Phooey:
I hear you. You're scared. You've been scared, since 9/11. Everything the President says, everything you see on CNN, it feeds your fear... Yada yada.
More flabby abuse in the guise of armchair psychiatry.
I don't see monsters under my bed. But I got really pissed off when I found out that a-hole went past my place in a car full of unstable explosives as he was on his way to bomb LAX.
I woke up turned on the TV and saw 9/11. I was enraged as I saw the people falling from the buidings and at the time thought of 30,000 dead. Very luckily, it was only a tenth that number, but a tenth that number was not the intent of the perpetrators. It wasn't a ghost or a monster under the bed who committed the crime.
I was angered by the bombed embassy in Africa and especially by the callous disregard the bombers had for the passersby there.
I was enraged upon finding out the the various crimes were done by people who are campaigning to bring the world to the state of ragged ass 8th century peasants ruled by wise people, such as, of course, themselves, who have a direct connection to god. The creeps murdered these people for the purpose of giving their own empty lives meaning.
What is most galling to me is that these people, with the help of a ton of Saudi money, are propagating their Perfectly Stupid Ideas throughout the world so even more people may be murdered. I remind you that when such ideas had great currency in the 20th century, the greatest spasm of killing in the world's history resulted.
But you, an educated Western person, wish to trivialize my concern and Chuck's concern, with sophomoric psychologizing. Thanks heaps.
Decades ago I was pissed off when I found out Hussein gassed those people and the folk on my side were too cosy with him. I was even more angered when I found out the Baath party was another fascism in drag and the folk on my side were close to him - where were their memories? - this is what WW2 was fought against. I was vastly relieved when the US finally turned against Hussein and angered when it stopped marching to Baghdad.
the Peace Party people are cowards
No they're not. They're dopes. They supported Stalin, Hitler, Mussolini, Mao, and Hussein. Well, that's what the people who suffered under those tyrants thought, but what the hell do they know?
The followers of Gandhi, who took on the British Empire, they were cowards
They were not cowards and they were not part of the peace party, either. They were aggressive fighters who took aim at the heart of the British people with exactly the right weapon at the right time.
The followers of ML King, who endured a campaign of hundreds of church-bombings and lynchings, whose marches were broken up with police dogs and water cannon and sometimes bullets
Again, aggressive people who used the right weapon at the right time.
Neither Gandhi's nor King's followers would have stood a chance in the 19th century or even, in the US case, prior to WW2 during the rabid Wilsonian racist period.
The tactic worked also in E Germany because the Soviet empire was collapsing and finally, after fifty years of terror, its rulers were men without the blood of millions on their hands, no investment in the tyrannical ideology, and too much to occupy them at home. It surely would not have worked 10 years sooner and the East Germans would have been fools to try it.
Right now, if the Palestinians used the Gandhian weapon, they'd have the Israelis on the ropes within a year and they could have done the same thing 20 years ago with success, also. The woman who stood in front of the Israeli dozer was an arrogant fool... where were the 100,000 Palestinians beside her?
Use the Gandhian weapon on Hussein, the Syrian government, or even probably the Iranian mullocracy, and it would be worse than stupid. They'd shoot the demonstrators and kill their familes, and a lot of good folk would die for no decent progress.
Only people who believe in solving problems by killing their fellow man, are courageous.
Of course not. But if you think for a moment the likes of Hussein, or the kill-a-yank-for-Allah crowd, or the Wahabbist Saudi kleptocracy are going quietly into the night you are down right wrong. They will resist to the very end allowing any folk but themselves political headroom. The Iraqis have had more freedom and political space -however imperfect- in the last few months than they had in all of the past thirty years and they didn't get it by sitting in the streets in front of Saddam's police. They weren't going to get it that way. Can you spell m-a-s-s g-r-a-v-e-s? The Iranians might get it that way but it's mighty chancy compared to the likelihood of success the Palestinians could have with any sort of intelligent leadership.
