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bucheon bum
Joined: 16 Jan 2003
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 Posted: Mon Feb 25, 2008 10:01 pm Post subject: |
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| jkelly80 wrote: |
| The Taliban is a very popular Pashtun organization, informed as much by Sharia as the Pashtunwali legal codes. As long as the Pashtuns are around, we're going to be seeing organizations like the Taliban in southern Afghanistan and the frontier areas of Pakistan, and they're going to be wack-jobs. |
eh, it is more complicated than that.
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Intriguingly, provinces where tribal structures are strongest, such as Paktia, Paktika and Khost, have proved most resistant to Taliban encroachment.
NATO commanders are now studying these areas hard. In Loya Paktia, as the region is known, the Taliban have struggled to gain ground against the ancient code of tribal behaviour known as Pushtunwali (literally, �do Pushtun�). It governs hospitality, honour and revenge. It has self-regulating systems of arbakai, tribal elders and arbitration. Loya Paktia remains startlingly egalitarian and determinedly suspicious of outsiders. Yet, tempting as it is to see such structures as the answer to the Taliban, Pushtunwali is also hostile to the central government and to Western ideals, particularly of education and sex equality. Feuds in Loya Paktia are still often settled by the exchange of women. |
Those provinces border Pakistan and are Pashtun. Afghanistan has many different layers.
Afghanistan's Tribal Complexity |
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bucheon bum
Joined: 16 Jan 2003
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| Posted: Mon Feb 25, 2008 10:08 pm Post subject: |
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| jkelly80 wrote: |
| There's always an opportunity cost. Kill em all has been proven not to work. You have to be realistic here Joo. They're not going anywhere, they're nuts, and they hail from one of the most geo-strategic areas on Earth. |
1. When has killing them all NOT worked? Worked for the Romans against carthage pretty effectively. When has the US ever employed this method? Closest was the wars with Native Americans and against the Japanese. I'd say those were pretty successful. But it is irrelevant because it is a method that the US cannot realistically use given the present circumstances.
2. Nuts? Umm I think you could come up with a better word than that. Completely different mindset than us perhaps?
3. Most geo-strategic areas on earth? Now? How? If that is the case, why did we not care about it after the end of the cold war? |
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cbclark4
Joined: 20 Aug 2006
Location: Masan
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| Posted: Mon Feb 25, 2008 10:19 pm Post subject: |
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I'm really just adding some more fuel to the fire.
World Watch
First appeared in print in The Rhinoceros Times, Greensboro, NC --------------------------------------------------------------------------------
By Orson Scott Card July 18, 2004
Did We Invade the Wrong Country?
I find it just a little amusing that pundits -- especially opponents of the war -- are now saying, "It looks like we invaded the wrong country, if we wanted to get the governments that supported 9/11."
What they mean is that Iran, not Iraq, seems to have given the terrorists who blew up the World Trade Center safe passage -- including the decision not to stamp their passports so that they could not be identified as having passed through Iran.
Well, duh. Of course Iran supported them. Iran has openly supported terrorism since the "holy" dictatorship of the ayatollahs was established during the Carter presidency.
But we didn't invade Iraq because they directed or actively supported or had foreknowledge of the 9/11 attack. Nor did President Bush ever say so. What he said was that Iraq was an active supporter of terrorism -- an undisputed fact -- with a relationship with Al-Qaeda -- again, another undisputed fact.
...
It is especially hard to imagine John Kerry being anything other than a champion appeaser, like Neville Chamberlain before World War II. Do you really think that if Clinton, Gore, or Kerry had been President in the aftermath of 9/11 that our enemies would have met with such swift and relentless suppression of their capability to mount further attacks on American soil?
*
Democrats in California are teaching all of America just how humorless they are.
Supporters of President Bush are supposed to grin and bear it when Michael Moore and Al Franken and other Hollywood "humorists" savagely slander him. But when Governor Schwarzenneger quotes an old Saturday Night Live sketch, calling obstructionists in the state legislature "girly-men," it doesn't occur to Democrats to merely shake their heads and say, "Oh, that silly Austrian."
http://www.ornery.org/essays/warwatch/2004-07-18-1.html
Last edited by cbclark4 on Mon Feb 25, 2008 10:28 pm; edited 1 time in total |
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jkelly80
Joined: 13 Jun 2007
Location: you boys like mexico?
