Interesting... A preference for "Mozart," "poetry," and the NFL, in lieu of revisiting the event of "9/11" (via the right/left media).
A "perfect storm", perhaps? A state of denial, perhaps?
Nah, a U.S. Constitutional "rights" frame of mind: I am, therefore I must be alone... I think. :wink:
Re: The Diana-ization of 9-11
I probably will watch the news that day (as always) but I will still whine and moan and complain over and over again about why on earth are they dwelling on the past, why are they re-hashing an issue that was just about to keel over and die?, etc. Of course, with the local news my complaining will be more due to an ignorance of Wisconsin (even during storm warnings, they show the watch area extending to the state border but then (magically) ending at the misshapen border? I doubt it, those state chauvinists that they are.Originally Posted by Virgil K. Saari
1987 INTP
Evidence
The only reason I have for listing my preferred media stimulations of Mozart (who goes into "Why do they hate us?" in Die Entf?hrung aus dem Serail} , Mahler (who meditates on loss and death), the Bard, poetry from England and college football is to avoid the charge of "hating the West " that will surely come to those that dislike Bathos.
What was the media like on 7 December 1942?
Re: Evidence
FYI...from the Museum of the city of San Francisco:
December 7, 1942
"One Year after Pearl Harbor" parade from the Ferry Building to Civic Center. 70,000 marched to commemorate Pearl Harbor, Manila, Bataan, Corregidor, Midway, Wake, and other battles of the Pacific. Parade opened a ten-day observance of the American war effort, with special activities planned for each day. Sponsored by the San Francisco Win-the War Committee.
So...I would suspect that our American habit of indulging in remembrance activities isn't as new as I would've thought before digging this up. A ten day observance sounds kind of exhausting to me. Can you imagine how unpopular it would have been to say anything negative about all this back then? I'd bet that it would perhaps have been physically perilous to express one's lack of enthusiasm for an orgy of flag waving and marching.
Perhaps in anticipation of the mood of the coming 4T, I plan on simply ignoring the 911 orgy, perhaps going to something at my church (they're doing a week of services and discussions and other stuff). Best, in my opinion, to practice keeping my own council about some things so as not to be labeled as some kind of "un-American" type who must of course be rooting for osama bin what's his name and his gang of thugs.
Someone has organized an event at one of the sports stadiums here in Seattle where each one of the many thousands of people attending will receive a piece of colored cloth so that when everyone holds it up above their heads a gigantic American flag will be formed that can be seen from the sky.
On this "orgy of flag waving" thing, I've made it a habit of quizzing Silents I meet on this when ever I get the chance: Do you recall a lot of flag waving during the Second World War, I ask? Nope, is the typical reply; We couldn't afford to buy flags during the war.
Duh. :wink:
Perhaps it truly is civil liberties which will be the major issue at the regeneracy (and something Greenish may be attached to it). Even Merle Haggard has had it! Below are his comments discussed in a column excerpt. Go Hag!
www.counterpunch.org/cockburn0829.html
(Excerpted. Emphasis mine.)
August 29, 2002
American Journal
Kissinger, Hitchens, Springsteen, Haggard and Presley
by Alexander Cockburn
... Far more forthright and rambunctious is Merle Haggard, according to Cheryl Burns who reports this from Kansas City: "I saw Merle Haggard tonight in KC--great show. He said something about 'so now we're in another war' and went on to say he was still proud to be an American and all that, so I was wondering just where he was headed. But then he said there was nothing good about any war except the soldiers, sailors, etc.
"Then he says, 'I think we should give John Ashcroft a big hand ...(pause)... right in the mouth!' Went on to say, 'the way things are going I'll probably be thrown in jail tomorrow for saying that, so I hope ya'll will bail me out.'
Cheryl concludes, "Proud to be an Okie from...um...Oklahoma City."
Right on, Merle. At another concert, June a year ago, he was quoted by John Derbyshire in National Review online as saying, "Look at the past 25 years we went downhill, and if people don't realize it, they don't have their fucking eyes on ... In 1960, when I came out of prison as an ex-convict, I had more freedom under parolee supervision than there's available to an average citizen in America right now... God almighty, what have we done to each other?" ...
Stonewall, I just noticed you have 2,275 posts! Wowzers.
It's like a bug high on the wall. You wait for it to come to you. When it gets close enough you reach out, slap out and kill it. Or if you like its looks, you make a pet out of it.
- Charles Bukowski
Re: The Diana-ization of 9-11
Sounds good to me, Virgil. I also have a primary to vote in, plenty of good books to read, a good NFL team to cheer for, and a lot of e-mail to answer. And I'll be checking in here as well.
