorant man, but his knowledge is selective and filtered.
The Real Chicken said:
I forgotten to care about or follow Cook's latest opinions--is he now apologizing for the Boston bombers as well?"
You obviously forgot ever to even read any of my opinions, as I've never apologized for any terrorist bombers, be they affiliated with Al Qaeda or the United States Government.
You obviously forgot ever to even read any of my opinions, as I've never apologized for any terrorist bombers, be they affiliated with Al Qaeda or the United States Government.
This statement says a lot about the unfortunate state of the world today. People's value judgements (calling something 'terroristic' is a value judgement) differ to the point where rational judgement is impossible, and debate becomes increasingly futile and irrational. Robert may have some valid points to make; as a debater I can respect that his arguments are rational based on his values. But when his fundamental values are so alien, the temptation to dismiss him out of hand is great.
"We have been the cowards. Lobbing cruise missiles from two thousand miles away. That's cowardly. Staying in the airplane when it hits the building. Say what you want about it. Not cowardly."
Maher can't tell the difference between "will" with "courage". It is as if he admires the courage of the estranged husband who murders his wife and children, then stays in the house as he burns it down around himself.
Besides, how were the 9-11 alpha teams supposed to get out of the planes anyway?
Comrade Bob goes full Chomski.
@ Robert Cook
"No religion, no culture, no people are free of violence, fanaticism, sadism, brutality, and atrocities. For example, as Martin Luther King, Jr. said 46 years ago (on April 04, 1967), and it's still true today, "
Yeah! Goddamn Taoists!
and ...
MLK Jr was right. As long as you don't bother including any other country in that list such as the USSR, China, etc. Of course if you combined the death tolls from The Great Leap Forward with The Cultural Revolution and other such Mao originated stupidities the number would vastly exceed anything America has done.
But that would interfere with your not-quite-so-pithy little goofball of a meme so we'll just wink at it and let you convince yourself that you are relevant.
@ Robert Cook
"You obviously forgot ever to even read any of my opinions, as I've never apologized for any terrorist bombers, be they affiliated with Al Qaeda or the United States Government."
Frankly I usually just avoid reading anything you write as it is largely a waste of time at best. Whether or not you did or did not. Well who really gives a fuck?
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