George Orwell's Perpetual War - are we there yet, Mr. McCain? (Ron Paul, Huckabee)

[New City V]

Las Valley 702 / George Orwell's Perpetual War - are we there yet?

George Orwell in his 1948 book "1984" warned us about a future dystopia that manipulated the public into constantly rewriting history and maintaining an extreme authoritarian environment of perpetual war.


YouTube - 1984 George orwell Film part 1



In 1961 President Dwight Eisenhower warned us about the dangerous influence and corruption of an emerging "military-industrial" complex.


YouTube - Eisenhower on the Military Industrial Complex

Many view the long American-Soviet Union "cold war" as mostly a propaganda vehicle for both sides to maintain domestic political power, rationalize colonization, coups, assassination and interference in other nations, suppress domestic dissent, and generally support militarism and authoritarian rule.




YouTube - He May Be a Communist

YouTube - President Nixon widens the Vietnam War - 13 of 28

YouTube - Iran-Iraq War Declassified



Aren't we seeing the same thing with Bush's preemptive Iraq war - no end in sight, labeling anti-war citizens as unpatriotic or even traitors, no exit strategy or even planning for an end to war, etc.?




YouTube - Seymour Hersh: US is funding Al-Qaeda to counter Iran - 1

YouTube - O'Neill: Bush determined to invade Iraq from Day One. (2004)

YouTube - Bob Woodward "State of Denial":Bush at War part1

When a messianic George W. Bush suggests that we could be in Iraq for 50 years, John McCain says "make it 100 years ... that's fine with me." Isn't that really just the same manipulative political strategy of fear that worked well for the militaristic Republicans during the Cold War?

Originally Posted by LA Times

http://www.latimes.com/news/politics/la-na-mccain5jan05,0,1958105.story?coll=la-home-center

"The United States military could stay in Iraq for "maybe a hundred years" and that "would be fine with me," John McCain told two hundred or so people at a town hall meeting in Derry, New Hampshire, on Jan 3. And U.S. troops could be in Iraq for "a thousand years" or "a million years," as far as he was concerned."

Originally Posted by New York Times

http://www.nytimes.com/2008/02/01/opinion/01brooks.html

He [McCain] talks about the struggle with Islamic extremists as the transcendent foreign policy challenge of our time.

YouTube - McCain: 100 years in Iraq "would be fine with me"

Haven't we seen re-runs of this same fear/war-mongering movie now for decades?

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[paperhouse]

Why call out McCain? Huckabee, Romney, Obama, and Hillary will continue the same policy.

[New City V]

McCain is the only one who has publicly advocated staying in Iraq for 100 years.

Ron Paul has expressed, along with the Democrats, a clear-cut intent to get us out of Iraq as soon practicable.

[Yeledaf]

"Pacifism is objectively pro-fascist. This is elementary common sense. If you hamper the war effort of one side, you automatically help out that of the other. Nor is there any real way of remaining outside such a war as the present one. In practice, 'he that is not with me is against me.'"" -
-- George Orwell

[New City V]

Originally Posted by Yeledaf

... [mixed bag of quotations] ... -- George Orwell

Totally meaningless. There is an immense amount of room between extreme pacifism and calculated militarism.

What difference does it make to the dead, the orphans, and the homeless, whether the mad destruction is wrought under the name of totalitarianism or the holy name of liberty and democracy? - Mahatma Gandhi

Returning violence for violence multiplies violence, adding deeper darkness to a night already devoid of stars. Darkness cannot drive out darkness: only light can do that. Hate cannot drive out hate: only love can do that. Hate multiplies hate, violence multiplies violence, and toughness multiplies toughness in a descending spiral of destruction.... The chain reaction of evil — hate begetting hate, wars producing more wars — must be broken, or we shall be plunged into the dark abyss of annihilation. -Martin Luther King Jr.

My pacifism is an instinctive feeling, a feeling that possesses me because the murder of men is disgusting. - Albert Einstein

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[Yeledaf]

Originally Posted by New City V

Totally meaningless. There is an immense amount of room between the extreme pacifism and militarism.