This letter to the editor from a Canadian has turned up all over the Internet. In case anybody has not seen it, I will post it here.
http://www.onlinejournal.com/Comment...all082202.html
(For education and discussion purposes only)
Open letter to America from a Canadian
Never mind that earth-friendly technology already exists to once and for all end dependence on oil, coal and nuclear energy from huge, out-of-control utilities and corporations. You would rather pay through the nose for your insecure comforts, wouldn't you America, and make others pay with their blood.
By W.R. McDougall
Reprinted August 22, 2002, from The Baltimore Chronicle
Dear America:
And so it has come to this. Your once-great nation has fallen into madness, an affliction of mass denial that brings shivers up the spines of millions outside your borders. Yours is a sick nation. But most of you carry on as though nothing at all is the matter.
Dark, evil operations run rampant in the secret corners of your government institutions. A dubiously constituted government pursues war at will anywhere on earth, discussing nuclear options that become points for cheerful chatter over lunch. Your military and intelligence agencies employ terrorist tactics around the globe even as they insist that such tactics are necessary in the fight against terrorism.
You have become a nation of monsters, America. Hypocrites. Murderers. Fools.
Your constitution is a shambles thanks to "national security" measures resulting from what might well be U.S.-government- sanctioned terrorist attacks in New York City and Washington,, D.C., covert provocations designed to justify a malevolent, poisonous, oil-based military economy.
Never mind that earth-friendly technology already exists to once and for all end dependence on oil, coal and nuclear energy from huge, out-of-control utilities and corporations. You would rather pay through the nose for your insecure comforts, wouldn't you America, and make others pay with their blood.
At the same time, you stand by as the Israelis' secular Zionists? whom you support through the supply of arms and money? slaughter untold numbers of innocents in the West Bank, then blame the Palestinians for bringing the terror upon themselves. (True, there are abominable Arab suicide bombers in Israel's midst. But are they not driven to madness and desperation by your infernal support of international terrorist politics?)
As I write these words, you support a nation run by a convicted murderer by the name of Ariel Sharon who with impunity is carrying out war crimes as cruel and horrendous as those of other sadistic tyrants in history. And you say, in your utter cynicism, "When will these Palestinians bring this war to an end?"
You recklessly wage combat on other fronts, too. At home, your War on Drugs is a disastrous 30-year folly?a gigantic con game designed to benefit lethal cartels, corrupt politicians and menacing intelligence agencies across the planet. . . . .
With your government's support, crooked multinationals like Monsanto buy up the world's water supplies, and take possession of the world's vegetation through Frankenstein technology already known to cause illness.
Does the FDA care about any of this? It does not. It has long been on the bandwagon to foist genetically altered food on the Guinea Pigs of the country?including every man, woman and child on America's increasingly toxic soil.
You are a nation of suckers, America, to be bled dry of your hard-earned pay through outrageous bank schemes, Wall Street rip-offs and fake government budget grabs. Your Pentagon cannot account for trillions in lost dollars.
Does this bother you? Not in the least.
Your whole economy is controlled by what is for the most part ravenous, international private banking interests in the form of The Federal Reserve, which with your government's consent leads you down the garden path to certain financial ruin thanks to a national debt you will never be able to repay.
How is it that private banks are responsible for issuing your currency? How is it that they are allowed to charge ridiculous interest rates on what they issue? By decree, this was supposed to be the responsibility of your government, which could create its own currency without charging interest.
Do you realize your congress could dismiss these banks in an instant if it so wished? But don't ever count on it. More important matters are pressing. The upcoming election needs investment.
These very same money men are the ones who, through unmonitored and unrepresentative world committees, are driving countries like Argentina into hopeless debt and social upheaval. These greedy overlords are creating strife and suffering on a scale too tragic for words in nation after nation. Just look at Africa.
They've got their sights on America, now, too; disrupting economic stability through so-called free trade initiatives and provisions for special favors and the endless flow of cash to corporate monstrosities like Enron.
Amid all this, where are those who are supposed to represent your interests, America? For the most part, your congressional representatives are nothing but swine gathering at the corporate troughs. Your president is a white-collar thug, a hypocrite who through his actions celebrates war, repression and greed even as he gives lip service to peace, freedom and justice.
George W. Bush deceives you daily, the war monger hiding behind a phony patriotism. He is an Enron buddy boy, a spoiled child lying in his teeth about his past and current dirty deeds.
Does he care about you America? Hardly. This is altogether obvious to those outside your borders who are politically aware and awake to the world around them.
You were never concerned about the disgraceful practices of George's ruthless father, either, a Bin-Laden cohort and friend to criminals and killers in global drug, oil and terrorist enterprises. Iran. Vietnam. El Salvador. Chile. Guatemala. Iraq. And on and on. The never-ending bully-boy story of blood, guns, drugs and money.
