Dear Jon Stewart, Sane People Protest Crazy Wars

um, to sane people, they are political leaders, as thier rediculousness is part of the show.not the show disguised as government.while it may be dont in the interest of getting a laugh, its center of perspective is more reasonable than anyone elses.

exactly, "bring it down a notch"

oooo blue upvotes.pretty......................................were you saying something?i got distracted

cause the nations of Iraq and Afghanistan attacked us

not that I agree with their tactics....support the troops not the war

Easy there killer I never said Iraq or Afghanistan attacked us.

The invasion of Iraq was a mistake, in my opinion.

Afghanistan harbored terrorists who attacked us. I'm not saying an invasion was the best route but I think something had to be done.

I've been trying for weeks now to find the answer to the question, "why do terrorists hate us?" And not even terrorists but Middle Easterners, though not all Middle Easterners.

If we pulled all our armed forces from the Middle East, would we stop being attacked by terrorists?

Edit: Forgot to mention I do believe our past and current foreign policies are a large reason for the hatred.

We made the Middle East the hell-hole it is.

They were oil-rich and moderate back in the 1970's.
Women even had equal rights.

But Afghanistan was leaning towards Communism, and the US could not stand for that. So, we gave money and ammunition to the rebel group that was against Communism. They were against godless Atheistic Communism because they were Fundamentalist Muslims; The Taliban.

By the 1990's they took over.

And you know about Ronald Regan selling weapons to Iran without the knowledge of the Congress, right?

We totally screwed up that whole part of the world, because of our fear of Commies getting control of oil.

I'm not denying it but do you have anything about woman having equal rights before the 70's, I'd like to read up on it just to expand my knowledge.

I do know about the Iran Contra Affair and the appointing of countries presidents or leadership being backed by America.

With American help the Mujahideen defeated the DRA and Soviets and than because we didn't do anything to reconstruct the country the Mujahideen became the Taliban and ruled the country and oppressed the citizens. Charlie Wilson said something about how Afghanistan was going to be in trouble once Congress cut off all the funding and he was right.

Now since we let the Mujahideen (later Taliban) gain control and oppress the citizens wasn't it our duty to remove them from power? Also wasn't it a good idea to help the Afghanis defeat the invading Soviets?

Equality for women was the communist influence- communists wanted men and women to be equal, and the Fundamentalists did not like that.

http://www.afghangovernment.com/briefhistory.htm

In 1978 the PDPA seized power from Daoud in a military coup. After seizing power they began a series of limited reforms, such as declaring, more or less, a secular state, and that women were deserving of equal treatment of men. They sought to curtail the practice of purchasing brides, and tried to implement a land reform program. They quickly met with fierce opposition from many sections of the deeply religious population though. The PDPA’s response to this was very heavy-handed, aggravating the situation. Soon several rural areas rose in open armed rebellion against the new government.

---

As far as duty to fix our mistakes- yes, it probably is.

But personally, I think war does not fix mistakes, it aggravates them.

I think the best solution to fight religious fundamentalism is propaganda, of happy, healthy, wealthy, westerners, and getting them to want to live like us.

They should desire our products, our music, our films. They should be made to want lives like on our TV shows.

Eventually, the people will overthrow the government themselves.

A soldier with a gun is not fixing anything- a blond model in designer jeans, drinking a Pepsi while leaning against a sports car might.

who knows if it was or wasn't a good idea to help the Afghanis defeat the Soviets...maybe they would have eventually fallen anyway with the collapse of the Soviet Union...all we need to think about is where we are now and where do we go from here.

The Isreali-Palestine conflict isnt helping either

Well, technically it wasn't a mistake...

it was a well-planned economic strategy... but yeah. We shouldn't have been there.

Uptopiansky is right on all counts. We destroyed their country... We've been bombing them for decades, now... often illegally, and sometimes using weapons outlawed by the Geneva convention (sometimes called WMDs). Why SHOULDN'T they hate us? We also attacked them for financial gain and.... you have to realize the religious (fake) dichotomy that's going on, too. The muslim and Christian religions are incredibly similar... and both religions worship the same creator, they just have different prophets. But the man on the street in America will tell you that "Muslims have a hateful religion", which is complete bullshit.
There's a holy war going on... for them, and for us. We've been taught to hate them because of their religious belief (which is akin to saying "they can't be reasoned with"), meanwhile, they hate us for invading their holy lands.
The governments on both sides are using religious propaganda to motivate the people, as they have for centuries, often distorting the true meaning of people's spiritual nature in order to make advancements in power.

