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Related: Editorials & Other Articles, Issue Forums, Alliance Forums, Region ForumsBill Maher on how we cannot change Iraq
http://www.rawstory.com/rs/2014/06/21/bill-maher-tells-america-like-bad-ex-boyfriend-iraq-is-never-going-to-change/
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Now I know we're Americans, which means that when this nation was founded by Jesus (audience laughter), he made us exceptional. But we're not miracle workers. We have to realize that some nations much like Nick Nolte's pants are never going to change. (audience laughter) Some of them aren't even nations, they're just tribes that we threw together like reality show contestants on a sex boat. And when Presidents of both parties have dealt with them over the decades and got bad results, we always blame the President. But maybe it's not the President, maybe it's the place.
It's like how, you know sometimes there's one place on a street where every business that goes in there fails? You drive by, it's a Quiznos. You drive by again, it's a nail salon. Drive by again, it's a pawn shop. It's not failing because it hates freedom, it's just a shitty location. (audience laughter and applause)
I'm sorry, Iraq! Not to be mean, but you're a shitty location. Which is why it's so frustrating to now hear "if only we had stayed". This is the delusion that launched the war in the first place. Remember the plan? We were going to go into Iraq, we'd be greeted as liberators, then we'd install an American-style democracy that we'd then use as a model for the rest of the Middle East to become democratic. Then after lunch.... (audience laughter)
Don Rumsfeld once said we could fix Iraq in six months. "Fix" Iraq. America's like one of those women who always think she can "fix" the bad boy. And Iraq, Afghanistan, Vietnam, Pakistan, Somalia, these are all the bad boys we couldn't resist trying to fix.
We think, "You know, if they just got to know us, I know they'd straighten out. If I just spend time with him, he'll see how happy he is, and he won't want to drink and chase whores anymore!" (audience laughter and cheering) "I'm going to smother him with love, that's what I'm gonna do! And then he'll realize what he really wants to be a secular democracy."
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Bill Maher on how we cannot change Iraq (Original Post)
eridani
Jun 2014
OP
MisterP
(23,730 posts)1. Iraq's biggest health problem, even in the 80s, was obesity
saying "oh, they've been fighting for a thousand years" isn't appealing to history, it's erasing it: it's dodging everything that's been done in the area since 1920 or 1958 or 1963 or 1967 or 1973 or 2003 or ...