Posted on 09/13/2001 6:33:57 AM PDT by getoffmylawn
Nearly two days after the horrific suicide attacks on civilian workers in New York and Washington, it has become painfully clear that most Americans simply don't get it. From the president to passersby on the streets, the message seems to be the same: this is an inexplicable assault on freedom and democracy, which must be answered with overwhelming force - just as soon as someone can construct a credible account of who was actually responsible.
Shock, rage and grief there has been aplenty. But any glimmer of recognition of why people might have been driven to carry out such atrocities, sacrificing their own lives in the process - or why the United States is hated with such bitterness, not only in Arab and Muslim countries, but across the developing world - seems almost entirely absent. Perhaps it is too much to hope that, as rescue workers struggle to pull firefighters from the rubble, any but a small minority might make the connection between what has been visited upon them and what their government has visited upon large parts of the world.
But make that connection they must, if such tragedies are not to be repeated, potentially with even more devastating consequences. US political leaders are doing their people no favours by reinforcing popular ignorance with self-referential rhetoric. And the echoing chorus of Tony Blair, whose determination to bind Britain ever closer to US foreign policy ratchets up the threat to our own cities, will only fuel anti-western sentiment. So will calls for the defence of "civilisation", with its overtones of Samuel Huntington's poisonous theories of post-cold war confrontation between the west and Islam, heightening perceptions of racism and hypocrisy.
As Mahatma Gandhi famously remarked when asked his opinion of western civilisation, it would be a good idea. Since George Bush's father inaugurated his new world order a decade ago, the US, supported by its British ally, bestrides the world like a colossus. Unconstrained by any superpower rival or system of global governance, the US giant has rewritten the global financial and trading system in its own interest; ripped up a string of treaties it finds inconvenient; sent troops to every corner of the globe; bombed Afghanistan, Sudan, Yugoslavia and Iraq without troubling the United Nations; maintained a string of murderous embargos against recalcitrant regimes; and recklessly thrown its weight behind Israel's 34-year illegal military occupation of the West Bank and Gaza as the Palestinian intifada rages.
If, as yesterday's Wall Street Journal insisted, the east coast carnage was the fruit of the Clinton administration's Munich-like appeasement of the Palestinians, the mind boggles as to what US Republicans imagine to be a Churchillian response.
It is this record of unabashed national egotism and arrogance that drives anti-Americanism among swaths of the world's population, for whom there is little democracy in the current distribution of global wealth and power. If it turns out that Tuesday's attacks were the work of Osama bin Laden's supporters, the sense that the Americans are once again reaping a dragons' teeth harvest they themselves sowed will be overwhelming.
It was the Americans, after all, who poured resources into the 1980s war against the Soviet-backed regime in Kabul, at a time when girls could go to school and women to work. Bin Laden and his mojahedin were armed and trained by the CIA and MI6, as Afghanistan was turned into a wasteland and its communist leader Najibullah left hanging from a Kabul lamp post with his genitals stuffed in his mouth.
But by then Bin Laden had turned against his American sponsors, while US-sponsored Pakistani intelligence had spawned the grotesque Taliban now protecting him. To punish its wayward Afghan offspring, the US subsequently forced through a sanctions regime which has helped push 4m to the brink of starvation, according to the latest UN figures, while Afghan refugees fan out across the world.
All this must doubtless seem remote to Americans desperately searching the debris of what is expected to be the largest-ever massacre on US soil - as must the killings of yet more Palestinians in the West Bank yesterday, or even the 2m estimated to have died in Congo's wars since the overthrow of the US-backed Mobutu regime. "What could some political thing have to do with blowing up office buildings during working hours?" one bewildered New Yorker asked yesterday.
Already, the Bush administration is assembling an international coalition for an Israeli-style war against terrorism, as if such counter-productive acts of outrage had an existence separate from the social conditions out of which they arise. But for every "terror network" that is rooted out, another will emerge - until the injustices and inequalities that produce them are addressed.
I think ya got it backwards there, Skippy. But give it a couple weeks and hopefully you'll be right...
Were we wise to assist the fanatics in Afghanistan and Pakistan during the 1978-1992 war, producing the regime which now harbours bin Laden?
Were we wise to take the side of the KLA (direct links to bin Laden) first in Kosovo, and now in Macedonia?
Were we wise to condemn Russian retaliation against the Chechen terrorists (also with direct links to bin Laden) who bombed apartment buildings in Moscow and St. Petersburg?
Were we wise to aid and abet our own enemy? These are questions we must ponder.
While former US assistance to Bin Laden and Saddam Hussein must be seen in light of the Cold War chess game of proxy wars between the US and USSR, we have since had time to wise up and reassess. The Gulf War showed us the cost of having to cut down to size a Frankenstein of our own Cold War creation when he got too big for his britches.
Our next step should have been to take out the other Frankenstein, Bin Laden. But what did Clinton do? He fed American technology to Bin Laden's network via the Syrians, and likely the Chinese as well. Technology which has now been turned against us in Tuesday's monstrous attack. Furthemore, he turned NATO into the air force of Bin Laden's allies, the UCK/KLA. And let us not forget that the Bosnian Muslim regime, which the US backed, still harbours Bin Laden mujahadin to this day.
