The Neo Con Blogger(TM)

The soldier taking a child to safety is doing something for world peace.

The protestor raising consciousness about the invalidity of an illegal war is doing something for world peace.

The citizen who changes their life so that they are no longer dependent upon foreign oil for transportation or their food so that there is no need for wars to protect "our" oil is doing something for world peace (perhaps more than the others).

Who ISN'T promoting world peace?

The soldier of any side who kills accidentally or purposefully innocent bystanders is increasing the cycle of violence. Like it or not, by design or not, THAT soldier is promoting violence.

Or so it seems to me, and to you, as well, I suspect. I mean, the soldier who'd drop a bomb on NY would incite all sorts of hatred and feelings of violence in you, would it not? Assuming your answer to be Yes: therein is your own evidence.
 

And how many peace signs does it take to stop hijacked planes from flying into our buildings and killing innocent civilians? I know you're a man of peace, Danny Boy, but come on! I think this cartoon speaks to all protesters, esp the more silly ones like the eco and animal rights crowd. I'd ask the same questions to those groups, 'How many peace signs does it take to stop people in Brazil from chopping up the rain forests?' Answer, 'I'm not cutting the trees down and boy it takes guts to protest here in the US when the targets of most of the eco-animal stuff has nothing to do with the US.' Where were your signs when SH murdered and gassed his own bloody people? Where were your signs for Pol Pot, Amin, Stalin, Hilter, Mengitsu, Milosvic, etc...kinda funny how the peacenicks protest the US and not poeple or places where the folks above operated with impunity. But if it makes you feel better to bomb animal test labs and throw blood on women in fur coats and torch SUV car dealerships, then I lump all of those people in the same group and ask this simple question, who has given you the right to protest - it's not the guy on the left side of the cartoon...it's the soldier (sailor/airman metaphor) on the right. Sleep tight, peacenicks, you can wake-up tomorrow and protest all over again since you live in a free country - no thanks to the fella on the left (always on the left).
 

US peaceniks protest the US because this is our country and the only one that we have any say over. Right living begins at home.

If I lived in Brazil and I had a problem with Brazilian leadership, I'd protest them. It doesn't really make a lotta sense for me here in the US to protest Brazil's actions, right?

Having said that, when we realized that Reagan and Daddy Bush were supporting Saddam back in the 70s (when most of the killing was done), the peaceniks WERE protesting the US AND our support of Saddam. How about you?

I will agree with you that it doesn't make a great deal of sense to protest a war that you feel to be about oil, for instance, and to keep driving a car using that oil. The greatest protests are those we do with our actions and lives, which is what I indicated in my first comment.

So, by your comments, do you mean to say that you think there is never a place for protest, or you just object to these particular protesters opposed to this particular war?

I mean, would you have been glad to see protesters in Saddam's Iraq, standing in opposition to him? Is it protesting you're opposed to or just these particular protests?
 

Nicely put Dan
 

Yes..and I was protesting it in HS. I wrote a paper about it - the gassing of Iranian troops. It was unknown to me at the time that kurds were slaughtered. That's worse since they were civilians. But in the case of Iran/Iraq War, it was against the G Convention ot use gas in war and I protested in the paper I wrote in HS. The proff told me that Iraq was not as bad as Iran. Great argument-moron. I told him that I did not care about either side - the premise of my paper was how can the world cast a blind eye to gassing hundreds of thousands of troops/people? Now back to Danny Boy - My contention is the degree and type of protest. Now I don't think that Danny Boy is one of the wacky protesters I am going after. In fact, I am going after all protesters/criminals who violate the rights of others in the name of protest like blowing up abortion clinics. It's agaisnt the law and anyone who does that should be in jail. Now, if you want to defend protesters who burn cars, destroy animal labs, etc., then you've proven my point that that kind of protest puts you in a league of nuttiness I simply can't understand. That was degree - here comes Type. Type in this ase is that it is seldom seen that the wackos I listed previous comments met with placards from protesters of any kind. Stalin, Pol Pot and the rest never got the same kind of protest that Nixon, Reagan and W receive. To finish. The fellas with the signs don't do a damn thing to make any person outside the US free. But if it makes them feel all warm and gooey inside, great. Protest your butts off. The fellas on the right gave you that privilege. Sleep well, boys. Let the guys on the right continue to make millions around the world free. And that's the way it is!
 

Ryan- you are either a liar against your own country, or you are extremely ignorant of the facts. Either way, you should shut your stupid mouth up.

Saddam Hussein was NEVER a US ally. Between 1984 and 1988 the US had an interest in seeing that the Iranians did not conquer Iraq and so, yes, we aided him somewhat. Far less than the Left makes of it, but we did. After the war was over, we stopped.