Does any of this matter? No, it's simply time to eat.
Go get your ten-billionth burger, America. Fatten your already fat asses with bacteria-and-hormone-ridden meat and do nothing as you sit stupefied before your mind-numbing television sets awaiting the next episode of sad families being humiliated on "Cops."
Few among you are the least bit concerned that no real investigation of 911 has taken place, that no serious investigation of the anthrax attacks is moving forward, that no authentic investigation of Enron, or the murder of one of its top executives, is underway.
How many of you give the slightest damn about the totalitarian measures your government is taking to keep its secret meetings, grubby files and treasonous activities from your eyes?
When did you stop caring, America? Was it after your own FBI and intelligence agencies plotted the murder of President John F. Kennedy? Or is this just the raving lunacy of the conspiracy nut? What does your gut tell you, America? Is something a little amiss here?
Forget about it. Have some Pepto-Bismol.
Today, in futility, your own government goes to court against itself for information you are entitled to by law. But this is hardly deemed vital news in the community. It is a fleeting reference in an electronic sea of meaningless banter. For proof, just look to all the spineless wimps who constitute your mainstream news media.
Today, you excoriate, ridicule and ostracize the brave and true among you. Your best investigative journalists are fired from their jobs and ignored. Congress's few courageous souls are laughed at and dismissed out of hand as crackpots. The most honest and conscientious political leader in the country, Ralph Nader, is a powerless, near-invisible curiosity easily side-lined by hired goons.
America, you are a goddamn shame.
What law matters now in your despicable state? What justice? What truth?
When will you wake up?
If you had your druthers, you would right now gather your courage, take to the streets and march on Washington D.C in the millions. But I know you will do no such thing. The vast majority of you are spiritually, emotionally and intellectually dead.
As I write these words, I can only imagine what additional horrors your shadow government might be planning in what will surely be an attempt to justify militarism and totalitarianism on a universal scale. A nuclear explosion in one of your cities, perhaps? A massive bio-chemical attack?
Or perhaps it will be some Arab terrorist who finally commits the terrible deed, his last thought before death being the promises you made to him before you killed his family.
Mr. McDougall originally wrote this letter to the Washington Post, but that paper has not yet printed it.
Updated for the Baltimore Chronicle & Sentinel.
Oh, Canadians don't know crap about the U.S. Government. Let me guess, he's an Xer, isn't he? Probably a Joneser? That letter sounds like a modified version of something my ('61) mom would say.
1987 INTP
A GREAT article from Time giving support that "9-11" was NOT the 4T catalyst (with comparison to WWII):
http://www.time.com/time/columnist/e...0.html?cnn=yes
America Hasn't Really Changed Since 9/11
Nothing that has happened since Sept. 11 suggests that it will mark as profound a change in American society and foreign policy as World War II
Tuesday, Sep. 03, 2002
When William Butler Yeats sat down to write about the 1916 Easter rebellion in Dublin, he knew it marked a rupture in Ireland's fabric. Before 1916 was one state of affairs; after it, all was "changed, changed utterly." Sept. 11, we have come to think, is an event for modern America much as Easter 1916 was for Ireland. At home the U.S. is supposed to be different from the way it was; abroad it has ostensibly found a fresh definition of its role in the world.
I don't believe it. I don't believe that the essentials of American society were changed by the attacks, and I don't believe that American foreign policy should be stood on its head in response to them. Sept. 11 needs to be put in perspective.
One way of doing so is to compare Sept. 11 with Dec. 7, 1941, that other day that will live in infamy. For the U.S., World War II really was epochal. More than 12 million were mobilized into the armed forces; nearly 300,000 died in battle; the economy was rescued from a deep slump; technological innovation proceeded at a pace never seen before; the social and economic position of women was transformed; the carapace of legal racial segregation began to crack; weapons were developed that could end life on earth; and in the war's shadow, the G.I. Bill created a mass middle class.
Nothing that has happened since Sept. 11 suggests that it will mark so profound a change in American society. If it had, two indicators would by now have flashed red. Everyone knows that the churches were full on Sept. 16, but everyone who regularly goes to church knows they haven't stayed that way. Michael Dimock, of the Pew Research Center for the People and the Press, who has tracked polling data since last fall, says he can find "no evidence" of a religious awakening. The Pentagon says that although there was an approximate doubling in the number of people expressing interest in the armed forces after Sept. 11, this did not later translate into any marked increase in enlistments.
Nor is there any reason to believe that the war on terrorism will dominate American foreign policy. Take one more comparison, this time with the cold war. For more than 40 years, the U.S. was consumed by a global struggle against communism. Some 95,000 Americans died in Vietnam and Korea in wars designed to contain the communist threat. The defense budget soared to levels unprecedented in "peacetime."
