Ditto.
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 don't know that the embargo worked in South Africa. South Africa was completely self-sufficient.
So what do we do now, numbnutz? Maybe we can hold a service for the .. what was it?.. Millions and millions of Iraqi babies we starved to death despite the good intentions of their benevolent leader which of course we installed and are responsible for, as well as all the other evil badguys in the world
So what should we do, sh*t-for-brains? Maybe we can write a long "I'm so sorry" letter to all those courageous raghead murderers of 30,000 worker bee civilians. Sounds like a magnificent idea, Mr Perfect.
Ditto.
Yeah but the libs writing that crap would tell you you didn't. As long as you were a liberal.
In fact, if you did that and were raped, I would say that the guys should pay the legal price. You acted like an idiot. They inflicted physical harm.
And besides that, your analogy isn't accurate. It would be more accurate to say that if you befriended a lady who had a battering husband, and while you were over there, he started beating her, and you stood up to him perhaps using some inflammatory words and kicking him in the groin and calling the cops, and then two days later, he came over to your house and started it on fire and strangled your pets, then would someone be right to say you asked for it?
It comes out of the anger of the hater choosing to obsess on and appropriate something that it wants and can't have.
As far as abortion, yes we have indignation for that too, but that is not the current event. If you have been here for any time, you would know that.
On that note, where is your indignation for Child Pornography? How about domestic abuse? Haven't seen you mention those, must mean you don't care, huh? Get it?
I posted this article and made the above simple statement. I made one simple request and that is for us to "not stop thinking". I did that on purpose as it seems like a completely reasonable request that neither supports the terrorist actions of Tuesday, nor calls for the blood of any innocents.
I believe the people that are directly responsible for Tuesday's terrorist attacks should suffer a very slow and painful death, but I purposely avoided making any calls to violence because this site is already swimming in hate. All I ask is that we simply don't stop thinking.
On the Balkan threads I am often accused of being a rabid anti-Muslim and ultra-nationalist, and now I'm accused of being an apologist for terrorist. I think I may have a solution. On Balkan threads I will simply plead that the Serbs negotiate with the terrorists and try to be nicer to them no matter how many terrorist attacks are delivered against the Serbs. I will plead with the Serbs to start negotiating with the KLA and Bosnian Muslim terrorists and start compromising the way the US wishes them to, but I will call for the total anihilation of Muslims when it's in reference to the terrorist attacks against America.
On second thought. Nah. I'm just going to keep on thinking.
By the way, I've chosen to flag all of you because, sadly, you folks are the only few on this thread to not be offended by a simple call "to think".
In the past America could bring pressure to bear upon governments twist a few arms and get the to acquiesce to things that were not in their own national interest but they were unable to withstand the blackmail. Now our enemy can do the same, with a probably a greater effect, as the cost of refusal would far outstrip anything that American could do.
How long will some of our reluctant allies be able to withstand the pressure of a powerful organization that can wreck their economy and cause revolution in their countries? How long will Turkey give aid and war making rights to American forces? How long will it be before a highjacked civilian airliner plunges in to the core of a Nuclear power plant? How long will it be before a crop dusting plane unloads chemical or biological agents over some large gathering of Americans? Pick your own gathering.
Just a few thought while you are loading the bombs to attack the world. It may take a little time for reality to sink in, but guys - you heard it here first – THE WORLD HAS CHANGED.
You are a pathetic ass-licker of the Washington imperialists. You are a disgrace to your name.
And... what was the root cause again? Oh yeah... the Arabs hate the Israelis and want their sacred homeland.
Not sure how we address that one, other than by being friends with neither. How about that?
Try this link. It's a LOOONG sermon, but explains the root cause quite nicely. Fascinating.
No, the analogy is far closer to someone who befriends a battering husband and encourages him to continue. And then cries innocent when the lady strikes you as well as him.
We don't need no steeekin' thinking.
Exactly right, and allow me to add that THE BALANCE OF GLOBAL POWER WAS FOREVER CHANGED!
Thank G-d I am a product of the Bible Belt South and not the high-church European culture that preceded it! And thank G-d that if the South ever does become an independent nation, it is we pro-Jewish Fundamentalist Bible-thumpers and not you chr*stendom types who will run it. In fact, not every Old South Southerner regards the Jews as the Source Of All That Is Icky, but that's another story.
The Southern Redneck (or, as I'm sure this fine Southern lady calls us, "white trash") has the same relationship with Israel that the Jamaican r*st*f*rian has with Ethiopia. To a rootless people with no memory of an ancient heritage and who have only the Bible to guide them, all the ancient traditions of chr*stendom are phonies. All are unauthorized by the Bible (which Flannery O'Connor, valiant Southern lady, admitted is the object worshipped by Southern religion). The only chr*stendom they can find in their Bible is Biblical Israel, the only Rome is Jerusalem, and the only "chr*stian kings" they can find are Saul, David, Solomon, and their successors. In fact, unlike classical chr*stians, Southern Fundamentalists accept J*sus solely on the authority of the extended Hebrew Bible they possess, and for no other reason. Which means all one has to do is realize the "reformers" didn't go far enough when they tossed out the "Deuterocanon."
The Independent South will be a Noachide Theocracy, and Hebrew will be its language. 'Amein, selah. Ken yehi ratzon.
CatoR:
Time to close this one out; it loads too slowly (or start thread 2)
I'm not defending anything. I've been asking you what YOU would do. What would you do right now , after this terrible tragedy?
Please, monkeybrains, tell me what would you do about anything whatsoever.You apparently just like to whine and complain and nurse your litlle Anti -Semitisms and all your other little Anti's. So , enlighten us, jerkoff. Lead us toward the Perfect World.
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