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| Posted: Mon Feb 25, 2008 10:21 pm Post subject: |
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I stand corrected. However, this strikes me as power politics within the Pushtun tribes, and not really problems born out of ideological differences. The Taliban is a recent group, so its not surprising it would butt heads with older established tribal structures.
I wasn't suggesting that the US is currently taking the 'kill em all' tactic, which might have worked in pre-modernity but never again. I was suggesting that Joo seems to favor that kind of thinking though. Do you really think it would work in Central Asia?
Pushtuns and Pushtunwali seem rather cloistered and intolerant, so it's not surprising if some sort of Sharia-styel organization like the Taliban crops up again. Nuts might have been too glib. Shall we say "fifth century stylistics?"
Central Asia is becoming ONE of the most geo-strategic areas because of its oil and gas reserves. Controlling pipelines through airstrips and bases could skirt Russian Gazprom monopolizing in Western Europe and also dissuade the Chinese from their aims for the region as well. Keep in mind that nobody thought much of the Middle East strategic until the end of the 19th Century, but here we are. |
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Kuros
Joined: 27 Apr 2004
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| Posted: Mon Feb 25, 2008 10:25 pm Post subject: |
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| jkelly80 wrote: |
I wasn't suggesting that the US is currently taking the 'kill em all' tactic, which might have worked in pre-modernity but never again. I was suggesting that Joo seems to favor that kind of thinking though. |
I really doubt Joo favors a 'kill 'em all and let . . . ' tactic. It might surprise you how moderate Joo actually is. |
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jkelly80
Joined: 13 Jun 2007
Location: you boys like mexico?
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| Posted: Mon Feb 25, 2008 10:29 pm Post subject: |
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| Kuros wrote: |
| jkelly80 wrote: |
I wasn't suggesting that the US is currently taking the 'kill em all' tactic, which might have worked in pre-modernity but never again. I was suggesting that Joo seems to favor that kind of thinking though. |
I really doubt Joo favors a 'kill 'em all and let . . . ' tactic. It might surprise you how moderate Joo actually is. |
No I don't really think that either. Also maybe a little glib. |
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Joo Rip Gwa Rhhee
Joined: 25 May 2003
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| Posted: Mon Feb 25, 2008 10:55 pm Post subject: |
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I would like to see the US try these things.
1) Bring back the Clinton mideast plan. ( In fact make Bill Clinton US envoy to the middle east. That way he won't make trouble back home. )
2) Don't attack Iran- not now anyway.
3) Talk to Iran and Syria.
4) Tax imported oil , raise the gas tax
5) Invest in alternative energy , clean coal , nuclear power, better exploration methods with the same effort that the US put in to winning WW II.
6) Pressure the Europeans to , in fact apply horrible pressure to Europe to list Hezzbollah as a terror group.
7) Make the Patriot act permanent.
8 ) Introduce a national ID card like Korea has
9) Set up permanent US military bases in the Kurdish areas.
10) End the CIA ban on assassinations. From now on anyone of note who calls for holy war against the US is legitmate target for assassination. Anyone of note who funds Al Qaeda is a legitmate target for assassination.
11) announce that the US will withdraw from the NPT treaty if Iran tests a nuclear bomb.
12) Do NOT agree to any treaty that limits the deployment of space weapons.
13 ) Fully invest in the next generation of weapon systems.
If the US were to do the above what would the results be? I would bet you all that the US would be in a much better strategic situation than now.
Maybe more would need to be done later - in the end it has to be whatever it takes - but the above would be a start.
Last edited by Joo Rip Gwa Rhhee on Tue Feb 26, 2008 12:47 am; edited 3 times in total |
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Justin Hale
Joined: 24 Nov 2007
Location: the Straight Talk Express
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| Posted: Mon Feb 25, 2008 11:02 pm Post subject: Re: Please do not be a passive Muslim. |
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| cerulean808 wrote: |
Here's yet another example of the mendacity of the American Crazies. This time an email campaign abusing the Holocaust and 9 11 to promote their Islamophobic message of hatred and intolerance.
