Obama's Pastor: U.S. to Blame for 9/11

[T.A.M.]

I applaud wildly. I will probably end up voting for Obama if he gets the Democratic nomination, but I do it as the best of an indifferent lot, not in expectations of a political messiah which is what some of his more fervid supporters seem to be expecting.
I particularly find annoyning their belief that he is somehow different and nobler in his political tactics then the other candidates, which I find silly.

Call me less cynical, or if you prefer, more of a loftier dreamer...those insults I can take...lol

TAM

 

[Billdave2]

Since none of the incidents and countries you list here have any thing remotely related to the human rights abusing dictators and corrupt governments I listed, I would say you've built yourself a lot of straw men here to play with.

You have little insight that the vast majority of that financial aid to foreign countries is given for things our government perceives as directly benefiting us, mainly military aid often to prop up a government that abuses human rights in its country.

How about you look at the history of our involvement in Pinochet's tyranny in Chile, Nicaragua's Somoza, The Dominican Republic's Trujillo, Haiti's succession of tyrants, Argentina's military government responsible for thousands and thousands of "the disappeared", El Salvador's and Guatemala's tyrannical governments, the Vietnamese government we supported during the war, the Shaw of Iran, and Indonesia's Suharto. That should give you a well rounded sampling of the kind of activities I am talking about.

But don't waste your time trying to claim these were fights to stop the communist dominoes from falling. Revolutionaries only turned to communism after we stood on the side of corporate assets and profits over a fair deal and human rights. While a corporation clearly has the right to make a profit and protect its assets, the typical corporate pattern was to make a deal with a corrupt dictator for the countries' resources, then those corporations would claim no responsibility for how the poor in those countries were treated.

So when labor leaders trying to unionize workers were murdered, heck, that was good for business. And should those workers take any action, just call it a communist uprising, ignore the fact that the people were desperate and had few other options and were grossly mistreated, call in the US government to provide military aid to the dictator, and there you go.

The "red scare" may or may not have been legit. But, the shortsighted decisions to back brutal dictators was not the only option. And this is where the misinformed US public gets it wrong. A better option would have been to promote a fair deal for workers, a fair price paid for the resources so that some of the profits could be directed back into the countries' infrastructure, and refusal to allow terrorist tactics to be used against millions of people. Had we done that, we would have had millions more middle class citizens all over the world driving a healthy world economy. We would have had to deal with limited resources and more pollution earlier on, but we wouldn't have had nearly as much war and terrorism.

The reason we never paid attention to human rights abuses was due to who had the power and who had the government's ear. Why should a corporation worry about poverty stricken populations? That was up to the countries' governments.



Henry Kissinger is an example of how one ignores such horrendous events and sleeps well at night. Kissinger is the poster child but hardly unique in the US government in the last century. I present the following as an example, not as some comprehensive evidence.

Human Rights Watch, 2002 - Argentina

Spanish judge seeks Kissinger

Why the law wants a word with KissingerHitchens wrote a book on the subject of Kissinger's contributions to a number of atrocities.

Hello pot, the kettle says you are black. Your list is just as much a strawman as mine was. Your post implied that the only time we get involved in other countries is in negative ways. I would be willing to bet that at this very moment there is not a poor country in this world that does not have an American presence doing some form of assistance to locals. The Peace Corp, missionaries, and other groups go around the world providing money, food, health care, and technical help. Just last month a group from my church went to Honduras and help make repairs to the local school, one of our members is a dentist and he and his partner provided free dental care to all the member of the village. We also have a mission we support in Romania that provides food, shelter and education to gypsies. That is just one church. How many other small deeds like this do you think take place every day? Do imply that all America brings to the rest of the world is suppport for corrupt dictators and their own self interests is far from the reality.

 

[gtc]

Here is the controversial quote from the wright speech, with context...

I like the way he doesn't care about the non-black Panama civillians.

Obama may not share his beliefs but we are certainly entitled to judge him based on the people he chooses to befriend and to question his political judgement.

 

[T.A.M.]

Your entitled to judge him on anything you want...free country.

TAM

 

[Skeptic Ginger]

Given he made the comments in 2001, I suspect at the time Obama's "Campaign" was a non-entity...lol

TAM

The 9/11 comments were in 2001. But there were Hillary comments much more recently. Rich white people, ......blah blah



(there's a 2o second ad at the beginning, skip past it)

 

[Skeptic Ginger]

Hello pot, the kettle says you are black. Your list is just as much a strawman as mine was. Your post implied that the only time we get involved in other countries is in negative ways. I would be willing to bet that at this very moment there is not a poor country in this world that does not have an American presence doing some form of assistance to locals. The Peace Corp, missionaries, and other groups go around the world providing money, food, health care, and technical help. Just last month a group from my church went to Honduras and help make repairs to the local school, one of our members is a dentist and he and his partner provided free dental care to all the member of the village. We also have a mission we support in Romania that provides food, shelter and education to gypsies. That is just one church. How many other small deeds like this do you think take place every day? Do imply that all America brings to the rest of the world is suppport for corrupt dictators and their own self interests is far from the reality.

Did I say none of your examples were true? Did I say there was really a negative side to the examples you gave? You continue to misrepresent my position and argue against your straw man.

And you might want to review what a straw man is: To misrepresent your position and then argue against it. Just what position have you taken that I have misrepresented and then attacked?

You claim I only recognize the bad things the country has done. Where did I say that? Just because I described many bad things says nothing about what else I think.

I said this government had done many bad things. You proceeded to describe things the country has done that were positive. I said those were not the things I was talking about.

You are annoyed I pointed out some of the less nice things this country is responsible for but pretending they didn't happen or that anyone who brings the stuff up is somehow bad for doing so is maintaining a see no evil hand over your eyes. I prefer to address the issue in hopes of not repeating it. I thought this country had moved past that crap. Then Bush Jr took office and went right back to repeating the worst of it.

 

[MaGZ]

I think some of this stuff develops insidiously over time.

I'm quite curious about Obama's true religious beliefs considering his mother was an atheist and not a closet one. Was this church a political activity from the beginning or did Obama really find Jesus somewhere?

Obama didn’t find Jesus. He found a big church that would help him get elected to the state senate.

 

[bigred]

Oh cmon. No way is Obama like all those other politicians. He's noble, you can trust him, unity, diversity, rags to riches great American story blah blah blah