Who is worse?

The hopelessly incompetent Obama, or the hopeless inaccurate commentator?

It is difficult to know what to be depressed about: the author's (generaly) accurate account of the world's greatest terrorist nation and the sychophancy of its ally Australia, or the ill-informed nonsense that inhabits so much of the comment section.

It is truly pathetic that the choice offered by one commenter is between being part of the American empire or being run by either a Korean dictator or the Taliban.

John Howard's assault on the teaching of history in schools is obviously paying dividends if the dangerous ignorance displayed in the comments section is any guide. It is one reason why, as the author of New Orders notes, we enter into major obligations without any debate in parliament.

The same was true about entry into the Afghanistan war (not "debated" until October 2010 and then only because the Greens insisted as part of their support package for the Gillard government)and the later entry into Iraq. Read Howard's speech to the Australian parliament in February 2003 and count the lies told then for which there has been absolutely no accountability.

I have little doubt that when the US/Israel attack Iran we will loyally line up with yet another travesty based on lies and sink deeper into the moral and lawless abyss that we have become.

"It is truly pathetic that the choice offered by one commenter is between being part of the American empire or being run by either a Korean dictator or the Taliban."

Where was this choice offered?

It wasn't.

So what is truly pathetic is that a commenter can fabricate garbage around what another commenter has said.

@ Neutral.

Your own comment at 11.48 invites that inference although it was so ignorant it is difficult to be sure.

AT James O'Neill, your back pedalling has spilled more garbage.

Now it's an inference which I invited eh?

What else can you fabricate in your 'moral and lawless abyss'?

The mere speculative rhetoric which is equal and opposite to the vibe of the article is such a simple thing. Balance.

The ignorance on display is the reactionary ineptness to understand such simple things.

If you want to write anti US propaganda, Hamish, at least try to make it good propaganda. This article of yours reminds me of the “spontaneous confessions” submitted by Red China during the Korean War, which were purportedly written by shot down US pilots. The “confessions” had headings like ‘How My Cruel Capitalist Masters Forced Me to Commit Cruel Biological Warfare on Peace Loving Socialist People.”

Reading your article displays to your readers that the USA does not do a single thing right. Everything the USA does is utterly contemptible. Your credibility just went right out of the window, right there.

Some of the things that you have written about the social system in the USA is absolutely true. If you wish to criticize the USA, then writing about topics illuminating deficiencies in US culture or governance in which ordinary, well informed people readers would agree with you, would enhance your credibility. But writing articles which assume that your audience is all avid readers of the Green Left Weekly firmly establishes you in the eyes of ordinary people as just another rabid hater of the West.

Just remember, that many people are glad that the Yanks finally caught up with Osama bin Laden, and they could not give a crap about any international law which protected him from justice. Pakistan is not “a country”, it looks like a collection of warring tribes where the authority of the central government does not exceed the range of the artillery at the local army fort. Complaining that the USA is violating Pakistani sovereignty is a charge more worthy of mirth than serious consideration.

You even darkly hinted at US involvement in Asian wars. Well you could have some justification there, but there is just one fly in the ointment. And that is, almost everyone on planet Earth can make the comparison between North Korea and South Korea and they know that the Yanks did exactly the right thing by intervening there.

At least give the yanks credit for that.