Posted on 01/03/2009 10:41:26 AM PST by Starman417
Ted Turner and Jane Fonda must be political soul mates.
From a transcript of Bill O'Reilly's interview with Ted Turner:
O'REILLY: All right. Is America a good country?TURNER: Oh, it's a great country.
O'REILLY: Are we exploitative overseas? Is the war on terrorism largely our fault?
TURNER: No, I wouldn't say largely. But I think if we stopped bombing people and sent doctors and scientists and engineers around the world that we'd make a lot more progress, and we wouldn't have near as much terrorism in the world as we do. I think bombing just makes people angry, and they want to bomb you back.
Uh...yeah...that's all our military does is carry out American foreign policy objectives of "bombing people"; not bombing terrorists...not bombing America's enemies...but "people".
Here's a little education for Ted Turner, by way of a Hugh Hewitt interview with Robert Kaplan:
HH: You know, I want to begin in the 9th chapter of this, your second book on the American military, as you were driving out of Timbuktu, 11 hours beyond the gates of Timbuktu. Use that as a metaphor for what you were doing and why you went the places you have gone.RK: Well, Timbuktu is not the edge of the Earth. The edge of the Earth is miles beyond Timbuktu, north into the heart of the Sahara desert. And I was with a company of American Special Forces officers, about twelve of them, all non-commissioned officers except for a captain. And you would think what is the U.S. military doing in the heart of the Sahara desert. Well, we’re not only in the heart of the Sahara desert, we’re all over the Pacific ocean, we’ll all over South America, and all this is occurring while we are fighting a war in Iraq and in Afghanistan. And what I tried to do in the course of the years in which I embedded with the military was to show the whole thing. Not to ignore Iraq, but not to be limited by it, either, because one big deployment might overstretch us like Iraq, but dozens upon dozens of smaller deployments will do no such thing. So I was with a company of American Special Forces officers who were investigating just what was in the center of the Sahara desert in terms of al Qaeda movements, humanitarian, prospects for humanitarian relief, just getting to know Africa. Because in this global world war on terrorism, really is a global war.
HH: Now your accompanied by, extraordinary in the course of this book, an extraordinary array of Americans, one of which on this particular trip is an Evangelical staff sergeant from Oklahoma who doesn’t want to be identified, because he doesn’t want his deeds to serve himself. I thought that was another metaphor for the extraordinary people you’ve spent the last many years with.
RK: Yeah, the people I…what I did was I didn’t report on anybody in this book. I befriended a lot of people, and revealed them to the reader as they revealed themselves to me. And the best of these people didn’t want any publicity, not because they were afraid of being written up badly, but because they were afraid of getting public recognition for anything they do. For them, the real sweet thing is to do it and not get recognition, if you can believe it. And this Evangelical staff sergeant, he drove most of the way through blistering sandstorms, he slept only six hours, which was interrupted by an hour and a half of guard duty, and he got up the next morning to fit little African children for eyeglasses as part of a civil affairs project that this Special Forces A-team was doing. And just, you know, just dealt with one child, one woman after another throughout the morning without any complaining about lack of sleep or anything.
HH: Let me tell the audience, this is a remarkable read, you’re going to want to get Hog Pilots, Blue Water Grunts, and just an example of detail, “Following sun up, Captain Tory, an Evangelical staff sergeant from Oklahoma, set up an eye clinic inside one of the ruins. They unpack little boxes of adaptable eyewear, an ingenious, low-tech device manufactured by the U.S. Agency for International Development. These were round, Harry Potterish horn-rimmed glasses of zero prescription which increasingly strengthened as you pumped a clear gel solution attached to the frame inside the glass. The SF, Special Forces guys called them, ‘never get laid again glasses,’ because of how they made you look.” Now that has got an eye for detail, pardon the pun, Robert Kaplan, but I guess it is in those very small things, as well as the B-2’s that we’ll talk about later, that the genius in the American military lies.