What difference does it make to the dead, the orphans, and the homeless, whether the mad destruction is wrought under the name of totalitarianism or the holy name of liberty and democracy? - Mahatma Gandhi

Returning violence for violence multiplies violence, adding deeper darkness to a night already devoid of stars. Darkness cannot drive out darkness: only light can do that. Hate cannot drive out hate: only love can do that. Hate multiplies hate, violence multiplies violence, and toughness multiplies toughness in a descending spiral of destruction.... The chain reaction of evil — hate begetting hate, wars producing more wars — must be broken, or we shall be plunged into the dark abyss of annihilation. -Martin Luther King Jr.

My pacifism is an instinctive feeling, a feeling that possesses me because the murder of men is disgusting. - Albert Einstein

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You wanted to play Orwell, let's play Orwell. Try reading something besides 1984, for starters. Then come back when you can do more than google quotes and post images.

Orwell was a complex and intelligent man, who was not afraid to fight against evil. He was not an adolescent sloganeer.

[New City V]

Originally Posted by Yeledaf

He was not an adolescent sloganeer.

As you seem to be with your lone Orwell quotation which he later regretted.

Originally Posted by George Orwell, 1944

For instance, I particularly regret having said in one letter that Julian Symons 'writes in a vaguely Fascist strain' - a quite unjustified statement based on a single article which I probably misunderstood. But this kind of thing results from the lunatic atmosphere of war, the fog of lies and misinformation in which one has to work and the endless sordid controversies in which a political journalist is involved.

[paperhouse]

Originally Posted by New City V

McCain is the only one who has publicly advocated staying in Iraq for 100 years.

Ron Paul urges, along with the Democrats, a clear-cut intent to get us out of Iraq as soon practicable.

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I haven't seen a clear cut plan from any of the Democrats aside from Kucinich, Edwards, Biden, or Gravel. I never paid much attention to Dodd. Hillary and Obama are dancing around the issue.

McCain, Romney, and Huckabee support continuing the war and perhaps elevating it if Iran decides to send any more fishing trolleys into open waters "threatening" our warships.

[Yeledaf]

Originally Posted by New City V

As you seem to be with your lone Orwell quotation which he later regretted.

He never regretted the wounds he received fighting in Spain, though, did he?

As I suggested before --- read the author. Don't do a quick google search and congratulate yourself for finding something that supports your immature views. That is sophomoric and contemptible.

To get you started, here is a passage from Orwell's essays literary criticism -- an essay called "Lear, Tolstoy, and the Fool." It's a more textured treatment of pacifism and its hypocritical aspects:

There are families in which the father will say to his child, ‘You’ll get a thick ear if you do that again’, while the mother, her eyes brimming over with tears, will take the child in her arms and murmur lovingly, ‘Now, darling, is it kind to Mummy to do that?’ And who would maintain that the second method is less tyrannous than the first? The distinction that really matters is not between violence and non-violence, but between having and not having the appetite for power. There are people who are convinced of the wickedness both of armies and of police forces, but who are nevertheless much more intolerant and inquisitorial in outlook than the normal person who believes that it is necessary to use violence in certain circumstances. They will not say to somebody else, ‘Do this, that and the other or you will go to prison’, but they will, if they can, get inside his brain and dictate his thoughts for him in the minutest particulars. Creeds like pacifism and anarchism, which seem on the surface to imply a complete renunciation of power, rather encourage this habit of mind. For if you have embraced a creed which appears to be free from the ordinary dirtiness of politics—a creed from which you yourself cannot expect to draw any material advantage—surely that proves that you are in the right? And the more you are in the right, the more natural that everyone else should be bullied into thinking likewise.

[New City V]

Originally Posted by Yeledaf

That is sophomoric and contemptible.

Dear Mr. Quotations,

This thread is not about your silly George Orwell quotes or what he did or did not believe at some point in his life. What we recognize are patterns of subterfuge from politicians who start wars for selfish, deceitful purposes.

Re: militarism vs pacifism - I return to my earlier response:

Originally Posted by New City V

Totally meaningless. There is an immense amount of room between extreme pacifism and calculated militarism.

That you prefer to defend militarism and Orwellian exploitation by using ad hominem attacks buttressed by silly and irrelevant quotations is telling by itself. Orwell's Big Brother would be proud.