I think the the failure in Afghanistan is one of the main reasons the USSR collapsed.

Touché

I wouldn't say it's complete bullshit. I know not all Muslims are evil but Sharia Law is, at least some of it is seeing how I don't know all the rules to Sharia Law.

I'm hoping you can help me answer this because I believe it's what's been on my mind for the past couple months. When, if ever, should the US intervene in conflicts and how?

I believe in being a good Samaritan- If a nation is abusing their own people, or attacking another, we should not look the other way.

But, we should not attack them militarily either.

Like I said before- we should simply exert our influence by spreading our secular culture as far and wide as we can.

If that is not enough- combine the advertising with embargos.
Make them want what they can't have.

LOL what the hell gave you that idea?

Don't worry- that only happens in your mind.

How about this- if the Republicans and the teabaggers stop blaming Obama for everything? Now that would be a hoot and a half.

Heck, they were blaming Obama for the economy before he even took office.

I think they blamed him for us losing the Vietnam war.
How Obama did that before he was born, I have no idea.

I blame Woodrow Wilson for everything.

When people like you admit that Bush royally fucked things and then dropped the whole load of shit in Obama's lap, then maybe Democrats will "stop blaming Bush for everything".

Yes i do realize that george bush gave us the patriotic act. But guess what, obama didnt have to reauthorize it.

that and the pot thing are the reasons I will not vote for him again

The only one raised that has a chance of being valid is "The 10-30-10 rally on the capital's mall is looking more and more like a celebration of "slacktivism." Slacktivism did not end slavery, activism did. Slacktivism did not get women our rights. Activism did. Slacktivism won't end war or global warming. But activism just might."

While that might be true that doing something is better than doing nothing, it still doesn't compare with doing something crazy to get attention is worse than doing something effective that gets the problem solved.

The Civil War ended slavery, not protesters. The sufferagettes didn't get women's rights by chaining themselves to things, the need for factory workers like Rosy the Riveter did.

All protests do is raise the issues so that other ways can be found to solve the problems, but when the methods used to raise the issue are distorted then the attention is focused on the extreme ways used and distracted from the problem itself.

I'm going to have to disagree on that one.

The marches on Selma by Martin Luther King were critical to the civil rights movement.
The Stonewall riot was the beginning of the gay rights movement- with drag queens beating up cops.

And study feminism more. The sufragettes just got women the right to vote, but they were a first step. During WWII factories accepted women employees because they had no choice- the men were at war. After WWII, when the men came home, the factories wanted to send those rosie the riviters home packing.

The government even made patriotic posters telling women to quit their jobs and hand them over to the men.

But women stood up, and said they wanted to continue working. That began the second step of feminism, with Betty Friedan, Gloria Steinem, and all the protests- including bra burnings and sit ins.

Protests ARE a necessary part of every major struggle- including the anti-war movement.

Of course they do not solve issues, but raising awareness is IMPORTANT- it changes the wave of public perception, and that pressures politicians to action.

You are not understanding John Stewart's Sanity concept.

As his show demonstrates, it is necessary to use extreme theatrics to get a point across sometimes- he certainly does it often.

The problem is the message itself that is being conveyed.

We have a problem in this country of anti-intellectualism and fear-mongering. Considering any political notion to be the equivalent to scientific facts, and using fear to manipulate and control the masses.

Yes, these do happen on the left, and yes they are awful, and yes they need to be addressed; but it dominates and controls the right wing to the point that it is obvious, hypocritical, and just plain silly.

what about peta they are sooo extreme

Wow, that was an inflamed, accusatory post against my little two line one.

Would the methods used include attacking people and claiming they need things pointed out to them?

Yes, I get that it is NOT about partisan politics.
That is exactly WHY they had to pick some organizations on the left to demonstrate that fact.

But if YOU don't get that this particular illness afflicts the right-wing media more than the left wing media, then you sir, need a whole lot pointed out to you.

I agree!

The tragic part is will anyone listen?

As they themselves pointed out ""Dipping hands in fake blood or screaming over everyone just makes you look crazy and then the rest of the country ignores you." He said that we should, instead, focus on solutions.

CODEPINK has been proposing solutions since the day we started. We risked our lives meeting with UN weapons inspectors in Iraq right before the U.S. invaded to see if war could be avoided."

Once you've lost all credibility for using crazy stunts and have been ignored, it makes it magnitudes harder to get anyone to listen to any solutions proposed.

It is shooting yourself in the foot to try and get attention that way since it sets up failure from the start.