IntenseDebate - JustinRaimondo

14 years ago @ Antiwar.com Original A... - The Afghan 'Experiment' · 0 replies · +1 points

What's happened to leftists? Have they forgotten how to think -- or read? To say that Obama's style is "Soviet" is a long way from saying that the Soviets are (were?) behind the escalation of the war. (How could they be when they're gone, gone gone....?)

COIN theorists quote Mao: don't blame me, blame them.

As for "Western capitalism" being the "real" cause of the Afghan war -- really? I don't think the Pentagon is a "capialist" institution, quite the opposite. Yes, we agree on "the ruling elite," which is empowered by the government. Governments make war: separate economic and governmental power, and you have no more wars to make Big Oil richer than it already is.

14 years ago @ Antiwar.com Original A... - The Afghan 'Experiment' · 0 replies · 0 points

I think the Taliban has the Pashtun franchise pretty much locked up. As for the Bush administration and HTS: the fascination with "science" as a weapon of war, specifically the social "sciences," is a specifically left-liberal conceit that has nothing to do with Bush.

See here:

http://mises.org/rothbard/mantle.asp

See also Friedrich von Hayek's "The Counter Revolution of Science," full text here:

http://www.archive.org/stream/counterrevolutio030...

14 years ago @ Antiwar.com Original A... - The Afghan 'Experiment' · 0 replies · 0 points

Good points. I will have to write a column about the 'stans -- Turkmenistan, Kazakhstan, etc., -- soon.

14 years ago @ Antiwar.com Original A... - The Afghan 'Experiment' · 2 replies · +2 points

Oh bull. I never said the Soviets -- who no longer exist, by the way -- are behind US imperialism, nor is Mao (he's dead, don'tcha know). As for liberalism -- who do you think is in charge in Washingon, these days? Ron Paul? Wake up, Grady my friend! The "liberal" road to a decades-long war has already been mapped out by our Dear Leader.

14 years ago @ Antiwar.com Original A... - The Afghan 'Experiment' · 0 replies · +2 points

http://humanterrainsystem.army.mil/paula.html

14 years ago @ Antiwar.com Original A... - Is the Antiwar Movemen... · 0 replies · +1 points

The solution is building an antiwar movement that transcends the narrow boundaries of "left" and "right".

It also means knowing who our friends are, and, more importantly, who our enemies are. And don't be so down on "fingerpointing"! it's necessary -- and it's also a lot of fun, at least for me. I am, after all,about as far from being a "progressive" (as presently defined) as one could possibly get, and it gives me no small amount of pleasure to point out how cravenly the "antiwar" voices of yesteryear have fallen silent at the sight of the killing fields of Afghanistan.

14 years ago @ Antiwar.com Original A... - Is the Antiwar Movemen... · 2 replies · +1 points

Yes, I read that, too: but you can bet the media are still being "vetted," albeit under the radar.

As to your other points: unlike most conservatives, progressives are supposed to be anti-war in principle -- and, historically, they have been, at least until the rise of the Dear Leader. Now, it seems, they are silent in the face of the biggest most ambitious imperialist project to do -- the invasion and occupation of Afghanistan and much of Central Asia. They have turned on a dime. Why is it unfair to point this out?

One slight correction of the factual basis for your critique: "your own party"? Which party is that? We here at Antiwar.com don't participate in electoral politics, and we support no party, not even the Libertarian Party.

14 years ago @ Antiwar.com Original A... - The Coming Media Bailout · 0 replies · +1 points

See -- yelling works.

Darpanet to the contrary notwithstanding, govt' didn't create anything: indvidual scientists discovered a preexisting scientific principle. It would have happened fifty years earlier if vital resources hadn't been diverted from private hands. As it was, the entrepreneurs truly developed the internet, not the Pentagon;.

14 years ago @ Antiwar.com Original A... - The Coming Media Bailout · 1 reply · +1 points

There is an argument to be made, however, that since the "mainstream" media is just a shill for the government anyway, especially in foreign policy matters, that they might as well be put on the payroll as government employees. That way, it's all upfront -- and everybody knows who and what they are serving.

Markets fails liberal snotnoses like you because, like most puffed-up ersatz "intellectuals," you no doubt believe the market fails to appreciate your genius, and thus doesn't reward you commensurate with your alleged abilities. Life is hard, bud, and then you die....

And this tired canard about "the Pentagon" having "invented" the internet is just as tired as the arguments you make for a government-controlled media: the internet was there waiting to be discovered, even if the Pentagon had never existed. Indeed, it may very well have appeared on our computer screens much earlier -- if so many resources hadn't been wasted and shoved down the ravenous maw of the State.

14 years ago @ Antiwar.com Original A... - The Coming Media Bailout · 0 replies · +1 points

Oh please -- what is it about the "progressive" give-me-free-money-because-I'm-cool viewpoint that produces such condescension?

He who pays the piper calls the tune, comrade. The mainstream press has nothing to say about the subsidies you descry. That's because they are FOR those subsidies -- and would especially be for them if they were recipients. Share the wealth, spread it around: GE and the New York Times, together in celebration of corporate liberalism.

IntenseDebate Comment System

Connect with JustinRaimondo

People I'm following

JustinRaimondo