It is simply ridiculous to imagine that defeating radical Islamic terrorism ? however vile it may be ? will require the same level of national commitment as was seen in the cold war. The Soviet Union's ideology had many adherents and apologists throughout the West. For leaders in the developing world ? where the Soviet Union was extending its power as late as the 1980s ? Moscow was associated with progress and an escape from the thieving grasp of colonialism. Above all, communism was militarily powerful; the Soviet Union had thousands of weapons of mass destruction aimed right at us, and in Vietnam communist forces defeated the U.S. and its local allies.
The contrast with radical Islamic terrorism could hardly be more pronounced. Al-Qaeda controls not a single state. Leaders of every nation in the Muslim world loathe al-Qaeda's tenets, for the very good reason that they threaten those leaders' power. Though there is certainly a network of al-Qaeda sympathizers in the West, radical Islam has been unable to proselytize outside a very limited core of religious fanatics. Compared with the military power of Soviet communism, Islamic terrorists are a raggle-taggle army on the run. To revise our national priorities fundamentally in response to the terrorists pays them more respect than they deserve.
In fact, a foreign policy shaped by the war on terrorism would serve America poorly. The world is full of problems that need American resourcefulness: the rise of China, the fall of Japan, Europe's crisis of self-confidence, economic turmoil in Latin America. Policies designed to combat terrorism have nothing to offer such cases, yet any one of them may have more of an impact on our future than Sept. 11. If the U.S. takes terrorism as a simple guide to complex situations, it will often fall into error. It is, for example, natural for Americans to sympathize with Israelis ? fellow sufferers from terrorism. But it is false to imagine that the Israeli-Palestinian conflict, with its roots in competing claims to the same real estate, can be solved solely by asking who is a terrorist and who is a victim.
In the end, I suspect, the war on terrorism will look nothing like World War II or the cold war but rather like the 50-year fight to end the Atlantic slave trade in the first half of the 19th century. That was a priority for many nations, but it never defined the national interest of any one of them. The occasional use of military power against slavers ? usually by Britain's Royal Navy, which held a position like that now enjoyed by U.S. forces ? was important to the cause. But so were moral persuasion, multilateral diplomacy, economic development and bribes. All will prove useful in defeating terrorism.
Ending the slave trade was a noble undertaking. So is the war on terrorism. But we cannot allow it to define who we are or to shape all the ways in which we act in the world. If we do so ? to use the old refrain ? the terrorists really will have won.
From the same issue of Time
ILLUSTRATION FOR TIME BY BRAD HOLLAND
By ANDREW SULLIVAN
Posted Sunday, September 1, 2002; 3:38 p.m. EST
e will forget. Researchers have long known that the memory of epochal events fades with time. Experts have a name for this phenomenon: flashbulb memory. As time passes, the chronology gets jumbled; we fumble on the details; we reimagine the past to make it more coherent, meaningful, bearable. A new study at the University of Illinois at Chicago of a large, countrywide sample of people is discovering that we have already forgotten some things about Sept. 11. Which tower fell first? Was the Pentagon hit after both World Trade Center towers? We forget. We conflate. We confuse.
But we know, of course, that this kind of memory is not the most important one. Some events solder themselves within our consciousness so intensely that they change forever the way we see the world. The details barely matter. The change itself matters. Your child is killed in a car accident; your mother is diagnosed with breast cancer; your wife is raped. These kinds of events stop your life for a moment; your soul freezes while the rest of the world swivels around you to a new position. Part of you insists, This hasn't happened. Part of you demands, Move on. Most of you knows that neither is an option.
And most of us know that there is no moving on from Sept. 11. It wasn't a random tragedy for which grief is a slow-acting salve. It was a massacre—a premeditated murder of civilians by men possessed by a theocratic ideology. It was an invasion—the violation of sovereign American soil, the erasure of a visible monument to American success and energy and civilization. It was a crime—the filling of the air of a great and free city with the irradiated dust of innocent human lives. It was a statement—that radical Islam intends to attack and destroy the very principles of the Enlightenment that underpin the American experiment—freedom of religion, of conscience, toleration and secularism. The appropriate response to this attack is therefore not grief or remembrance or sadness or reflection, although each of these has its place. The appropriate response is rage.
For whatever else Sept. 11 was, it was a declaration of war. The totalitarian force of radical fundamentalist Islam, like the forces of Nazism and communism that preceded it, has not disappeared. We briefly defanged it in its most important lair in Afghanistan, but even there it has not been extinguished. Saudi Arabia, the chief exporter of this murderous ideology, remains protected by the West. Saddam Hussein is currently laboring to manufacture weapons of mass destruction that his allies in the Islamist terrorist network would dearly love to use on American soil. Suicide bombers have not relented in attempting to destroy the democratic state of Israel. Anti-Semitism, now as in the past the kernel of the totalitarian mind, has metastasized like a cancer throughout the Middle East and back into its ancient home in Europe. Educated men and women who regularly find the slightest fault in democratic Western societies vie with one another to provide glib, desperate rationalizations for the murderers of 9/11: arrogant American global power somehow deserved payback, and those who deliberately kill civilians are allegedly legitimate combatants with worthy grievances.