Only they have the bravery to kill their enemies, and accept the "collateral damage" and "unfortunate accidents" that, in the typical guerrilla war, kill 10 times as many civilians as combatants
In the past fifty years, most guerilla wars have been sustained by the followers of totalitarian ideology who have as their ends the subjugation of the populations they've conned, or more likely terrorized, into supporting them. That is the end Shining Path, Baath, and even those darlings of the Peace Party, the Sandanistas and PA, are striving towards, and no amount of Liberation Theology can change or disprove that. As far as they are concerned, the more collateral damage, the better - it validates for them what they're doing - and as a practical matter, those that oppose them must avoid it as much as possible. Supposed "bravery" in accepting such damage is a crock and those involved will tell you such damage is counterproductive because it makes their task far more difficult.
The techno-warrior, who sits in a bunker in a heavily protected base, watching a screen, and pushes a button, and a drone aircraft drops a bomb and kills some people (who were identified as the enemy, based on vague and uncertain Intelligence), this warrior (and the people who cheer him on), he has courage. Only him.
Courage is not the issue. Unless the techno-warrior is mis-wired or thicker than a post she goes into the business knowing intuitively -and often clearly- she's taking a risk with her mental well being.
Only the War Party loves their country; the Peace Party hates their country. Peace and Patriotism are opposites, mutually exclusive
This is dopey. The peace party, as you call it, is getting some really important things wrong.
The war party, as you call it, is too damn triumphalist some of the time.
The War Party has the only solutions. They are the only hard-headed Realists, the only ones who know how to GetThingsDone. There are only two solutions to any foreign policy problem: kill or submit. Escalate without limit, or appease. Be an alpha male wolf, snapping and snarling at the slightest hint of revolt in the pack. Or roll over and expose your belly. Those are always the only two choices.
The non-war party had its way for the ten years up to Dubya's inauguration, and foreign policy with regard to Iraq and the ME failed regimes and the terrorist problem (particularly the islamist one), did not bring forward any large body of decent work, did it? Perhaps I'm missing something and I'm sure if I am you will point it out.
"All of us have heard this term 'preventive war' since the earliest days of Hitler. I recall that is about the first time I heard it. In this day and time.... I don't believe there is such a thing; and, frankly, I wouldn't even listen to anyone seriously that came in and talked about such a thing." - President Eisenhower in 1953, after being shown plans for a preventive war against the Soviet Union.
Eisenhower was a ruthless man who prosecuted a war to utter capitulation. His questions about Iraq might well have been, "Why hasn't the surrender been enforced?" Do you think he would have had no strategic requirements after 9/11?
Tolerance, openness and understanding towards other peoples' cultures, social structures, values and faiths are now essential to the very survival of an interdependent world. Pluralism is no longer simply an asset or a prerequisite for progress and development, it is vital to our existence.- The Aga Khan (1936- ) Imam of the Shia Ismaili Muslims
The Aga Khan's followers need this tolerance not from Western society but from Islamists. This is a big fat red herring. Openess to murderous ideology is not just stupid but begs for destruction.
At one time all people were only one nation. - The Koran 2:213
A rubbishy untruth, whatever the source. We have never, ever, been just one family, village or nation.
What scares me the most, is that your fear causes you to do things that make more and more people hate you and me. Your methods, a near-random Hitting Back, this is losing the war
What's so random? The US policy seems in its overall form to be coherent. You just don't like it, right? And of course, more of your arm chair psychologizing of a quality insulting to the intelligence of a newt.
I'm scared, and I see your fear, and I'll keep holding up the mirror till you see it too. Then, maybe, we can change our methods, and win this war.
Mirrors. Mirroring. Oh yes. That's what Western diplomats do with folk like Saddam - only they they hold the mirror facing themselves....
They would do much better throwing away their mirrors and looking at what's there.
I feel your pain -Bill Clinton |
