Tag: Middle East

Ben, we bloggers will all miss you, as will all the standup comedians.

And no kidding, that’s the literal truth when it comes to war, American-style.

“In her great piece, Sara Gray makes the connection between kids playing at 'first person shooter games' and being in live combat. She explains how these kinds of games desensitize heavy players to images of violence- thus, isn't it easy to imagine shooting someone in real life when you spend all day simulating shooting someone?”

“It is so sad to see Muslim extremists reverting to 12th-century brutality and American ‘patriots’ regressing to 19th-century behavior.”

And if anyone says the analogy between Vietnam and the current conflict is debatable, that’s just the point. Rather than a rush to yet more war, it’s time to have a real national debate on the subject.

“What we need is a Higher World Order where building nations is more profitable than destroying them; conducting fair trade with other nations is more mutually beneficial than occupying them and stealing their resources; and living in a multi-polar world is more peaceful and profitable than one nation hopelessly clinging on to a dangerous fantasy of a unipolar world.”

We can't defend everything, not without losing everything in the process. We should be ashamed to be such a fear-based society here in the home of the brave.

Expanding the base infrastructure in the Greater Middle East will only perpetuate a militarized foreign policy premised on assumptions about the efficacy of war that should have been discredited long ago.

Ted Cruz may be able to build up his poll numbers by promising to carpet bomb foreigners in the Middle East of whom we are fearful, but at least we know that biology doesn’t have to dictate our response. Our brains don’t have to stay in the Stone Age.

“Iraqis, now Syrians, and by extension even the Europeans who are now awash in refugees from the wars we help foment, and the US taxpayer, and, documented by a Brown University study, the US job seeker—these are the losers.”