But through all this, we know what that day showed us. It showed us that we stand deeply vulnerable to a destructive force in some ways more dangerous than even the last two totalitarian powers Americans were called on to defeat. This enemy refuses to fight with honor; it hides and disappears and re-emerges whenever its purposes are served; it may soon have access to weapons that Hitler and Stalin only dreamed of. But it cannot be defeated the way Nazi Germany and Communist Russia were defeated because it is more like a virus than a host, infecting and capturing nation-states, like Afghanistan, and then moving on to others. So we will have to act to pre-empt it this time, in Iraq and elsewhere, or it will be too late to resist it at all. For Sept. 11 showed that, for the first time in history, the American homeland is actually vulnerable to a deadly foreign enemy. Only those in deep denial can forget that.
That's why I think that for all the return to superficial normality, Americans really have changed. The illusion of isolationism has been ripped apart. How can America opt out of the world when the world refuses to leave America alone? The illusion of appeasement has been destroyed. Do we really think that by coddling regimes like Iraq or Syria or Iran or Saudi Arabia, we will help defuse the evil that lurks in their societies? The illusion of American exceptionalism has been shattered. The whole dream of this continent—that it was a place where you could safely leave the old world and its resentments behind—was ended that day. A whole generation will grow up with this as its most formative experience—a whole younger generation that knows that there actually is a right and a wrong, and that neutrality is no longer an option. That generational power has only just begun to transform the culture. In decades' time, we will look back and see what a difference it made.
Andrew Sullivan is a senior editor at the New Republic and writes daily for Andrewsullivan.com
Comparing 911 to Pearl Harbor
There is my favorite fallacy again -- comparing 911 with Pearl Harbor (rather than with the Stock Market Crash).
The Pearl Harbor attack came when America was deep into a crisis and when our society was already in the midst of a profound change in how we viewed the Federal Government. Given that, we were ripe to mobilize quickly for war and accept a much larger role in foreign policy. However, the changes were set off by the Stock Market Crash of 1929 and we floundered for some years before accepting that government may need to take more of a role in our nation's ecomomic affairs.
In contrast, the 911 attacks came when America was nearing the end of an Unravelling. In the early stages of 4T, people react to the catalyst in a very 3T way until they realize that Things Have Changed. We're still groping our way in the new situation, and we will continue to for awhile, until we hit rock bottom and realize that we have to pull together, get off our duffs, and do something.
And the Easter Uprising that changed everything "utterly" did not result in the Irish Free State until 1922 and the civil war dragged on for years. 1917 in Ireland looked a lot like 1915. Maybe the author just needs a few more years, as Yeats had, to get some perspective.
It occurred to me recently that Mr. Bush is presenting a peculiarly indefensible notion of in what ways we need to change to meet the challenge of terrorism (which is the only 4T challenge he has so far acknowledged). His vision seems to be one of endless war, a war that can never be won and whose only goal is to keep ourselves from losing.
How long will it be -- setting aside the other 4T issues which will cross-current -- before the American people collectively shake their heads at this forlorn image? How long before someone wakes up to the fact that wars are supposed to be won, that they're supposed to be temporary states of struggle to rectify a rightable wrong and defeat a defeatable foe (however challenging that foe may seem)? Wars may be won, as most of ours were, or lost, as we lost in Vietnam, but either way they do not go on forever.
What we need is a leader who will give us a vision of victory and peace, in which the people can believe.
Jenny is right that 4T's begin with 3T approaches. Where I think most people are confused is in timing. We expect this period of failed 3T ressponse to be short, only 3 years, like last crisis. But we have to consider the greater power and knowledge the authorities possess today.
Our military might is unparalleled. Our survivial is not threatened. Our president has made it clear that he has drawn up an enemies list, who will feel the force of his wrath in the event of future attacks. Our armed forces have already ousted one government and seem ready to do another all in repsonse to the first attack A second, larger attack might see annihiliation of an entire national population.
On the economic front, the conservative government in 1929 did nothing to stop the Depression, partially because of ideology, but also because they had no idea that something like that could happen. For years conservatives have argued that the Depression could have been avoided had the Fed massively cut interest rates right away. Well this time this is exactly what was done. The president has pushed the government into deficit spending at an astounding rate. And he has a ready-made war to provide still more fiscal stimulus. There will be no depression. The adminstration are not idiots, they aren't going to be asleep at the switch this time.