Of course it's a lie about Britain removing the Jewish Holocaust from school history lessons. But then what else can be expected from these Western hate mongers?
"Passive Muslim"? The kind of bizarre jargon the likes of crazies SteveMcGarett and JooRip love to parrot in their Hate tirades.
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Please do not be a passive Muslim.
It is a matter of history that when Supreme Commander of the Allied Forces, General Dwight Eisenhower, found the victims of the death camps he ordered all possible photographs to be taken, and for the German people from surrounding villages to be ushered through the camps and even made to bury the dead.
He did this because he said in words to this effect: "Get it all on record now - get the films - get the witnesses - because somewhere down the track of history some *beep* will get up and say that this never happened".
"All that is necessary for the triumph of evil is for good men to do nothing." Edmund Burke In Memorial
This week, the UK removed The Holocaust from its school curriculum because it "offended" the Muslim population which claims it never occurred.
This is a frightening portent of the fear that is gripping the world and how easily each country is giving into it.
It is now more than 60 years after the Second World War in Europe ended. This e-mail is being sent as a memorial chain, in memory of the six million Jews, 20 million Russians, 10 million Christians and 1,900 Catholic priests who were murdered, massacred, raped, burned, starved and humiliated while the German and Russian peoples looked the other way!
Now, more than ever, with Iran, among others, claiming the Holocaust to be "a myth," it is imperative to make sure the world never forgets.
This e-mail is intended to reach 40 million people worldwide! (that is slightly more than 10% of the population of the USA.) Be a link in the memorial chain and help distribute this around the world.
How many years will it be before the attack on the World Trade Center "never happened" because it offends some Muslim in the U.S.??????
Don't just delete this. It will take a minute to pass this along. Let's make it 400 Million people.
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debunked.
http://www.snopes.com/politics/religion/holocaust.asp |
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Gopher
Joined: 04 Jun 2005
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| Posted: Mon Feb 25, 2008 11:24 pm Post subject: |
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| Joo Rip Gwa Rhhee wrote: |
| 3) Talk to Iran and Syria. |
That remains the Iraq Study Group's rec. After all, we talked with Moscow from 1945 to 1991. Why not recognize and talk to Tehran and Damascus?
I would add this to your list: recognize Palestine, force Israel to withdraw from much of its occupied territories and reduce its active-duty military, station American forces in Israel (like in South Korea), and explain to its neighbors that we will regard any attack against Israel as an attack against the United States and respond in kind. When things settle down, in one or two generations or so, we leave. Much more effective than Clinton or W. Bush's plans. |
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bucheon bum
Joined: 16 Jan 2003
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| Posted: Tue Feb 26, 2008 3:36 am Post subject: |
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| Gopher wrote: |
That remains the Iraq Study Group's rec. After all, we talked with Moscow from 1945 to 1991. Why not recognize and talk to Tehran and Damascus?
I would add this to your list: recognize Palestine, force Israel to withdraw from much of its occupied territories and reduce its active-duty military, station American forces in Israel (like in South Korea), and explain to its neighbors that we will regard any attack against Israel as an attack against the United States and respond in kind. When things settle down, in one or two generations or so, we leave. Much more effective than Clinton or W. Bush's plans. |
Well we have talked to Damascus in years past. For instance they were part of the coalition in the first gulf war. We have full diplomatic ties with them and whatnot. But yes, we should expand on our communication with Syria and Iran.
I think we should be more aggressive in our diplomacy in regards to Iran. That is, we should offer a normalization of relations in exchange for access to nuclear facilities for nuclear weapons monitors. Such a method has had some success with the North Korea situation recently.
As for Israel, I don't know. There is a big difference between the Koreas and Israel/Palestine. North Korea has been ruled by an authoritarian government. No North Korean is going to do squat unless the Dear Leader gives them permission to do so. Palestine has many different factions, all of whom want different things. Hamas has provoked Israel in the past to weaken other Palestinian groups, most notably Fatah and the PA. I can picture some group provoking the US for the same reason. It would also provide Iran another target to hit with its proxies. |
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Ya-ta Boy
Joined: 16 Jan 2003
Location: Established in 1994
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| Posted: Tue Feb 26, 2008 6:28 am Post subject: |
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10) End the CIA ban on assassinations. From now on anyone of note who calls for holy war against the US is legitmate target for assassination. Anyone of note who funds Al Qaeda is a legitmate target for assassination.
