Posted on 10/07/2003 12:17:29 PM PDT by SJackson
The story goes that Rockefeller was about to walk out the door in shabby clothes. His wife said, "You won't impress anyone in that outfit."
"Whom do I have to impress?" snapped Rockefeller.
That folklore comes to mind after reading this current headline in the New York Times: "U.S. Must Counteract Image In Muslim World, Panel Says."
They came here and murdered three thousand of us, and it's up to us to impress them. I don't quite get the logic.
You'd think it should be the other way round. They should be required to fix up their image.
Here's more from the Times on the panel's conclusions: "The U.S. must drastically increase and overhaul its public relations to salvage its plummeting image among Muslims and Arabs abroad."
But maybe public relations won't reach people who are busy in another line of work - like driving passenger airplanes into American buildings and planting bombs that kill seven-month-old babies in Israel. Maybe, after everything is weighed and considered, we're right and they're wrong. Can I get me an Amen?
Let's try that again. We're right. They're wrong.
In that case, no amount of PR will do any good. There is no reasoning with a culture whose extremists view eternal bliss as not about golden rule righteousness, followed by the shade of heaven's vine and fig tree, but rather suicide/murder, followed by carnal access to 72 virgins. No amount of PR can whitewash a generation so thoroughly brainwashed.
Besides, who cares if they love us? Whom do we have to impress?
We're the United States of America and if only tiny Israel could find the chutzpah, the daring, that once made it the little nation that could.
Again from the Times, and that 13-member panel: "Hostility toward Americans has reached shocking levels."
I could have told you that without a panel... and oh dear, there go my vacation plans to Kabul.
You mean they hate us more after 9/11? They hate Israel more after murdering more than a thousand of its people?
"Shocking levels." Now what have we done to upset nearly a fifth of the world? Forgot to do the dishes?
The panel, led by Edward P. Djerejian, a former U.S. ambassador to Syria and Israel, points the finger partly at... take a guess. This is multiple choice: Denmark. Sweden. Portugal. Umm... Israel?
"What's required is not merely tactical adaptation but strategic, and radical, transformation," says the panel.
Radical transformation. That is diplospeak for "throw Israel to the wolves."
This finding, from a group of academics gathered together by the Bush administration, assumes that the Palestinian Arabs once loved the Jewish people, and then the Jewish people did something bad. Like exist. They hate the Jews. The Jews must be to blame. Or that Osama bin Laden once loved America, and then America did something naughty. Like proclaim liberty. Yes, the fault must be with America.
There's no word in the Times as to a panel from the Muslim world, about concerns for their image in America and Israel. Apparently, there is no discomfort in that part of the world, no need to put on a better face, no instinct to re-evaluate the impression it makes, upon us, when you commit bloodshed in the name of Allah.
The term "shared values" comes up in this article in the Times. The U.S. spent millions on TV commercials about our "shared values" with the Muslim world.
Didn't work. The Muslim world laughed.
Here's a possibility. Maybe we have no shared values. They have their values. We have ours. Never the twain shall meet.
Doesn't mean we have to hate one another. Doesn't mean we have to love one another.
Just leave us alone. We don't bother you on the road to your mosque, and you leave us alone in our churches and synagogues.
How's that for shared values?
We're doing just that. In the previous administration, they had the image that we would never fight back, that terrorism against our assets was a freebie, that the Presidency was all style, no substance.
This administration is counteracting that image.
The "Panel" can kiss our collective a$$.
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One more time:
The US is the greatest society the world has ever seen.
The rest of the world should be seeking ways for us to view them more kindly. Specially the sandmaggots.
So I'll say it one more time. Do I care what the rest of the world thinks of us?
NO, I DON'T CARE!
Today, Americans generally consider them to be brutal, delusional devil-worshipping Satanists.
What brought about this revolutions in perception?
One thing's certain. Americans know a lot more about Muslims and Islam than they once did.
They don't like us, they never have liked us, and they never will like us. So we live, and provide for an intimidating and effective self-defense, aggressively deployed when we need it.
If you'd like to be on or off this
Christian Supporters of Israel ping list,
please FR mail me. ~
Letter To The President In Support Of Israel ~
'Final Solution,' Phase 2 ~
Ask yourself this, what would your opinion of America be if the only image you got was "Dallas", "Jerry Springer", 95% of the movies put out by Hollywood, Would you think gee what a wonderful place, we should be just like them.
So I'll say it one more time. Do I care what the rest of the world thinks of us?
You better because
1 There are a lot more of them than there are of us.
2 The world is a very small place and getting smaller all the time.
I keep re-reading this thread because there is so much food for thought here.
The above is true. The most concise, percetive and complete statement of a demi-century of problems:
"What's required is not merely tactical adaptation but strategic, and radical, transformation, of Islam!" says the panel.
That is either a veiled threat, or the verbalization of a coward.
When criminals outnumber the law-abiding in a neighborhood it is time become like them? Pay them off? Become just like them? What?
That applies equally to neighborhoods, cities, states and countries.
War is an ugly thing, but not the ugliest of things. The decayed and degraded state of moral and patriotic feeling which thinks that nothing is worth war is much worse. The person who has nothing for which he is willing to fight, nothing which is more important than his own personal safety, is a miserable creature and has no chance of being free unless made and kept so by the exertions of better men than himself.
~~ John Stuart Mill ~~
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