!!!
My dear Carmen,
It was so kind of you to remark that my work at the U.N. must be thatof a janitor; thank-you but no, there are not enough janitors in the entire world to clean up the mess that is the U.N.!!!
(by the by, do I detect a sneering condescension for the working class in that inquiry? What are you a descendant of the Hapsburg Dynasty)
Dear dear Carmen, your arguments against this totally justified war and the United States smack of classical Marxist Agitprop. I find this of great interest, since as a child I was fascinated with Archeology, and Marxism is nothing more than a philosophical and political fossil !!!Let's look.
Marxism seemed like a cool thing about a hundred years ago, when it was new and had never been tried. But largely due to totalitarian regimes espousing Marxist Ideology. The 20th Century was the bloodiest and most brutal century in human history.Stalin, Mao Tse Tung, Pol Pot and their lesser Communist puppets murdered more people in political executions than all the crusades, inquisitions, pogroms, and holy wars in the previous 2,000 years. Every nation that adopted Marxism became a brutal Fascistic state without exception. Marxist regimes are responsible for more crimes against humanity than any other type of political or religio-political system.
Why is this so? The basic weakness in Marxist thought is that it is based upon a flawed Anthropology: a totally wrong understanding of human nature. Therefore it is doomed from the start to be non-humane.
Marxism is based in the Hegellian dialectic (Thesis, Antithesis, Synthesis)which is supposed to guide the progress og human history. According to Marx, Capitalism is the the last stage in human economic development before the revolution which will usher in the dictatorship of the Proletariat. People will of their own free will realize that instead of owning private property they could have had a " ClassLess Society"(Like the option to have a V-8). Of course class struggle must go on first between the workers and the rich capitalist who manipulate the means of production. Therefore Marxists interpret every historical event into simplistic economic interests- E.G. "NO BLOOD FOR OIL" REFRAIN. ( Are ya with me so far?)
Marx himself never was a member of the working class. He fled from Germany and lived in England sponging off the wealth of Frederich Engels. The vision of Capitalism he saw in Victorian England was the height of the abuses of the Industrial Revolution. That was his only understanding of Capitalism, one without Labor Unions(which he hated), Workers Comp, 8 hour days, Safety Precautions, Health Insurance, Paid Vacations, etc that we have today.
Pardon my minor digression, dear Carmen; it's amazing what thoughts occur to one while pushing a mop and scrubbing a toilet.
Now you aske me, what has Marxism to do with Militant Islam and Saddam Hussein? Directly Nothing, Except,,,the Marxists see militant Islam as a tool to support in their undying hatred of the U.S.A. Marxist do not care about Human Rights. They do not care about World Peace. They do not care about Human Suffering; They are totally Devoid of COMPASSION.
One final note, my dear Carmen, before I leave to clean the bathroom stalls:if we are to have honest and intellectual discussion about the war in IRAQ, and the role of the U.S in the world, let's abandon all the Marxist terminology and double think and phony concerns for peace and the Iraqi children. Let's get ride of the hate-America-smash-the-state silliness. Let's renounce the unspeakable immoral and sub-intelligent stuff about the U.S. derserving 9-11 and the American P.O.W.'s being killers. Such drivel is beneath contempt.
The faxts of history show for all its faults the U.S.A. has done more to promote human rights, protect individual freedoms, feed the hungry(Funny how Americans send WHEAT to their enemies, while Marxists starve their oppents to death like Stalin in the Ukraine and the famines in Cambodiaand Ethiopia?)and promote self-government among nations(Just how did our former enemies: JAPAN and Germany become prosperous democracies?)If we are imperialists, we are not very good at it!!!
HAVE BUCKET, MUST TRAVEL, GOTTA MAKE THESE FLOORS SHINE
NEW YORK RED

I am more of a listener than a talker, so pardon my soliloquy.
Human beings evolved from animals, in fact we are animals. Therefore, we still have their traits. We are territorial and we protect our own. This could be proven time and time again, by the wars that have been fought.
Over the centuries, through enlightenment, our lives have become easier. We stopped living hand to mouth and started to settle down, our technology evolved, we created the concept, division of work. This allowed us to think conceptually about life.
Initially, for centuries we had a feudal system. One dictator that controlled and owned everything. The major flaw is the contentment of the society is based on the mental stability of the leader. If the person was benevolent, the society would be utopian. If the person was malevolent, the society would be Dante-like. People started to think, there must be a better way.
Government started to evolve, from Dictatorship, to Democracies, to Socialism and to Communism. What parallels this evolution is using land as a point of reference to idealism as the point of reference. The problem with this is idealism is conceptual not tangible, there are no borders, there are no fronts.
People are still animals. They are greedy and competitive. They always want to be the best winners. They want the biggest group. Some will use any tool to get it. This is why war is so gruesome.
In this time and age, war is different. We now fight war with the most destructive weapons about intangible ideas because we are still very animalistic.
War is not good vs. evil. War is guilty vs. innocent. War is to protect the innocent. They are the real casualties. The innocent are entities that are there by timing or accident, the humans, the other animals and the plant life. Remember without plants and animals we cannot survive. Millions of innocents get killed in wars.
The difference between good and evil is a point of view. The other group is the evil ones. Therefore, in the world there is only good. There are different religions and different types of governments. Even under the same groups there are different sects with different points of views. The best advise I know is not to hate them but try to respect their point of view.
Now all these sentences make me sound antiwar. I am and I am not against war. No war is a just war. When people get killed, they are dead. You just do not only affect the dead person, but also his/her family and friends. There is a ripple effect. Now if bystanders get killed then I say go to war. If they invade go to war. Protect the innocent.
Well thank you for reading my opinion.