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I basically agree with this, but it need not be a stated, public policy. And there needs to be some very tight over-sight. Very tight. |
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stillnotking
Joined: 18 Dec 2007
Location: Oregon, USA
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| Posted: Tue Feb 26, 2008 9:10 am Post subject: |
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| cbclark4 wrote: |
I'm really just adding some more fuel to the fire.
World Watch
First appeared in print in The Rhinoceros Times, Greensboro, NC --------------------------------------------------------------------------------
By Orson Scott Card July 18, 2004
Did We Invade the Wrong Country?
I find it just a little amusing that pundits -- especially opponents of the war -- are now saying, "It looks like we invaded the wrong country, if we wanted to get the governments that supported 9/11." |
Orson Scott Card is Exhibit A for why good writers don't necessarily make good analysts. Anyone whose assessment of Iraq begins and ends with whether or not we invaded the "wrong" country has nothing meaningful to contribute. |
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stillnotking
Joined: 18 Dec 2007
Location: Oregon, USA
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| Posted: Tue Feb 26, 2008 9:50 am Post subject: |
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| Joo Rip Gwa Rhhee wrote: |
It would be fair for one to say that both Michael Moore and Move On opposed the Afghan war -yes?
I don't think you sympathize with the terrorists , on the other hand liberals don't see the the enemies of the US for what they are and they believe that the UN operates in good faith and it will protect the security of the US. PS I would say my favorite columnist is Thomas Friedman. Of the New York Times. But anyway the UN won't protect the US , unilateral disamament won't make the US safer. And the US is hated and resented because it is a hyperpower far more than for any other reason. |
Thomas Friedman? Really? He of the endless "Friedman units" and "well-on-the-one-hand-but-then-again-on-the-other" pablum? The man was a pretty good journalist but is a terrible columnist. His knowledge of the Middle East is a mile wide and an inch deep; his columns alternate between rah-rah American boosterism of the Hallmark card/high school pep rally variety, and facile pseudo-solutions in the style of "ruler X just needs to say Y and all will be well". Friedman is emblematic of the deepest problems in our political dialogue: he combines a resolute unwillingness to understand the basic facts of human nature with an equally resolute belief that everyone in the world wants to be an American. He was dead wrong about Iraq, and reacts with extreme and immature defensiveness when called on it, characterizing his critics as cynics or Saddam-lovers. Well, I am neither, but I was nonetheless right about Iraq and he was wrong, and that tells me pretty much everything I need to know about the value of his judgment.
Let's take your specific allegations about liberals:
- Don't see the enemies of the United States for what they are. Well, we've discussed this, but I am fairly certain -- judging by news coverage and analysis -- that I have a much clearer idea of who our enemies are and why they hate us than the average talking head.
- Believe the UN operates in good faith and will protect the security of the US. I believe the UN operates in a marginally more honest way than the average government (including America's). I do not expect, or want, the UN to operate as a tool of American foreign policy, as this would invalidate any value it has as a functioning international body and resolver of disputes. I certainly do not rely on the UN to protect my security. The United States spends far more on defense than the UN's total budget, in fact more than the total budgets of most countries. Being killed by a foreign enemy is so far down on my list of worries that it barely registers.
- Unilateral disarmament will not make the US safer. Agreed. Is there some danger of this happening? Is the Pentagon holding bake sales these days? See above.