RK: Yeah, it all lies in the details. For the price of one F-22, you could populate all of Africa with SF-A teams doing humanitarian relief. But that is not necessarily a criticism of an F-22, because I get that later in the book when I talk about the B-2 and other expensive bombers, which are sort of an expensive form of health insurance to keep the Chinese honest about their intentions in Taiwan. But you know, we get bargains in our military budget, and we don’t. The B-2’s, the F-22’s, there’s no bargains there. But in terms of what we can do on the ground in a place like Africa, we get a lot of bargains like this deployment that I embedded on.
Extracted from a post targeted at Paul Bearers:
In an interview with Hugh Hewitt, Robert Kaplan says,people have this image of the U.S. military going all over the world as a busybody, propping up dictatorships. It's so false. In fact, the only regimes we prop up through training missions are of certified democracies, certified by Congress, which we have not imposed on them, that they've evolved organically on their own as democracies.The Savage Wars of Peace, by Max Boot:Far from being isolationist before World War II and the formation of NATO, America from the very beginning of the Republic intervened in a nearly continual series of civil wars, coups, and hostage rescues. Starting with attacks on the Barbary Coast pirates between 1801 and 1805, the nation has always interfered in other nations' business far from home.
Two generations of college students have been taught that all such "adventurism" is nothing but imperialism and running-dog capitalism--and Boot does not deny that states naturally send in their forces out of national interest rather than mere idealism. But he shows that the majority of the time the Marines intervened to stop the slaughter of civilians, to retaliate against the killing of Americans and destruction of their property, and to prevent chaos from spreading beyond a country's borders. While such incursions often served the local property-owning elites and corrupt grandees, such interventionists as Thomas Jefferson, Chester A. Arthur, and Teddy Roosevelt assumed that order and stable governments were usually preferable to mass uprisings, constant revolution, and mob rule.
When natural disasters strike, what does America do? Take advantage of another nation's misfortune, or come to its rescue, using American military might while draining American taxpayer coffers and making private donations to charities? We did this for earthquake relief in Iran, 2003 just being one year's example of this:
In the latest U.S. shipment, an American military plane carrying 80 personnel and medical supplies landed early Tuesday in the provincial capital of Kerman. The team reached Bam, 120 miles to the southeast, by midday.Seven U.S. Air Force C-130 cargo planes have already delivered 150,000 pounds of relief supplies — including blankets, medical supplies and water — making the United States one of the largest international donors.
Pakistan earthquake relief, the 'Great Satan's' military has delivered 94 tons medical supplies, 1,939 tons of humanitarian supplies, 1,582 tons of equipment, evacuated 15,794 victims..provided doctors, nurses, medicine.....
In addition, we donated a mobile hospital:
WASHINGTON, Feb. 16, 2006 – The United States today transferred the 212th Mobile Army Surgical Hospital, the last unit of its kind in the U.S. Army, to the Pakistan government for continued use in earthquake relief efforts, a Defense Department spokesman said. The 84-bed hospital, which arrived in Muzaffarabad shortly after the earthquake struck the country on Oct. 8, is valued at $4.6 million, according to the U.S. Embassy in Pakistan.The hospital consists of the following:
* Primary health care and emergency medical treatment section; * Surgical suite with two operating tables and sterilization equipment; * Two intensive care units; I * Intermediate care ward; * Minimal care ward; * Pharmacy; * Laboratory; * Radiology units; * Medical maintenance work area with a supply of repair parts; * Power-generation system for the entire hospital; and * Storage containers for packing and moving the hospital.
The hospital has treated more than 20,000 patients and provided about 20,000 vaccinations to about 8,000 patients since October. After the transfer, the American medical personnel will return to their home base in Miesau, Germany, and the Pakistani military will take over the hospital, according to the embassy.
