Hi RWS,
Thank you for stating so eloquently what has been on my mind from the moment this horrible act started to unfold last Tuesday. For the sake of our fat-assed SUVs, and before that our luxury sedans and extravagant skybuses, we have meddled incessantly in the affairs of the Middle East since the 1930's. We are deeply resented in that part of the world for propping up some of the most wretched monarchist and fascist regimes in the world. Ordinary Arabs throughout the region cannot help but be resentful of the intrusiveness of the U.S. connivance. But all this is lost on the great number of contributors here who simply want to think about the next level of escalated involvement in the affairs of parts of the world where the bulk of ordinary populations are repulsed by the American approach.
I find it fascinating that the "libs" on this thread (if I can use that discredited term) such as Cosmo, you and I can clearly empathize with the equivalent of Joe Six Pack in Cairo, Tehran or Kabul and understand their deep frustration with U.S. meddling. Others on this thread are blissfully unconcerned about these ordinary humans who've been pushed beyond their boiling point by U.S. arrogance. This blindness to the rage among the masses is what makes situations like that of last Tuesday to not only start to occur, but to become all too predictable.
You make a really valid point about Afghanistan's infrastucture. There is no there, there. There is nothing that a conventional army can do there, except engage in My Lai type atrocities. Whole lot of good that will do. OTOH, I looked at some "footage" on the EnergyNewsLive webcast today with a new eye. It was a helicopter's eye view of the petrochemical infrastructure on the Houston Ship Canal. Good Golly, Miss Molly, now that is a rich target. Now that the bad guys have taken out the heart of the American finacial empire, howzabout the soul of the petrochemical complex? We are so vulnerable it is astonishing. But not to any nation state, because we'd level it, as others have suggested. But these anarchic, clandestine terrorist cells have, remarkably, an upper hand when it comes to the elements of surprise, stealth and the use of primitive means to create extreme havoc in our precariously perched prosperity.
I'm sure I'll be shot down for suggesting it, but if the U.S. were to consider toning down its arrogance, attempt to be a good and not meddlesome neighbor, and start to distance itself from the insanity of the Arab world, I'd think that we'd be on the right course to lessen the likelihood of an ongoing series of reprisals, the likes of which the world has never known. We must keep in mind that this "jet cum bomb" assault on the WTC and the Pentagon isn't the WMD attack we feared. Nor should we for a moment think that biological and chemical weapons aren't on their way to our cities at this very moment.
I see lowering the rhetoric to be the only sane way out of this. Incendiary talk of war, or of turning nations into pavements will have only one result. A continuing spiral of ever more wretched crimes against humanity. We have vastly more to lose than to gain by a foreign campaign in Central Asia.
Best, Ray |