- The US is hated and resented because it is a hyperpower. No. If that were the case, we'd be universally hated and resented, since no other country approaches us in military or economic power. The US is hated and resented by people whom we have screwed in the past. I always chuckle over conservative indignation about Hugo Chavez, as though Chavez represented anything but the logical outcome of a hundred years of US policy toward Central and South America. One cannot bankroll terrorism and military dictatorships without consequence. Ditto Iran: those who wonder at the anti-Americanism of Iranians clearly have never cracked a history book or Googled "Operation Ajax". Iraq is an even more immediate example (is it really realistic to expect hosannahs from a country down eighty thousand civilians from an American war?) It is a peculiar -- downright Friedmanian, really -- conceit of Americans to believe that any hatred or resentment toward us is born of muddle-headedness or class envy. Some of it is, no doubt, just as some people disliked the Romans for the same reasons; but at least the Romans had the basic self-awareness not to pretend that no one had any real reason to hate them. |
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Joo Rip Gwa Rhhee
Joined: 25 May 2003
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| Posted: Tue Feb 26, 2008 10:33 am Post subject: |
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Anti US feelings:
Stillnotking check out this Video (it is really short just the part with the host. You don't need to watch it all. )
Anti americanism on Danish TV
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=eeHF8UBLi68
http://forums.eslcafe.com/korea/viewtopic.php?t=98865&start=0
| Quote: |
Chelsea: Oxford life difficult
By CNN's Dylan Reynolds
LONDON, England (CNN) --Chelsea Clinton has admitted she is finding it hard to cope at Oxford University because of anti-American feeling.
In a frank article for Talk magazine, the University College student says the attacks on the United States left her feeling confused and scared, and she finds it "difficult" to deal with those who question America's actions.
"It's hard to be abroad right now. Every day I encounter some sort of anti-American feeling. Sometimes it's from other students, sometimes it's from a newspaper columnist, sometimes it's from 'peace' demonstrators," she said.
"Over the summer I thought that I would seek out non-Americans as friends, just for diversity's sake. Now I find that I want to be around Americans -- people who I know are thinking about our country as much as I am |
http://edition.cnn.com/2001/WORLD/europe/11/09/clinton.oxford/index.html
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WE WERE ALL AMERICANS
The introduction of the Pew report sets the tone for the entire study. The war in Iraq, it argues,"has widened the rift between Americans and Western Europeans" and "further inflamed the Muslim world." The implications are clear: The United States was better off before Bush's "unilateralism." The United States, in its hubris, summoned up this anti-Americanism. Those are the political usages of this new survey.
But these sentiments have long prevailed in Jordan, Egypt, and France. During the 1990s, no one said good things about the United States in Egypt. It was then that the Islamist children of Egypt took to the road, to Hamburg and Kandahar, to hatch a horrific conspiracy against the United States. And it was in the 1990s, during the fabled stock market run, when the prophets of globalization preached the triumph of the U.S. economic model over the protected versions of the market in places such as France, when anti-Americanism became the uncontested ideology of French public life. Americans were barbarous, a threat to French cuisine and their beloved language. U.S. pension funds were acquiring their assets and Wall Street speculators were raiding their savings. The United States incarcerated far too many people and executed too many criminals. All these views thrived during a decade when Americans are now told they were loved and uncontested on foreign shores.
Much has been made of the sympathy that the French expressed for the United States immediately after the September 11 attacks, as embodied by the famous editorial of Le Monde's publisher Jean-Marie Colombani, "Nous Sommes Tous Am�ricains" ("We are all Americans"). And much has been made of the speed with which the United States presumably squandered that sympathy in the months that followed. But even Colombani's column, written on so searing a day, was not the unalloyed message of sympathy suggested by the title. Even on that very day, Colombani wrote of the United States reaping the whirlwind of its "cynicism"; he recycled the hackneyed charge that Osama bin Laden had been created and nurtured by U.S. intelligence agencies.
Colombani quickly retracted what little sympathy he had expressed when, in December of 2001, he was back with an open letter to "our American friends" and soon thereafter with a short book, Tous Am�ricains? le monde apr�s le 11 septembre 2001 (All Americans? The World After September 11, 2001). By now the sympathy had drained, and the tone was one of belligerent judgment and disapproval. There was nothing to admire in Colombani's United States, which had run roughshod in the world and had been indifferent to the rule of law. Colombani described the U.S. republic as a fundamentalist Christian enterprise, its magistrates too deeply attached to the death penalty, its police cruel to its black population. A republic of this sort could not in good conscience undertake a campaign against Islamism. One can't, Colombani writes, battle the Taliban while trying to introduce prayers in one's own schools; one can't strive to reform Saudi Arabia while refusing to teach Darwinism in the schools of the Bible Belt; and one can't denounce the demands of the sharia (Islamic law) while refusing to outlaw the death penalty. Doubtless, he adds, the United States can't do battle with the Taliban before doing battle against the bigotry that ravages the depths of the United States itself. The United States had not squandered Colombani's sympathy; he never had that sympathy in the first place. |
http://www.travelbrochuregraphics.com/extra/the_falseness_of_antiamericanism.htm
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Germans: U.S. More Dangerous than Iran
According to this poll, more Germans consider the U.S. to be a danger for world peace than Iran.
