i kill therefore i am

or not as the case may be.

jeff goldstein and his dittoheads are thumping chests and slapping backs like the gang of drunken fratboys they are over a recent column by joel stein.

shorter joel stein: "i don't support the troops because i don't support the war but i still wan't to be cool so i'll say i like them."

shorter goldstein: "i like the sound my keyboard makes"

shorter dittoheads: "you are like a god sir"

to cleanse your palate i offer the words of mr. crispin sartwell

By Crispin Sartwell

Unanimity gives me the heebie-jeebies. And lately, I'm pretty nervous
out on the highway and in the parking lots, where every car seems to
have three yellow-ribbon magnets that say "Support Our Troops."

Even people who oppose the war "support our troops." I find this
puzzling. If you think the war is wrong, then you think what the
soldiers are doing is wrong.

One of the purposes of training soldiers to act under order is to
create a disciplined, unified implementation of tactics. Another is
to relieve as many people as possible of as much responsibility as
possible for what they're doing.

But even in a context in which someone is telling you what to do,
you're responsible for what you do. If this is not the case, then not
only are there no war crimes, there are no war heroes.

To join the military is a decision. To allow yourself to be deployed
to Iraq is a decision. No doubt it would be disconcerting to take
yourself to be serving your country in, let us say, Vietnam and then
come home to find yourself reviled. But if you yourself believed your
decision to fight was the right decision, you should expect that
others will disagree with you, and you should be able to weather the
disagreement.

I am not under an obligation to praise you for taking actions I think
are wrong. Now, if I believed that you acted in ignorance -- that,
for example, you thought that conquering and occupying Iraq was
"protecting our country," then I might regard that as something of an
excuse. Then again, I might think that you should know your belief is
false and that if you believe without question what Dick Cheney (or,
for that matter, anyone else) says, then you're liable to do bad things.

Writing in 1848 during the Mexican-American War -- a war prosecuted
on the flimsiest of pretexts with the most questionable of motives --
Henry David Thoreau wrote as follows: "A common and natural result of
undue respect for the law is, that you see a file of soldiers,
colonel, captain, privates, powder-monkeys, and all, marching in
admirable order over hill and dale to the wars, against their wills,
ay, against their common sense and consciences, which make it very
steep marching indeed.

"The mass of men serve the state thus, not as men mainly, but as
machines. ... In most cases there is no free exercise whatever of the
judgment or the moral sense; but they put themselves on the level
with wood and earth and stones: and wooden men can perhaps be
manufactured that will serve the purpose as well."

For us to oppose what our troops are doing and to support them for
doing it is to regard them as inanimate objects, as things with no
responsibility for their own actions. It is to excuse everything on
the ground that the persons doing it have no conscience,
understanding or will.

But we, too, need to accept our responsibility. Thoreau went to jail
because -- in protest of the war and as a refusal to participate in
it -- he declined to pay his taxes. I myself, though I oppose the
war, am no tax resistor. In other words, when the authorities order
me to cough up (or, rather, when they confiscate the war machine's
cut directly from my paycheck), I utter nary a peep.

The laws and mechanisms under which I do this are designed precisely
to exculpate me, to diminish my own sense of my responsibility. But
whether the law treats me as a child, an object, an idiot or a
victim, still I am responsible as I pay for what I hate.

Support our taxpayers.

SUBVERT OUR TROOPS

discuss among yourselves

Comments

[John Parker]

Ames, you were right! The Democrats won!

Now: LET THEM LEAD~!

[Ames Tiedeman]

How come Karl Rove thought the Republicans would hold the Senate and the House?

I read that he even thought this at 8:00 p.m. on November 7th.

Makes me laugh. Was he that out of touch with reality?

Amazing, really.

[John Parker]

Ames Tiedeman:

I think Rove has run his course.

His "Brain" is dead!

[John Parker]

Ames: Do you think a Republican or Democrat will win in 2008?

Who do you think is the next President?

[Comandante Agi]

the real question is: who is Ames Tiedeman?

[Ames Tiedeman]

Look at this story I found: For all of you with thoughts on illegal immigration and an interest in the Eisenhower Administration. A very interesting read regardless of your opinion:

July 06, 2006 edition

How Eisenhower solved illegal border crossings from Mexico
By John Dillin
WASHINGTON – George W. Bush isn't the first Republican president to face a full-blown immigration crisis on the US-Mexican border.
Fifty-three years ago, when newly elected Dwight Eisenhower moved into the White House, America's southern frontier was as porous as a spaghetti sieve. As many as 3 million illegal migrants had walked and waded northward over a period of several years for jobs in California, Arizona, Texas, and points beyond.

President Eisenhower cut off this illegal traffic. He did it quickly and decisively with only 1,075 United States Border Patrol agents - less than one-tenth of today's force. The operation is still highly praised among veterans of the Border Patrol.

Although there is little to no record of this operation in Ike's official papers, one piece of historic evidence indicates how he felt. In 1951, Ike wrote a letter to Sen. William Fulbright (D) of Arkansas. The senator had just proposed that a special commission be created by Congress to examine unethical conduct by government officials who accepted gifts and favors in exchange for special treatment of private individuals.

