Replies to This Discussion

Permalink Reply by Phil Cook on May 18, 2009 at 12:58am

The bible is always good at making people feel better about having broken it's commandments.

Permalink Reply by Angie Jackson on May 18, 2009 at 6:38am

Holy crap that's seriously disturbed. Way to boil the war down into theocratic terms any religious idiot (like our former president) could find appealing

Permalink Reply by mxyzptlk on May 18, 2009 at 5:51pm

Do you really think Rumsfeld is all that zealous?

I don't.

I think Rumsfeld stuck his wet finger in the air, recognized that there is a contingent of proselytizing officers, and like all the other arguments they presented for 8 years, they aimed for the emotional core. Give the officers reason to make this a holy war, and they'll fight that much harder, even when you shirk them on armor, water, and armed support on supply lines; when you take away their jobs and use tax money to hand them out to private companies at a premium and they lord it over the soldiers; when you provide them with no plan for security after the initial invasion; and when you stick them in rat-infested roach motels of hospitals when they get fucking shrapnel in their heads and leave them to suffer in silence.

Make them think it's all part of god's fucking plan, and the sin is washed away like a Saturday afternoon confessional.

I wrestled around Rumsfeld's weight class (he was a wrestler). Ever since he pulled the stunt with lighter, faster military / dirty nuke / tax debate, I've wished I could have wrestled him, and leave no rib unbroken. He's a sickening example of humanity.

Permalink Reply by Фелч Гроган on May 18, 2009 at 7:59pm

His "belief" is irrelevant. His ethical and moral bankruptcy is not.

Permalink Reply by mxyzptlk on May 18, 2009 at 8:38pm

Yep -- that's what I was saying in too many words, as in when I said I don't think he's all that zealous (of a Christian).

But part of his ethical and moral bankruptcy is wearing a Christian mask in order to use others' faith as a means to his end. It's kind of the neocon parallel of fundamentalist Christians using Israel, except most Israelis don't seem to buffaloed by people like Hagee.

I should have left out the wrestling bit. I tried to edit it, but lost connection (can never keep a good connection at my university's library). Rumsfeld just gets under my skin. In the lead-up to the war, I was doing a project tracking his statements with the media coverage of those statements, the coverage of the lead-up to the war, and the budget process, and what I saw was one of the creepiest, spookiest, ugliest political manipulations I've seen in my few years on this planet.

Permalink Reply by Dallas the Phallus on May 18, 2009 at 6:10pm