During the war, many Kurds served in the Iranian Army. After the war was ended ALONG WITH US ASSISTANCE, Saddam gassed the Kurds. I am so sick of Liberal traitors lying against America and blaming us for stuff we are not guilty of.
 

Dan Trabue- You are one of the Useful Idiots I wrote about in my most recent piece on the Republic of Utica which is linked on this website.

The smelly hippie carrying a protest sign does NOTHING good. He is a dope smoking fool who has no contact with the real world. My grandparents lived in Joseph Stalin's gulag world. Useful Idiots like yourself at that time were saying that Stalin's Russia was the wave of the future and that any stories of atrocities going on there were lies.

The sign carrying ass during the Vietnam Era made possible the murdering of millions of innocent Indochinese. And what did Useful Idiots like you do while the Killing Fields were being filled? You put on your bell bottoms, took a nose twinkle of the white stuff and went to Studio 54 AND COULDN'T HAVE CARED LESS!

Today you march in defense of Saddam, another filler of mass graves, and you go on and on about how unjust it all was. Where is the injustice? A murderous socialist was replaced by a democratic government.

That is ALL that happened. Those who "raise consciousness" as you put it, only raise a lot of crap.

No, not an ounce of good comes from them. And if you came out of your sheltered ivory tower, maybe you'd see that.
 

There are those of us who, once we leave our church service, do go out to protest a war that we believe to be unjust and that will only increase - not decrease - terrorism.

We do not march in defense of Saddam, we march in defense of the innocent Iraqis paying for our policies. We march in opposition to injustice because we know that peace can not be created by unjust means.

More than marching, though, we change our lifestyles so as not to be part of the problem (in this case, to decrease our dependence upon foreign oil).


To commit ad hominem attacks by calling us dope-smoking hippies only serves to deligitimize your arguments and does not address ours at all.

I think we all agree that there is a time and place to protest. When injustices are being committed in our names, for us to do nothing would be the crime.

And, just as protests helped end the unjust war in Viet Nam, our protests ARE helping end this unjust war, so they DO serve a purpose. You may disagree with us on that point, but you can't disagree that they have their intended effect.
 

RE: Why we don't protest Saddam/Hitler:

Part of the reason of smart protests is to effect change. It is very difficult for a US citizen to effect change over another country. Therefore, we protest our country where we CAN effect and HAVE effected change.

There ARE things we can do to effect change in other countries (the South Africa/Apartheid boycott springs to mind) but generally speaking, it would be ineffective for me to protest Saddam via marches in the street.

It's quite reasonable, actually.
 

Any questions?

No.

Nice one, CR.
 

"If I lived in Brazil and I had a problem with Brazilian leadership, I'd protest them. It doesn't really make a lotta sense for me here in the US to protest Brazil's actions, right?"

Dan, what about if you lived in Iraq and protested the Buthcer of Baghdad? You'd be thrown in jail, gang-banged, tortured, and if you got out, you'd be ostracized.

"More than marching, though, we change our lifestyles so as not to be part of the problem (in this case, to decrease our dependence upon foreign oil)."

Let me get this right. You've sold your car for a bike, you've stopped purchasing from anyone that uses semi-trucks for distribution, and you've stopped using electricity for it too runs with the use of oil. Sure, see ya there!

Finally, I believe dissenters are worse than the enemy. They pollute innocent minds, dilute facts, and in all cases make matters worse. John Wilkes Booth was a dissenter.
 

"Let me get this right. You've sold your car for a bike..."

Let me get this right. You've sold your car for a bike...

Yes, yes (mostly) and our electricity in KY is produced by coal and water, not oil. What I said is that we (my protestor friends and I) have decreased our dependence upon oil, not eliminated it.

It's difficult, in a system that has set up a dependence upon foreign oil, for the individual to totally divorce themselves from it, but we can reduce our dependence and call for changes from a system dependent upon foreign oil to one that is independent. That should be a big issue for conservatives, seems to me. Instead, we have a bunch of oil dudes in bed with a bunch of Arabs running our country and setting our policies (not that the Dems before them were much better).

My point remains that it makes no sense from a strategic point of view for US citizens to merely protest another nation's policies. If we wish to change another nation's policies, there are strategies to use, but protesting is not one of them.

It DOES sometimes make sense to protest ours, inasmuch as it can effect change. Dislike dissenters as much as you wish, Brother neo-con, but we're dissenting nonetheless.
 

This is great debate, save some of the name calling, and I'm guilty of it too...but I have to cut Danny Boy some slack. He is left of center on most issues I post. But what I don't think Dan is is the fringe of the wacko left that I referenced earlier. I just don't see Dan burning SUVs or torching the flag in the name of protest. On the other side is the passion everyone else has spelled out about distaste for dissent in the form of protesters this cartoon represents. The message is simple and true. Peace signs don't stop bullets or planes from killing innocent Americans. And the radicals I see demonstrating on the Mall in DC every few months certianly have done nothing to advance peace in the world. Neo-con-tastic and I have the same opinion: if one is so incensed to protest the US for the crap other countires do, I'd sure like to see these lefties protest the attrocities in Africa, Cuba, and China with the same vigor as they have against Rummy and W. That won't happen because the left never met a despot it did not like.
 