Of course one cannot stop the crisis. But one can modify its normal course. In prior crises, things got very bad very fast all by themselves. It took a long time to figure out what the problem was and then to agree on a fix. Most of the problems we face today have relatively easy technical solutions. Once we agree that there is a problem and that we have to do something about it, solutions will be quickly found and implemented.
The work that has to be done is coming to this agreement that we are in a crisis. By the time it dawns on everybody that yes it is 4T, it will be almost over. Most of the solutions will have been implemented 3T style over the course of the 4T. They won't work all that well, but then nothing done 3T style does. But they will be enough. It is the 1T that shows unity, not the 4T.
The above is, of course, a parody of Bush's vision.
Tony Blair's use of the term "parody" to describe the Left's portrayal of Bush was spot on. It is time to awake from these fantasy portrayals.
Like crime and greed, terrorism will always be with us to some extent. Bush's vision, however, has been to focus on the nation-states that fund, harbor, and encourage the terrorists. There need be nothing "endless" about this approach.
There is plenty about the Bush administration's particular implementation of this vision that can and should be disputed and argued about. However, those who cannot see beyond their predjudices about Bush will not be able to contribute intelligently to the neccessary debates.
One example of the Left's blindness is this: the Left has for a long time derided the U.S. foreign policy of backing dictatorships in the Middle East as long as the oil flows. Now, when the Bush administration seems torn between maintaining the old ties (it is unfortunate that two oil men are in the White House at this particular moment in history) and drastically changing our foreign policy (up to and including approaching Saudi Arabia as an enemy regime), the Left is arguing to leave things as they are. Typical.
Bush's vision is iteslf a parody.The above is, of course, a parody of Bush's vision.
Sure there does, because it is purely military. The number of states that fund, harbor, and encourage terrorists is vast. To defeat them military would require invading, conquering, and occupying roughly half the world. What's more, even success at that task would not end the threat, but would simply increase the number and availability of targets, in the form of U.S. military personnel stationed as occupation troops. And finally, it would increase the hostility towards the U.S. among the world's poor, and provide more recruits for al-Qaeda and similar organizations. This is a dead-end approach. It will give us endless war, which is one of the three principles of Ingsoc. This, we can't afford, if there is any way around it. And I believe there is.Bush's vision, however, has been to focus on the nation-states that fund, harbor, and encourage the terrorists. There need be nothing "endless" about this approach.
Military response is needed. But so is reflection and examination of our policies that provoke such rage and make us such a target. We need a deeper vision than Mr. Bush is providing.
Oops! Back to braying-jackass mode, it seems.One example of the Left's blindness
To the only point of substance presented in the course of the mouth-foaming tirade that follows these words, I respond that 1) Saddam Hussein is a dictator who does NOT help us keep the oil flowing, and 2) a proposed change for the worse may be challenged without hypocrisy.
The number of states that fund (etc.) terrorists is NOT vast. You could almost count them on one hand.
Besides all of that, you are apparently missing the following train of reasoning that seems to have some backing in the Bush administration:
(1) Various Middle Eastern nations are not democracies, but dictatorships, in which the legitimate aspirations of the people are suppressed.
(2) To remain in power, the leaders of these nations must divert the anger of their populations away from themselves (ala Orwell's 1984)
(3) The leaders of these nations intentionally channel the anger of their people towards Israel and the United States (as evidenced by the content of their state-controlled media)
(4) This anger is manifested in terrorism.
(5) Therefore, the U.S. should not be helping dictatorships remain in power in the Middle East, regardless of the oil issue. It is in the U.S.'s long-term interest that these societies become more free and pluralistic.
(6) The sooner these societies develop free speech (and media) and responsible governments which address the real wishes of their people, the sooner the anti-US anger will begin to decline as the people find more valuable causes to devote their energies to.
For the Left to ignore an opportunity for #5 to become American foreign policy simply because a Republican is in the White House would be a shame. It is what they have wanted for a long time.
Given that, I don't think the term "blindness" was all that bad. Your portrayal of me as a braying jackass seems unfair.
Look, do you want the US to remain a "allied" to fascistic regimes in the Middle East or not? Saying you agree to changing our foreign policy on this does not automatically mean you support attacking Iraq. We were not allied with the Soviet Union, nor did we attack them.
Whatever you say, those alliances were Cold War alliances of convenience. Now that the Cold War is over and the oil market has become much more diverse, it seems almost inevitable that a change in policy will take place. If Hillary were president, the only thing that would be different is that you would agree.
As for increasing the size of US forces abroad, that would worry me as well, but I have to wonder just how many American troops are still stationed in Europe, and whether we really need them to still be there, now that both WWII and the Cold War are finished.