General Eisenhower, who was gearing up for his run for the presidency, said "Amen" to Senator Fulbright's proposal. He then quoted a report in The New York Times, highlighting one paragraph that said: "The rise in illegal border-crossing by Mexican 'wetbacks' to a current rate of more than 1,000,000 cases a year has been accompanied by a curious relaxation in ethical standards extending all the way from the farmer-exploiters of this contraband labor to the highest levels of the Federal Government."

Years later, the late Herbert Brownell Jr., Eisenhower's first attorney general, said in an interview with this writer that the president had a sense of urgency about illegal immigration when he took office.

America "was faced with a breakdown in law enforcement on a very large scale," Mr. Brownell said. "When I say large scale, I mean hundreds of thousands were coming in from Mexico [every year] without restraint."

Although an on-and-off guest-worker program for Mexicans was operating at the time, farmers and ranchers in the Southwest had become dependent on an additional low-cost, docile, illegal labor force of up to 3 million, mostly Mexican, laborers.

According to the Handbook of Texas Online, published by the University of Texas at Austin and the Texas State Historical Association, this illegal workforce had a severe impact on the wages of ordinary working Americans. The Handbook Online reports that a study by the President's Commission on Migratory Labor in Texas in 1950 found that cotton growers in the Rio Grande Valley, where most illegal aliens in Texas worked, paid wages that were "approximately half" the farm wages paid elsewhere in the state.

Profits from illegal labor led to the kind of corruption that apparently worried Eisenhower. Joseph White, a retired 21-year veteran of the Border Patrol, says that in the early 1950s, some senior US officials overseeing immigration enforcement "had friends among the ranchers," and agents "did not dare" arrest their illegal workers.

Walt Edwards, who joined the Border Patrol in 1951, tells a similar story. He says: "When we caught illegal aliens on farms and ranches, the farmer or rancher would often call and complain [to officials in El Paso]. And depending on how politically connected they were, there would be political intervention. That is how we got into this mess we are in now."

Bill Chambers, who worked for a combined 33 years for the Border Patrol and the then-called US Immigration and Naturalization Service (INS), says politically powerful people are still fueling the flow of illegals.

During the 1950s, however, this "Good Old Boy" system changed under Eisenhower - if only for about 10 years.

In 1954, Ike appointed retired Gen. Joseph "Jumpin' Joe" Swing, a former West Point classmate and veteran of the 101st Airborne, as the new INS commissioner.

Influential politicians, including Sen. Lyndon B. Johnson (D) of Texas and Sen. Pat McCarran (D) of Nevada, favored open borders, and were dead set against strong border enforcement, Brownell said. But General Swing's close connections to the president shielded him - and the Border Patrol - from meddling by powerful political and corporate interests.

One of Swing's first decisive acts was to transfer certain entrenched immigration officials out of the border area to other regions of the country where their political connections with people such as Senator Johnson would have no effect.

Then on June 17, 1954, what was called "Operation Wetback" began. Because political resistance was lower in California and Arizona, the roundup of aliens began there. Some 750 agents swept northward through agricultural areas with a goal of 1,000 apprehensions a day. By the end of July, over 50,000 aliens were caught in the two states. Another 488,000, fearing arrest, had fled the country.

By mid-July, the crackdown extended northward into Utah, Nevada, and Idaho, and eastward to Texas.

By September, 80,000 had been taken into custody in Texas, and an estimated 500,000 to 700,000 illegals had left the Lone Star State voluntarily.

Unlike today, Mexicans caught in the roundup were not simply released at the border, where they could easily reenter the US. To discourage their return, Swing arranged for buses and trains to take many aliens deep within Mexico before being set free.

Tens of thousands more were put aboard two hired ships, the Emancipation and the Mercurio. The ships ferried the aliens from Port Isabel, Texas, to Vera Cruz, Mexico, more than 500 miles south.

The sea voyage was "a rough trip, and they did not like it," says Don Coppock, who worked his way up from Border Patrolman in 1941 to eventually head the Border Patrol from 1960 to 1973.

Mr. Coppock says he "cannot understand why [President] Bush let [today's] problem get away from him as it has. I guess it was his compassionate conservatism, and trying to please [Mexican President] Vincente Fox."

There are now said to be 12 million to 20 million illegal aliens in the US. Of the Mexicans who live here, an estimated 85 percent are here illegally.

[Ames Tiedeman]

@John:

A Republican. We have learned our lesson on giving one party all the branches.

[Ames Tiedeman]

The Republican debate of June 4th was superb. Unlike the Democrats, the Republicans actually speak their minds.
Hillary, Edwards, and Obama look like children compared to the Republican field. From an intellectual standpoint, the
Republicans far out do the "tripple failure" that is Hillary, Edwards, Obama.

[Jason Sweet]

Good point on immigration Ames. I also agree with you that this is a strange site. Give them hell.