Mr. Mountjoy, I don't think you're getting my point: We might try to change the atrocities in other countries (as we did in South Africa), but there's not a whole lot of purpose in protesting it here. THAT would be a meaningless protest (except for the warm fuzzy feeling of protesting atrocities).

While there is a time for symbolic vigils, etc, most smart protesters want to conduct actions that will have actual results (ie, an end to atrocities). So, for US citizens to protest Colombian policies is not very helpful UNLESS US leaders have a hand in the nondesirable policies.

But thanks for the defense, and you're correct, I don't see much value in burning SUVs or torching a flag.

Despots I haven't liked:
Saddam
Hitler
Pol Pot
Pinochet
Somoza

to name a few...
 

You forgot the picture of Bush; it would have made it a lot easier. Clearly the Soldier himself does not decide whether or not to go to war. But as far as this pic is concerned who is holding a gun?

If you had a picture of Bush next to Bin Laden that would be a toss up as well. Although you could argue that more people have died as a result of Bush than have as a result of Bin Laden.

Still this pic is just cheap propaganda. I could replace that soldiers pic with a leveled Iraqi village and 40 dead children and ask the same question.
 

Boo Hoo Hoo - you obviously have missed the point of the metaphor this picture represents...The US, along with it allies, saved the world how many times? Let's see, in the last 100 years WWI, WWII, Korea, Viet Nam (tried until we pulled out thanks to pressure from your freidn on the lft side of the cartoon), Grenada, Ending the Cold War, Afghanistan and the 50 million plus who are now free in Iraq, plus all the causes we help fund like Jonas Savimbi in Angola, the Contras, etc. So, the question really is, who has not been saved when the US does what it does best? Don't try to answer that. Save yourself from continued embarassment...you simply just don't understand.
 

It's the Soldier, not the reporter
who has given us the freedom of the press.

It's the Soldier, not the poet
who has given us freedom of speech

It is the Soldier, not the politicians that ensures our right to Life, Liberty and the Pursuit of Happiness.

It's the Soldier who salutes the flag, who serves beneath the flag,
and, whose coffin is draped by the flag.

God bless our military who are in harms way!!!
 

Amen - Bos'un's Mate - Fair Winds!
 

Thanks for asking, Poldark. I'd be glad to elaborate.

There are times for symbolic protests, even when it may seemingly do no good. Given limited amounts of time in anyone's life though, most progressives and other folk who are Resisters would rather see effective actions taken.

So the point, with the Nazi-era German citizen would not be to do nothing, but it would be to find the most effective means of resistence.

Which is why I gave the example of South Africa. We, who opposed apartheid here in the US, did not spend too much time in generic protests of the South African gov't. There was little point to it beyond bringing awareness. Instead, we spent time organizing a global boycott, which eventually helped bring down apartheid.

Nonviolent resisters are NOT ever for "doing nothing" in the face of oppression. We're for taking wise and just actions to bring the oppression to light and end it.

Seem reasonable?

As to your first question: It is always the atrocity itself, the lack of Justice that motivates us. Believe me, I'd really rather my gov't was NOT taking unjust actions that I'd have to spend my time protesting.
 

And again, where were you when the real bloodbaths in Africa were going on when you were carrying signs about SA? Were you and your buddies attacking the black-on-black opressions in Zambia, Uganda, Zaire, etc. Nope. Funny how those same protesters turned a blind eye to the black-on-black oppression which certianly killed more people than the SA ever did. More people died in Ugandan jails than all the people who dies in SA. What nonesense protesting SA was in the face of the deaths and manical regiemes mentioned in those other countires on the same continent. And yet there was silence from the left. As always!
 

Genocides are not the kinds of things that individuals can do much about effectively. So, instead of protesting Uganda for bloodbaths, I've been petitioning my gov't to do something about it. I've been encouraging us to join the ICC, to strengthen the UN, to abide by international policies ourselves, to lead the way in working for justice and designing plans on HOW to deal with the Ugandas of the world.

EVEN IF you believe that an Iraq style invasion could work in one case, it can't work in them all because there are not enough resources to stage a military invasion in every oppressive country. But we can develop international policies and laws about what is and is NOT acceptable. (It is not a loss of sovreignty to sign on to an agreement that killing innocent people is wrong.)

So, that's what I've been doing. What about you? There has NOT been silence from the left any moreso than the silence from the right. There HAS been WAY too much silence from everyone, but not from one side more than the other.
 

Thanks for proving my point.