Tom Feran
New citizen's creed: panic now, think later
09/06/02
A
classic comedy skit on "Big Chuck and Lil' John," one of the many produced by Chuck Schodowski for Fox 8's Friday-night movie show, finds Chuck in a western saloon as his cowboy character, the Kielbasy Kid. He's at a table with another character, the grizzled Old Timer.
Try Our Classifieds
"Remember, Kid," the Old Timer tells him. "Always shoot first and ask questions later."
The Kid nods, draws his pistol and blasts the Old Timer out of his chair.
Then he holsters the weapon and asks, "Why's that, Old Timer?"
There's no answer, of course, though the Old Timer might have reconsidered his advice.
So would John Chwaszczewski, a semiretired construction worker and the son of a police officer, who says he grew up with the same motto: "Shoot first and ask questions later."
Chwaszczewski, who lives in New Jersey, has a summer home near Williamsburg, Va. He was painting in his garage there, one recent morning, when he heard a loud noise and saw a helicopter pass low overhead and land in a vacant lot about a block away.
He saw a man in a business suit run to the chopper with a large black box. He had visions of "Men in Black."
"My initial reaction," he told the local paper, "was this had got to be terrorists."
He ran inside, emerged with an AR-15, the civilian version of a military assault rifle, and opened fire. No one was hit, and the surprised pilot took off. Chwaszczewski was charged with a felony and three misdemeanors.
"Maybe I overreacted, but I did feel this was terrorism at its utmost," he said.
He told police the shooting was "a natural reaction" to the events of Sept. 11.
He could, at least, cite alarm at being buzzed by a helicopter. It doesn't take as much to send some people into panic.
Outside of Boston, a couple of months ago, the manager of a wholesale club saw four Muslim men saying evening prayers and told authorities she feared they were about to launch a terror attack. Unaware that Muslims typically pray five times a day, including once around sunset, officials deployed state and local police, a bomb squad and the fire department and evacuated the store.
In Ohio, it took only traditional Middle Eastern clothing to create panic. Questions were asked later, but the matter still hasn't been set straight.
Jamilah Ali, a 38-year-old black Muslim, was driving home to Baltimore with her uncle and 14-year-old son last Sept. 11 when they stopped at an Exxon station along Ohio 40 in Belmont County, not far from Wheeling, W.Va.
They were ordered out of the car, told to lay on the ground and were handcuffed at gunpoint by sheriff's deputies responding to frantic 9-1-1 calls about people in "Arabian garb."
Ali and her uncle were jailed for eight days, and her son was placed in juvenile detention.
Last October, Judge Harry White of the Belmont County Court ruled that deputies had no probable cause for stopping Ali's car. The stop was unconstitutional.
But last week, Ali was found guilty of aggravated menacing for threatening deputies the night she was arrested. Judge White sentenced her to the eight days she had served and suspended the rest of a 180-day sentence.
Ali denied making threats. Her public defender scoffed at the idea that a slight, handcuffed woman posed a threat. The sheriff saw no threat, either.
"I was startled, but with all the people around, I was not afraid," he said. "I had the numbers in my favor."
Jad Humeidan of the Ohio chapter of the Council of American-Islamic Relations said he was saddened by the "bigotry and ignorance" he heard from community members watching the trial. His group is appealing Ali's conviction.
As for Chwaszczewski, the copter gunner, his lawyer said he might not actually have fired and "probably has some mental-health issues."
"That's cool," Chwaszczewski said. "It gets me off the hook."
Contact this Plain Dealer columnist at:
tferan@plaind.com, 216-999-5433
? 2002 The Plain Dealer. Used with permission.
Iran, Iraq, Syria, Serbia, Indonesia, Libya, Sudan, Pakistan, Saudi Arabia, North Korea, Kazakhstan, Chechnya (if that counts as a state) . . .The number of states that fund (etc.) terrorists is NOT vast. You could almost count them on one hand.
I'm already past two hands. At what point do we say that it passes "almost"?
Note also that we're allied with at least two of those.
You know, Sanford, this kind of thing is the reason I have a personal quarrel with you, above and beyond the philosophical, political, and ideological disagreements which are, themselves, no cause for rancor. You are insulting. You make things personal.you are apparently missing the following train of reasoning
I really wish you'd cut that crap out.
No, I'm not missing that reasoning, I just disagree with the conclusions you're drawing from it, and also with a number of the points along the way. I also question whether the Bush League is actually following this reasoning. I think there are other reasons for their foreign policy.
