In the old days, during Biblical Times, when we invaded a country we did it for a reason. To take their stuff and, when available, their women. This is God’s way. For instance:
Shall not their cattle and their substance and every beast of their’s be our’s? only let us consent unto them, and they will dwell with us. …And it came to pass on the third day, when they were sore, that two of the sons of Jacob, Simeon and Levi, Dinah’s brethren, took each man his sword, and came upon the city boldly, and slew all the males. ….The sons of Jacob came upon the slain, and spoiled the city, because they had defiled their sister. They took their sheep, and their oxen, and their asses, and that which was in the city, and that which was in the field, and all their wealth, and all their little ones, and their wives took they captive, and spoiled even all that was in the house.
That was god. Makes sense. If the other guys don’t give you what you want, you invade them and make them pay with their lives, their stuff, their cattle, their women. So what the hell are we doing in Iraq?
That was Michele Bachmann. I so hope she becomes president. I’d love to have a couple of Iraqi slaves around the house, and they have some good stuff there too, old artifacts and such.
And if every American who was related to a soldier who died in Iraq got several million dollars, that could help our economy.
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Reaction = Face + Palm
Also I feel screwed by the title, I was expecting a quote more along the lines of “I realise now that I’m wildly unpopular and spectacularly unqualified so I withdraw from the race”.
Well not EXPECTING, hoping maybe
That’s just… that’s just… oh, fuck!
If only the Israelis had been more biblical in ’67, there would be no Palestinians to complain today. See what happens when you don’t follow the “good” book.
In other news, Michele Bachmann, astonished at the immense cost of WWI and WWII, recommended to make the Germans and the Japanese pay for it.
Well, they did try to make the Germans pay for WWI. It was a major contributing cause of WWII.
I believe Germany didn’t finish paying reparations for WWI until a couple of years ago. There was a long period of interruption in the payment schedule, and the DDR did not participate as they were paying the Russians for WWII for a number of years.
I think that both the neo-cons and the Foggy Bottom Crew had plans for the Iraq war to pay for itself with lowered oil prices and lots of juicy contracts for oil companies. The neocons wanted to simply privatize and plunder Iraq’s oil after turning Iraq into a happy flower petal tossing democracy. The State Department was a bit more realistic. They wanted to install a new dictator, let them “keep” their oil, and do most of the oil bidness under the table.
Either way, there was some expectation that these plans would defray a large part of the costs of the war. How wrong they were. And even if the oil companies got the contracts they wanted (and to an extent they have, though it took a long time) how can we be sure that the revenue would be taxed in such a way that the government costs in blood and treasure were covered?
Bachmann demanding a million dollars for each dead soldier’s family is just crazy. That’s a purely punitive measure. How could we possibly do such a thing to a people and government that have initiated no use of force against us?
I live in Alberta so I should start practicing to be a gud, gawd fearing’ Amurican when the rethugicans win next year?
My granddaddy was from Indiana, but converted to a Canuck, so would I be guilty of being a traitor or an apostate?
This is a popular idea, usually followed by a comment along the lines of “that didn’t really work out for them”. But there is another possibility, which is that they weren’t interested in having it pay for itself from the point of view of America as a whole: as things turned out, quite a few people (mentioning no-one connected to Halliburton) got rich from the contracts for “rebuilding” Iraq, while quite a few other people (mentioning no-one with a family name not unlike “shrub”) made lots of money when the price of oil went up. From the perspective of the sponsors and shareholders of Bushco, the Iraq war looks to have been hugely profitable. OK, the
peonstaxpayers have lost the oddpennytrillion dollars, but they’re not rich enough to be worth worrying about anyway….