Moved by admin: "This is what a starving child looks like": by Zak

Yada, yada. Americans are never responsible for anything their government does, are they? But they backed George W Bush to the hilt when he was invading Iraq and slaughtering 700,000 civilians. And they - YOU - re-elected Obama even though he sends drones to foreign countries every day and kills innocent civilians.

Well, that's the problem, isn't it? You don't really have any choice. The candidate with the most money to buy the media gets elected. You need to change your electoral system. HOWEVER, there is nothing to prevent Americans from protesting against illegal invasions of foreign countries, killing people with drones etc.

The US is occupying Afghanistan supposedly to fight al Qaeda.
At the same time, the US is giving money, weapons and technical support to al Qaeda in Syria.

...and drop off some money in Syria on the way!

Are those the same Irish people that allowed their children to be beaten and abused in school by the church because protesting would do no good (remember you said the church was too powerful)...or are we talking about a different group?

So are you suggesting that I quit my job and go stand outside the White House alone with a sign? You think that would make me a better person? Other than being homeless myself at that point, it really wouldn't make a difference, would it?

Could you maybe think of another topic to debate/argue about? While I do enjoy the argument, this one goes in a circle and I get bored.

That's rubbish, for a start. Some of my best friends are American (god help me), and a whole branch of my family is Irish-American.
I am pro American. I am pro the America that allows and encourages free speech, freedom of expression, tolerance of difference, independence, free enterprise, equal opportunity, democracy, civil rights and so on. But I am strongly anti American foreign policy.

Hello? I was one of the main organisers of the anti Iraq war protests in both Ireland and the UK. We were in constant contact with Cindy Sheehan and all the other protest groups in the US. There wasn't a protest in the US that we didn't know about.
I'm well aware of that, but they weren't protesting about anything he'd done. They were mainly Gore supporters who felt that they'd been cheated.
No, no, and thrice no. Again, there wasn't a protest that we didn't know about. We knew who the organisers were, we knew how many people took part, we knew how many arrests were made and who the arrested people were. The antiwar movement - and again, I was one of the main organisers and also handled a lot of the PR - was, and is, a tight and interconnected network, with different groups in almost constant contact with each other and with the main organizations.

I'm well aware that there were public protests in the US. They were sporadic and small, and they were mostly organised by the families and friends of soldiers serving in Iraq, or, like Sheehan, by the families of soldiers who had been killed. It was all about keeping "our boys" safe. I even had an argument with Cindy Sheehan about the fact that she had the number of casualties (ie fatalities) announced at the top of her website. It was like, "Killed so far: 1,125". This was the number of AMERICANS killed. There was no mention of the Iraqi civilians killed (who at that point numbered over 50,000). She grudgingly added an Iraq Body Count widget to the bottom of her index page.
My posts are not biased. America has a long and shameful history of attacking and invading and destroying or occupying (or, in the case of Iraq, both) other countries. US forces killed 2 million civilians in Vietnam. Then there was Korea, Cambodia, Nicaragua, El Salvador, Panama, Philipines, Guatemala, and dozens of other "military interventions". The US also supports Israeli state terrorism and apartheid. These are the facts. It would be impossible to understate the damage and destruction that the US has inflicted on other countries. The US is a terrorist state. That's what most Americans don't understand. It isn't possible to be "biased" against American foreign policy, no more than it is possible to be biased against Nazism, or Stalinism. You attack, invade, occupy and steal the resources of other countries on a continuous basis, and you have killed millions of innocent civilians in the process. Why is the US in occupation in Afghanistan? It's a simple question, but I've yet to meet an American who can give me a sensible answer. Why did the US invade Iraq? Why is the US supporting al Qaeda (the group it blames on 911!) in Syria? Why is the US sending drones to kill people in Sudan, Afghanistan, Somalia etc? Would it be okay if these countries sent drones to the US?

I make a distinction between Americans and US foreign policy. I "get" that most Americans don't really know what's going on, or what atrocities are being committed in their name, by their government. I understand that most Americans are too busy trying to survive and feed their children to take an interest in US foreign policy. But at the same time they can't turn a blind eye forever. When American forces liberated Buchenwald and Dachau, they forced the local people - who claimed not to know what was going on - to enter the camps and see for themselves the evidence of the atrocities carried out by their brave soldiers. There was a recognition that an army can only behave in this way with the cooperation, or at least the willful ignorance, of the people. Most of the people probably didn't know what was going on in the camps. But they didn't want to know. The Allied view was that if they didn't know, they should have known. They should have taken the trouble to find out. And the fact that they didn't made them complicit in the crime.

Americans have no excuse now. With the internet, they can easily find out what's going on. They have the means to find out whether their government is telling them the truth. If they choose not to take the trouble to find out, then they have to be prepared to share the blame for the crimes their government carries out on their behalf.

Oh good grief. No one is trying to stop Zak or anyone else from expressing themselves here, Joan. But other people can have opposing views to him as well. I rarely if ever post on this part of the forum, because I see it as an exercise in futility. I learned long ago that I will never change anyone's opinion about anything; least of all Zak Martin's.

Joan, the reason you may not believe there were many antiwar protests is because there was grave under-reporting of these protests and/or the numbers involved. A simple search for "under-reported war or Bush protests" will yield quite a bit of data. The Fairness and Accuracy in Reporting site as well as the ACLU sites have a lot of info about this.

New York Times, NPR Recount Anti-War Protests

Now I really am done. All this does is raise my blood pressure, which I don't need.

Hope you all enjoy your forum.