45 % of Germans call the U.S. a "greater threat to world peace" than Iran. 28 % think that Iran is a greater threat. For 16 %, the U.S. and Iran pose identical threats. |
http://medienkritik.typepad.com/blog/2006/04/germans_us_more.html
3-01-04
Why South Koreans Think of the United States as a Global Bully
By James I. Matray
http://hnn.us/articles/3740.html#
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Anyway why are people angry at the US?
The war on terror and related topics like Iraq.
The war on terror is justified. More to the point 9-11 showed that the Mideast as it was was a threat to the US. The cause of terror is cause Mideast nations and elites teach hate and incite violence. And since they are police states they can kill the terrorists (you know lop off their heads) and their supporters in each nation.
Plus Saddam never gave up his war.
And terror is a threat to the American way of life.
Tell us what did Saddam fight for?
What does Iran fight for?
What does Al Qaeda fight for.
Lets see if you know them for what they are.
The cold war
The cold war was justified . Of course the US made mistakes . Nevertheless it was justified. It was defensive too.
Tell us were the dictators the US supported any worse, any more totalitarian than those who fought against them?
The US is on the right side of history . It is no accident that the enemies of the US have just about the worst human rights records around.
It is not accident that most of the enemies of the US are ruled by expansionist totalitarian thugs , many of whom not only persecute their own minorities but also don�t let their own citizens leave.
US military spending.
The US spends 4% of its GDP on defense that isn�t much for a nation.
Nearly half of what the US spends on the military is a social program.
The US probably spends on each soldier more than 20x what China spends on each soldier. Are US soldiers better. Sure are they 20x better?
Because of economics of scale US weapons are far more expensive to develop than the weapons of other nations. US labor costs are high. Of course it is going to be more expensive for the US to build a jet than it will for China.
Also what is the objective. To win a hard fought battle or win overwhelmingly?
The US needs to be much more powerful otherwise the US won�t be able to do almost any military action.
If the US was just a little more powerful than Iraq then it would not have been able to do the first gulf war. I don�t think it is good for the US to have less capability.
THE UN
The UN was on Saddam Hussein�s payroll.
The UN human rights commission has Zimbawa , Syria and Libya on it. It only discusses ONE country.
At the UN the US needs to ask Khaddfy�s Libya for its vote to enact sanctions on Iran.
The UN. General Assembly is a dictators club. The Soviet Union had far more support there during the cold war.
The UN a place where dicators have the same rights as democracies.
Last edited by Joo Rip Gwa Rhhee on Tue Feb 26, 2008 11:12 am; edited 2 times in total |
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stillnotking
Joined: 18 Dec 2007
Location: Oregon, USA
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| Posted: Tue Feb 26, 2008 11:07 am Post subject: |
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| Joo Rip Gwa Rhhee wrote: |
Stillnotking check out this Video (it is really short just the part with the host. You don't need to watch it all. )
Anti americanism on Danish TV
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=eeHF8UBLi68
| Quote: |
Chelsea: Oxford life difficult
By CNN's Dylan Reynolds
LONDON, England (CNN) --Chelsea Clinton has admitted she is finding it hard to cope at Oxford University because of anti-American feeling.
In a frank article for Talk magazine, the University College student says the attacks on the United States left her feeling confused and scared, and she finds it "difficult" to deal with those who question America's actions.
"It's hard to be abroad right now. Every day I encounter some sort of anti-American feeling. Sometimes it's from other students, sometimes it's from a newspaper columnist, sometimes it's from 'peace' demonstrators," she said.