First off, while the leaders are certainly happy to divert the anger of their people away from themselves, the U.S. would not, in most cases, be their choice of diversionary target. Many of these regimes receive generous aid from the U.S. and have lucrative trade relations. Thus, the suggestion that the leaders are choosing the alternative target, and are the main reason why their people hate us, is unlikely to be correct. Rather, the people are angry with us on their own, for various reasons (some good, some bad), and the leaders are taking advantage of that in a dangerous political game, dangerous because either the people or the U.S. could easily connect the dots and do something about it.
I would certainly agree with point #5, but judging by its actions and policies, the Bush administration does not. We continue supporting dictatorships in the Middle East as long as they provide us with cheap oil. Iraq does not, therefore Iraq receives our hostility.
Point #6 is naive. When the people of a Middle Eastern nation overthrow the despot, they generally implement some sort of Islamic republic, under which hatred of America is given more, not less, support. Over the long run, it's likely that this would calm down and better relations ensue, but not instantly.
I agree. And when such an opportunity comes along, I'll join you in saying so. Right now, no such opportunity is visible.For the Left to ignore an opportunity for #5 to become American foreign policy simply because a Republican is in the White House would be a shame.
I wouldn't say it was because a Republican was in the White House, though; that's too simplistic. Rather, it's because a conservative is in the White House who is unwilling to take the necessary steps, in contradiction to American oil companies, to wean us from our dependence on fossil fuels. Whether it's a Democratic or Republican conservative is irrelevant. Clinton was no better, and Carter only marginally so.
Not in this respect, because the idea that the oil market has become much more diverse is incorrect. While there are many sources of oil in the world, if you remove the Persian Gulf source from the picture, the earth has already reached the oil-production peak. All other sources taken together can only decline in production in the future. (There are some that can increase, but they are more than offset by declines elsewhere.) Only when the Persian Gulf is factored in does the total maximum production exceed current production, and the global peak get set back about another eight years.Now that the Cold War is over and the oil market has become much more diverse, it seems almost inevitable that a change in policy will take place.
Thus, we are dependent on the Persian Gulf states to meet our future oil needs, unless of course we sharply reduce those needs. But Mr. Bush is clearly unwilling to pursue that course.
In other respects, of course our foreign policy has changed since the end of the Cold War.
See remarks re Clinton, Bill, above. Christ on a bicycle, Sanford, I'm not even a registered Democrat. Where are you getting all this BS in which you accuse me of blinkered partisanship? It's the policy that matters, not the team that's putting it into action.If Hillary were president, the only thing that would be different is that you would agree.
Throughout this Unraveling, the Democrats have been just as bad as the Republicans in terms of economics. Only on social issues have they held to their principles, and even that isn't a practical difference, since the Republicans do nothing but talk about social issues anyway. Nor am I confident that Gore would be doing significantly better on these foreign policy matters than Bush is doing. And if he didn't, I would NOT agree.
You are just plain wrong.
Former British Prime Minister (and naturally now a member of the Carlyle Group) John Major reveals that the US will nuke Baghdad if Saddam launches any sort of CBR attack. Once this seal is broken....
Saddam is warned:
We'd nuke Baghdad
Major ... lifts lid on vow
Picture: REUTERS
By TREVOR KAVANAGH
Political Editor
www.thesun.co.uk/article/0,,2-2002431528,00.html
British General strongly opposed to any military invasion of Iraq:
Gulf War General Says Iraq Invasion 'Totally Unjustified'
by Sean Rayment
www.commondreams.org/headlines02/0922-04.htm
Lady in British House of Lords attacks "Bush Cabal":
Williams attacks Bush 'cabal'
Patrick Wintour, chief political correspondent
Monday September 23, 2002
http://politics.guardian.co.uk/libde...797062,00.html
The next 9-1-1
Al Qaida, or some other terrorist organization, is going to try to pull off another big terrorist strike. As a terrorist once said, we have to get lucky every time...they only have to get lucky once. Next week, next month or next year, they will get lucky. I suspect that this will push America over the edge. When 1000 bodies become a repeating occurrance instead of just a freak, or when our transportation of products and produce is paralysed, or whatever the next 9-1-1 is, I feel we will say "Enough is enough" and go on a Crusade to end terrorism, which will almost certainly ignite a Clash between the West and Islam. And if I am right, 9-1-1 was the first strike in this Clash.
The next 9-1-1
Al Qaida, or some other terrorist organization, is going to try to pull off another big terrorist strike. As a terrorist once said, we have to get lucky every time...they only have to get lucky once. Next week, next month or next year, they will get lucky. I suspect that this will push America over the edge. When 1000 bodies become a repeating occurrance instead of just a freak, or when our transportation of products and produce is paralysed, or whatever the next 9-1-1 is, I feel we will say "Enough is enough" and go on a Crusade to end terrorism, which will almost certainly ignite a Clash between the West and Islam. And if I am right, 9-1-1 was the first strike in this Clash.
