DON'T GET FOOLED AGAIN- The Republicans lied, tricked, and pushed American into an illegal invasion of Iraq, don't let them do it again with Iran

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image showing DON'T GET FOOLED AGAIN- The Republicans lied, tricked, and pushed American into an illegal invasion of Iraq, don't let them do it again with Iran

Ready-Player_One on January 4th, 2020 at 16:29 UTC »

The rest of his post, for people without twitter:

The propaganda push will include enormous appeals to American militarism disguised as patriotism: flag pins, flyovers, reverent cries to “support the troops,” as if the greatest support you can offer the troops isn’t to keep them from dying for no good reason.

Over time, this vague appeal to patriotism and militarism will start to have a specific aim, an invasion, bombings, the takeover of oil fields, the support of proxy wars. These aims will magically align with the financial interests of multi-national corporations.

The people in harm's way -- innocent civilians in Iran, mostly -- will be framed and/or dehumanized as "the enemy." This will include everything from racial slurs to endless talking points about their "blood thirst" their "hatred of freedom and Americans." It's utter bullshit.

When the bombs start to drop, all of the reporting will be about the small number of US troop casualties. For example, most Americans know roughly 4,000 US troops died in Iraq. What most Americans don't know is over 200,000 Iraqi CIVILIANS were killed.

This horror too, this murder of children, of families, the bombing of weddings & birthdays, this destruction of entire regions, will be swept up under the guise of American militarism (disguised as patriotism), of "supporting our troops," who are "fighting for our freedom."

In the end, and there will be an end -- this isn't the beginning of World War III, this is asymmetrical slaughter -- the vast number of dead will be people who don't even know why the war was waged, they will be mostly young, innocent and brown-skinned. That is the ugly truth.

And even the US troops -- most of whom signed up out of a genuine desire to protect their country -- they will be abandoned too as the people who waged the war, who made such big promises of "support for the troops" will CUT veterans medical care, forget the dead and move on.

And the only people who will have benefitted will be those massive multi-national corporations -- oil and weapons manufacturers mostly -- who rushed in to profit off the death of all those innocent brown-skinned children lying in the rubble.

A couple more things: The media (especially cable news) LOVES a war. They love the spectacle, the drama. It means big profits. It means eyeballs on screens. It makes stars of their anchors. They will ask the wrong questions, they will follow militaristic talking points.

Cable news will try to EMPOWER the warmongers, by accepting rumors of impending harm to Americans as real news, by making stars of the "brutal enemies" handed to them by the Republican propaganda machine. You can practically see them salivate over the possibility for profit.

What will get lost in all this bickering and drama and tragedy and spectacle is the fact that all of this was AVOIDABLE. That Trump inherited a reigned-in Iran, that he set in motion an escalation to war because he thought it would benefit HIM.

Veryfreakingbored on January 4th, 2020 at 17:36 UTC »

In an interview by Gustave Gilbert during the Nuremberg trials with Hermann Göring. Göring states, "Why of course the people don't want war. Why should some poor slob on a farm want to risk his life in a war when the best he can get out of it is to come back to his farm in one piece? Naturally the common people don't want war: neither in Russia, nor in England, nor for that matter in Germany. That is understood. But after all it is the leaders of a country who determine the policy and it is always a simple matter to drag the people along, whether it is a democracy or fascist dictorship, or a parliament or a communist dictatorship."

When Gilbert replies: "There is one difference. In a democracy, the people have some say in the matter through their elected representatives, and in the United States only Congress can declare wars."

Göring answers: "Voice or no voice, the people can always be brought to the bidding of the leaders. That is easy. All you have to do is tell them they are being attacked, and denounce the peace makers for lack of patriotism and exposing the country to danger. It works the same in any country."

lechadeau on January 4th, 2020 at 17:44 UTC »

Yes. I remember “freedom fries”