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Politics : High Tolerance Plasticity -- Ignore unavailable to you. Want to Upgrade?

To: Raymond Duray who wrote (7719)	9/12/2001 8:08:03 AM
From: kodiak_bull	Read Replies (4) \| Respond to of 23153

Ray, "I see very little chance that as a nation we will be learning any valuable lesson as to the root causes of yesterday's terrorist attack or how to ameliorate our arrogance and willful blindness to economic inequalities which, IMO, makes further terrorist attacks almost inevitable." This is really where I have to get off the boat with you and Cosmo. Think of Germany in the 1930s. Herbert Goldberg living in Berlin says, "we must find ways to ameliorate our arrogance and willful blindness to the economic inequalities which make further brown shirt attacks inevitable." Or, you're being attacked by a pit bull, what do you do, contemplate how the dog must have been mistreated by its owner and how it is transferring that training, mistakenly, onto you? Or do you simply find an iron bar and crush its skull? These terrorist groups and organizations do not represent their people, but only their demogogic rhetoric. None of them stands for democratic, popular movements and individual human rights; just look at the countries which have and continue to support state terrorism: Iraq, Iran, Libya, Afghanistan, North Korea. Show me, if you will, the multi-party system, the freedoms of movement, speech and belief. These are, despite their size, fascist, totalitarian regimes in the making. Just as the rallying cry for the horrors of communism was "workers of the world unite, let us build a socialist paradise," resulted in the people's impoverishment (and gulags) and an economic nightmare, so the rallying cry of a religious jihad against America, the Great Satan, has nothing to do with religion or anything satanic about the U.S. As for economic inequalities, they are so pronounced because 1) we benefit from the innovations and systems that we created over the past century or so (air travel, auto production, manufacturing, information systems, the internet) by having created it and having from a business end marketed it successfully to others and 2) others, beginning in Europe, have been slower and less flexible in comprehending economic and industrial and information concepts. The world now runs on Intel chips, Dell computers and Microsoft products, literally runs on it. Why? Nobody forced anyone to use airplanes or computers--it's just A SUPERIOR WAY TO GO ABOUT LIFE. What is the solution for economic inequality that you propose? Afghanistan is poor and suffering under a repressive regime not because of America but because of Afghanistan. The same holds true for the blighted countries of Iraq, Iran, etc. Countries usually get the kind of government they (the citizenry) deserve, like it or not. One thing we can agree on, whether it's our neighbors to the north (Canada) or south (Mexico and below), or the Europeans we saved from Hitler or the guys wearing djellabahs in the Medinas and Casbahs of the Middle East, we're not loved and admired. Most seem to have adopted the very "sophisticated" world views of Harvard dons and editorial page scribes about the U.S. and how we should handle various issues. If you ever call into question their erroneous presuppositions (such as that English is an imperialist language, or that the U.S. actually started the Korean war) they can always cite some pundit from the NYT or an American university who's written an opinion on the subject. As long as I'm talking here, it is noteworthy that someone or ones on the Pennsylvania plane apparently didn't stand idly by and managed to do something. The result was a crash outside Pittsburgh in a field, rather than a crash into the other side of the Pentagon or the Capitol.

To: Raymond Duray who wrote (7719)	9/12/2001 9:41:39 AM
From: Think4Yourself	Read Replies (2) \| Respond to of 23153

Raymond, Sorry to say this but I take issue with your use of the word "revenge". Some may see what we will do as an act of revenge but I definitely do not. It is a matter of sending a strong message that we will not tolerate this kind of unjustified brutality towards our civilians. There is a world of difference between the two, at least to me. If we indiscriminately lash out then it's revenge. If it's a carefully thought out act against the targets responsible for the attacks, after carefully determining who is responsible, then it's sending a message. What they did was "revenge" for the injustices they felt we caused.