P.S.
To defend my friend, what is wrong with being a janitor? Do not forget that Albert Einstein was a patent clerk in Switzerland, when he thought up his theories.

To quote the Elephant Man: "I am not an animal, I am a human being!"

Although some human tendencies may have much in common with animals, and I may agree with much that has been said, we definitely did not evolve from animals. "Your great-grandfather may be a monkey, but not mine." :p

Boy has this thread deviated from its original intended purpose!

(I'm guilty, too, your honor!)

Nate, although I am aetheistic, I get on my knees and thank the world that people are greedy and competitive. What else do you think makes the U.S. so powerful? It certainly isn't the people that run our government. It's the people (greedy animals) who care about themselves and have the freedom to do so. How grateful I am to these greedy animals that provide the best of everything; the best bread, the best bridges, the best roads, the best buildings, etc. Because of my fellow greedy, competitive animals, I live in this capitalistic utopia.

NewYorkRed post made me think of an article , Lee Harris in Policy Review.
I include a short quote, and link to the article.

--Those who, speaking in Marx's name, try to defend the fantasy ideology embodied in 9-11 are betraying everything that Marx represented. They are replacing his hard-nosed insistence on realism with a self-indulgent flight into sheer fantasy, just as they are abandoning his strenuous commitment to pursuit of a higher stage of social organization in order to glorify the feudal regimes that the world has long since condemned to Marx's own celebrated trash bin of history.

America-bashing has sadly come to be “the opium of the intellectual,” to use the phrase Raymond Aron borrowed from Marx in order to characterize those who followed the latter into the twentieth century. And like opium it produces vivid and fantastic dreams.

http://www.policyreview.org/dec02/harris.html

Nate, Red,

I'd gladly clean the floors with you, and toilets as well. What makes the statement against Red even more pitiful is the fact that the three of you actually do clean up the messes that uncaring governments leave behind, amongst their people. I guess the reality of that never sinks in with some people, because they are too deeply rooted in their own thoughts, and ways to find grievance with anyone whose ideals resemble democracy, and the rights of humans to live their lives without fear.

Like was stated earlier, I'll take the greed of democracy anytime, because in the end, in a country like the U.S., we pay more out in taxes, and give more to help people throughout the world than those who preach against our society would ever care to share.

Lots of commas in here, so if anyone wants to attack the statement on that basis, be my guest.

Wolf

Ayn Rand, anyone?

I agree with Ayn Rand about the statements she makes regarding capitalism. Capitalism is certainly not perfect, but its the best system man has invented yet, where an individual has the freedom to thrive. Yes, I have lived in a communist/marxist/socialist society, so I know what I am talking about.

Red,Wolf, count me in in the janitorial staff.

The problem with buzzwords like "capitalism" and "socialism" is that most western countries are a combination of the two.

Britain, for example, has socialized certain public-welfare functions, but also has a free-market economy with production largely in the hands of private companies rather than under the control of the government.

So I think it's more productive to debate specific points of policy than to get caught up in misleading and reductive labels, particularly when they're bandied about as an easy excuse to not respond intelligently to the points someone else raised.

El viajero,
I believe that folks should express themselves as best they can, if we are to have any type of discussion.

Words like democracy, capitalism, free-market, communisim, socialism, marxism are not buzzwords, they are words, and they have meanings. What one may want to explore is the way folks define these words. That's the work of philosophy!

As a Spaniard I would like to say in this MM site that there are lots of people in Spain who support our President Aznar . I am really feed up of these leftish protestors who, making profit of the slogan “no a la guerra”, have invaded our streets, destroyed the urban furniture and attact the PP sites , PP politicians and boicot their meeetings.

I wonder why these leftists spaniards don't protest against our close relative and dictator Fidel Castro in Cuba, who has never respected human rights for so long.

I think we are now suffering in Spain an “anti sistema movement”, in order to throw out the PP party from government, unfortunately supported by the socialist party and its paper El País . They don't care about war or iraqui people. They are against americans, democracy and our western way of live. Yesterday they assaulted a McDonald and the ground floor of El Corte Inglés in Barcelona. Pacifists!!??

You must know that thanks to the well economic policies of the PP in the last 7 years, spaniards have money, employement and the economy is needed for foreign inmigrants as labor workers. Perhaps socialists in Spain cannot stand that the government of José María Aznar has achieved very good economics results and they find any conflict to break the government (a few months ago it was the Prestige in Galicia)

I expect this war ends soon, and the average people and families of Iraq can have a better life under a democratic or a better government.