"Over the summer I thought that I would seek out non-Americans as friends, just for diversity's sake. Now I find that I want to be around Americans -- people who I know are thinking about our country as much as I am |
http://edition.cnn.com/2001/WORLD/europe/11/09/clinton.oxford/index.html |
I can't watch the video right now because of the connection I'm on, but I'll take a look later. Thank you so much for the Chelsea Clinton story -- it is an absolutely perfect illustration of the kind of idiocy I'm so often on about. This little twit led a life so ideologically sheltered that she simply could not fathom the idea of informed disagreement with American policies or goals. She is "confused" and "scared" by "'peace'" demonstrators (I love the ironic quotes, as if to suggest they are really demonstrating for something else), and decides it would be so much nicer just to be around Americans, who don't put troubling questions into her bubbly little head. Bear in mind that Chelsea Clinton was in her twenties at the time this was written -- judging by her words and actions, a reasonable observer might have concluded she was about thirteen. Most adults would, at least, have troubled to listen to the critiques of foreign intellectuals, but even the mildest rebuke to the American national character is too much for our shrinking violet.
This is the new standard of anti-Americanism? Oxford students raising polite objections to our policies over afternoon tea? My, how standards have fallen. Let's take Chelsea to Beirut and let her listen to crowds outside her hotel room chanting "Death to America", then send her back to Oxford.
| Quote: |
| Even on that very day, Colombani wrote of the United States reaping the whirlwind of its "cynicism"; he recycled the hackneyed charge that Osama bin Laden had been created and nurtured by U.S. intelligence agencies. |
It often seems to me, reading conservative responses to this sort of thing, that we truly inhabit alternate universes. Colombani was perfectly right: the United States is reaping what it has sown, and we did create OBL. Whether or not the man was personally trained and funded by the CIA is irrelevant: his actions on 9/11 were the entirely predictable result of two great historical events (the rise of radical Islam in Saudi Arabia and the role of the mujahedeen in repelling the Soviets from Afghanistan), both of which occurred with the full support of the United States. Unfortunately, conservatives usually interpret critiques like Colombani's to mean we "deserved" 9/11 (and, in fairness, some of the less morally astute French intellectuals have made that exact argument). Of course the three thousand innocent civilians who died on 9/11 did not deserve it, but the policies of the United States government from the 1950s onward certainly had something to do with it, and it is blinkered folly to pretend otherwise.
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| Colombani described the U.S. republic as a fundamentalist Christian enterprise, its magistrates too deeply attached to the death penalty, its police cruel to its black population. A republic of this sort could not in good conscience undertake a campaign against Islamism. One can't, Colombani writes, battle the Taliban while trying to introduce prayers in one's own schools; one can't strive to reform Saudi Arabia while refusing to teach Darwinism in the schools of the Bible Belt; and one can't denounce the demands of the sharia (Islamic law) while refusing to outlaw the death penalty. Doubtless, he adds, the United States can't do battle with the Taliban before doing battle against the bigotry that ravages the depths of the United States itself. The United States had not squandered Colombani's sympathy; he never had that sympathy in the first place. |
Colombani's critique is colored by a variety of peculiarly French attitudes. The French are resolutely secular and therefore tend to attribute other nations' ills to the role of religion in government, even when the conclusion is not warranted. They also tend to overstate the importance, in historical terms, of bigotry and intolerance, for similar reasons. It's not fair to characterize the United States as a religious or racist empire, but it is entirely fair to characterize us as an empire, which is the central point the French grasp and the Americans do not. (Or at least, that the Americans attempt incessantly to talk themselves out of.)
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Germans: U.S. More Dangerous than Iran
According to this poll, more Germans consider the U.S. to be a danger for world peace than Iran.
45 % of Germans call the U.S. a "greater threat to world peace" than Iran. 28 % think that Iran is a greater threat. For 16 %, the U.S. and Iran pose identical threats. |
Am I to infer that you think the German attitude unreasonable or unrealistic? Why? How many wars has the United States started in the last hundred years? How many has Iran started?
Last edited by stillnotking on Tue Feb 26, 2008 11:19 am; edited 1 time in total |
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