We must realise who our true enemies are and who our natural allies are. Our true enemies are Bin Laden and all organisations and countries who support him. Our natural allies in this fight are Russia, Britain and Israel.
We must get our priorities straight, and our first priority must be national security.
We must not allow our righteous outrage to prevent us from analysing the situation with cools heads.
For now, prayers for the those who are lost, those who are injured, those who are mourning, those who are bravely attempting to rescue survivors.
The tens of thousands of people MURDERED by nut-cases did NOTHING to deserve their fate.
Anyone who would try to excuse such an atrocity is beneath contempt.
No not at all. Back before the large numbers of JackBoots had infiltrated this website there was a lot more truly useful information and a lot less diversionary drivel. When I was introduced to this book twenty-five years ago I read it and said to myself: "Horsesh*t; this can't be true; this is AMERICA!"
But, the seed was planted, and I began to connect the dots. Now, I realize that it is ALL true as confirmed by an insider to "the plan" here.
Good luck Pilgrim! (The jackals will be along soon, trying to pee on this information that I have shared)
Scores of Brits died in NYC yesterday. This piece of excreta is in a minority.
I well understand that the Arabs didn't like it when we used a battleship to shoot-up Arab villages, but they have to understand that most Americans feel there is nothing wrong with that (of course, I don't have a lot of confidence that they will ever learn to appreciate their innocents being killed.) And not one American in a thousand cares much if Iraqi children die by the hundreds of thousands because of the embargo. I do care, yet, I support the embargo. Not only do we have to take direct action against the terrorist states, we should expand that action. We should not trade with Syria, Iraq or Iran - or with anyone who does trade with them. If France and Japan want their oil, they should trade their goods with each other. If something is worth killing over, it should be worth not buying their goods. If they want to live outside human bounds, let them live outside the human community. That is their choice, not ours.
While Americans don't care, it should be noted that the Iraqi leadership also doesn't care if their children die by the hundreds of thousands. Saddam builds palaces worth $billions while Iraqi babies die. In the Muslim world, that is acceptable - otherwise, their clerics would be screaming bloody-murder. Also, few Muslim clerics are willing to condemn the Great Atrocity in New York, Virginia, and Pennsylvania. Very few Muslims will stand-up against the Muslim murderers. They may have some good reasons to be angry with us, but they have no reason for accepting terrorism as a way of life - and they do.
Now, the bombing and killing of civilians such as we killed in Germany during WWII, will probably have no greater effect than it had on German morale during WWII. In fact, the bombing of German cities tended to only build support for Hitler.
The way to respond to terror - is to kill terrorists, and not just anyone handy. We should have a long-term policy of hunting them down all over the world. But that's probably too hard, and not impressive enough for the American people - so we'll probably just kill people. And, it will probably work just as well as it has in Israel.
Should the American people stand-up more against the American military being used to kill people all over the world - of course. And if the American people don't care, the killings will continue, and not only in other countries. And our liberties will be increasingly threatened.
Nevertheless, the United States does have an obligation to responsibly oppose the world terrorists. And not only that, hopefully, many of them will die because of what they did to our country.
I might suggest to you that tossing around terms as "delusional" to some on that has actually stated a position makes me wonder if the JD in your handle implies "juris doctore" or your favorite (and frequently imbibed) beverage...
This is true but it also was an intrinsic Reagan strategy to bringing down the Soviet Union. I say, good for Ronnie. Of course you wouldn't know what realpolitik is now would you? Kind of lacks the symmetry that you get in your everyday life. While you get up, make your breakfast and put out the garbage (I'm sure difficult and challenging tasks for you), nation-states must make the hard and oftentimes apparently asymmetrical decisions necessary in the world of real politik.
Has there been hypocrtical behaviour by all nation-states? No doubt. For example, the U.S. was sucked into supporting the Bosnian Muslims, and the KLA in Kosovo, the latter, pan-Albanian Muslim thugs, against a sovereign European nation-state, the former Yugoslavia. A country which never did anything to harm the U.S. and indeed provided the most effective resistance in Eastern Europe to Nazism.
Unless, however, you are prepared to exercise your cranium in a more subtle fashion to recognize that niceties and pat decisions aren't always there (or self-evident for that matter), you will be unable to exercise the sound judgment necessary to attack the evil of pan Islamic Fundamentalism internationally including the dismantling of this Taliban by force if necessary. Moreover, the Guardian has been one of the most spineless anti-Israel rags. On the latter issue, they are particularly corrupt and amoral in their regular condemnation of Israel. Hence, I give little consideration to this band of whore-mongering scribes.
Let it suffice to ask you to muse on the quality of life you would have living under the tender mercies of Ben Ladin and the power hungry clerics he weilds the sword for.
Have fun dreaming about your rampage. It won't happen. At least Bush isn't as big a fruitcake as you are. (God, I can't believe I just applauded him!)
The world has learned bitter lessons about cowardly terrorists: They tend to use innocents as human shields, and very often with the "innocent's" willing participation.
The man in the street who harbors these vermin need to find out the hard way that they do so at their own peril.
"Thinking"? Surely you are not suggesting that the author of this piece is "thinking"? The column is simply a very serviceable example of anti-American gibberish undergirded by a typical leftwing utopian vision of the world that has no basis in reality.
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