In further progress toward the end of U.S. military relief efforts in Pakistan this spring, the U.S. Navy turned over $2.5 million worth of construction equipment to Pakistan military engineers Feb. 13. The equipment includes three D-7 bulldozers, a 15-ton dump truck, nine 20-ton dump trucks, seven 100-kilowatt generators and four generator skids, according to the embassy.
The U.S. also is donating its two forward-area refueling point systems to the Pakistan government to increase helicopter efficiency during reconstruction.
The U.S. military has been on the ground in Pakistan since Oct. 10, providing relief after a 7.6 magnitude earthquake struck the Kashmir region in northern Pakistan Oct. 8, killing more than 70,000 citizens, injuring more than 60,000 and leaving more than 3 million homeless. At the peak of initial relief efforts, more than 1,200 personnel and 25 helicopters provided vital transport, logistics, and medical and engineering support in the affected areas.
Today, 600 U.S. servicemembers continue to provide aviation, medical and engineering assistance to relief and reconstruction efforts.
the 2004 tsunami...
(Excerpt) Read more at Flopping Aces ...
Translation: Up yours, Ted Turner.
What ever happened to the “stars” and ‘famous people” who used to be patriotic? Like Bob Hope, John Wayne, Elvis Presely and even Captain Kangaroo ( the actor was a hero).
Only our enemies hate our military. Everyone else is relieved to see us. I know; I’ve seen the looks.
Pingerish
If the United States were to flip the bird to the world, millions more would die from wars, disease, economic neglect, natural disasters and the like.
We owe the world nothing. Not one penny, not one drop of sweat or blood. We do it because of who and what we are. We are Americans.
Time for Ted Turner’s proctological exam.
Unfortunately, the likes of these great people will not be seen in Hollyweird ever again.
A good start would be some of our OWN team liking our TEAM.
Which is always a delicate procedure given the potential risk of causing brain damage.
But now that I think about it, that would explain a lot.
ROFLOL - made my day.
Of course getting your A$$ kicked tends to make you resent the boot.
I used to think like this too... back in the seventh grade!
As for Robert Kaplan I highly recommend his books
IMPERIAL GRUNTS
and
HOG PILOTS AND BLUEWATER GRUNTS
Excellent reading on the efforts of the US military around the world.
My employer sends literally thousands of scientists and engineers all over the world, and we are making a lot of progress.
But when we send them to "certain" areas (generally the countries that need them the most), we have to pay literally millions of dollars for security forces to keep terrorists from killing them. Not Christian terrorists, not Buddhist terrorists, not Jewish terrorists, not Hindu terrorists, and not even Animist terrorists. Nope, it's Islamic terrorists (and maybe the occasional communist). Go figure.
Ted Turner is living proof that you don't have to be smart to be rich. What does Ted actually do to help?
Well put. I will never forget the response to the Boxer Day Tsunami in Indonesia. While UN and EU bureaucrats sat around wringing their hands and gibbering about how they needed to meet to make plans to help, The US went ahead and sent in an aircraft carrier with its rescue aircraft, and saved innumerable lives with its fresh water, food and medical resources. The a-hole ngo's had the nerve to complain.
He had a brain scan last week... they didn’t find anything!
Nailed him with the truth. Turner looked like he was medicated or something.
TURNER: No, I wouldn't say largely. But I think if we stopped bombing people and sent doctors and scientists and engineers around the world that we'd make a lot more progress, and we wouldn't have near as much terrorism in the world as we do. I think bombing just makes people angry, and they want to bomb you back.
And that's the problem. Ever watch any Hollywood WWII movies? Hollywood was solidly united behind the war effort. The left wingers in Hollywood weren't so solid until Hitler attacked the Soviet Union, breaking Hitler's pact with Stalin, but after that hell wasn't hot enough for our enemies.
Later the Soviet Union and Communist China opposed the U.S. by supporting their sponsored communist movements in North Korea and North Viet Nam, and there was no united American front. The left always favored the communist-led movements.
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