After all, do you see people expecting to buy and use a car with zero training, no licence or maintenance?
Yes. I bought a Honda with no intention of ever so much as changing the oil myself. I pay somebody else to do it, because it's a dirty, annoying, time-consuming process that I have no natural aptitude for. I suck at all things mechanical, I can't drive a nail properly half of the time. So I buy cars that I'm confident will require little to no maintenance to be done by myself.
Having a license to operate the vehicle is utterly unrelated to being qualified to service it, and this is where your analogy falls apart. Millions of people drive cars who couldn't diagnose and solve the most simplistic problem. I, at least, recognize the symptoms of a failing alternator, slipped belt, bad starter, loose air hose, low coolant, etc. But it's naive, asinine, and a little smug of you to look down your nose at the masses of people who don't give a flying shit about your stupid computer hobby and the high standards to which you wish to hold anybody else to dares to dabbled their finger in it. This attitude is alarmingly widespread among our ilk. I've seen people on Slashdot even suggest that unless you're willing to learn how to program, you have no business using a computer, because you don't know how it works.
Well, then I expect you move out of your apartment into a cardboard box in Antarctica, because the average Slashdot poster can't maintain basic operating systems of a common house, has never so much as changed a furnace filter in their lives, can't make a simple mitre cut with a backsaw and a box, doesn't know what kind of bit to use for masonry drilling, can't shingle a roof, service their own lawnmower, or ground a circuit.
Insightful my ass. I used to be really nice in most posts because I valued the extra exposure I get for having nice karma, but I just don't care any more. You're a prick, and you deserve to be called one.
I hate to feed this, but I figure I might as well give you SOME information so you can reasonably judge me like you have:P
I'm not judging you, don't haul out the Christian persecution line. You said that you were disgusted with people who are "apathetic about this sort of thing," that you have been "pushing" your friends and family to "boycott the RIAA and MPAA based on their recent tactics," and even though you "have explained to them time and time again that the artist makes practically nothing from CD sales," they continue to not spend their money the way that you think they should. Or, another to put it, despite them not changing their spending habits, you continue to tell them "time and time again" why their actions are not the "RightThing(tm)."
You also say that you "hate being surrounded by apathy" and imply that despite the "simply solutions" people "aren't willing to make just a little extra effort to do the RightThing(tm)."
Now, I can't really resolve the conflict between this somewhat aggressive and resigned characterization of your good fight to convince your friends and family to behave the way that your morals dictate that they ought to, and your backpedalling revision of this stance, where you say that, "[w]e don't try and control eachother, by any means," yet you're still trying to get them to stop buying CDs. You've tried "time and time again" and they keep doing it anyway, to your chagrin.
I'm not going to make any Christian jokes, I am a Christian. Roman Catholic if you're curious. But I, at least, don't shove unsolicited advice at people based on my moral understanding of the world, and doggedly insist on trying to get everybody I know to spend their own money in ways that conform to my moral guidance.
So, maybe your friends and family tolerate your nose in their business because you're all cut from the same type of cloth, but if I behaved like that towards my friends, they'd rightly tell me to take a long walk off a short pier. It's one thing if somebody is gambling away their college tuition. "Hey, Dave, we're concerned that you're fucking your life up." Or snorting their income up their nose, or whatever. Even then, we have a quick intervention, tell whoever the screwup is what we think, and let him go make his decisions after that with no further follow-up.
You, however, characterized yourself as the lone informed and moral voice in your community of well-meaning but thick-headed friends and family who just can't seem to figure out why your moral clarity is the "RightThing(tm)" to do, and their is not.
Again, if you were my buddy, and started that shit with me, over a fucking CD purchase, we'd be buddies no more.
I hate being surrounded by apathy. Some solutions are incredibly simple, yet people aren't willing to make just a little extra effort to do the RightThing(tm).
Or maybe your friends and family are bright enough to be offender at you trying to tell them what to do with their that they earned based on your principles. If I was your friend and you started in on that shit, I'll tell you that the instant you go to my job, and do my work, and collect my paycheck for me, you can decide how it gets spent, and until then, keep your fucking opinion on how I spend my own money to yourself. What an asshole.
Gmail seemed like a really cool idea for about 10 minutes, until everybody suddenly remembered that we don't care about web-based e-mail.
I use Gmail exclusively for all email transactions, and I haven't loaded up an email client since I got Gmail. Granted, I'm a sample size of one, so my standard deviation is infinity...
Without the UN, there might still be apartheid in South Africa. There would be lots more people starving to death. There would likely still be smallpox. Free and fair elections would be unavailable in many countries. AIDS (and tuberculosis and malaria) would be far greater problems. Those accused of warcrimes might not be tried.
The UN cherry-picks its battles based on the financial interests of its primary governers. This is why Germany, France, and Russia all condemned any activity in Iraq by anybody, not just the Americans. The UN manages to sometimes accidentally benefit people as a side affect to lining the pockets of its overseers.
We can bash Bush to our collective hearts' delights over his blundering and bungling of the Iraq public relationships campaign, but what was the UN doing about villages full of slaughtered Kurds? Mass graves? Political opponents fed into plastic shredders? People speaking against Hussein thrown off buildings? What did they do about WMD use in Iran-Iraq? The UN is happy to sit on its collective hands and let the world's petty dictators do whatever the hell they want, and if anybody decides to give the UN the one-finger salute and go do something, they're mercilessly attacked for it. This isn't a pro-America flag-waving penisfest, either, it's happened to every major western power. Britain and France have both been exposed to this on various levels. The UN is just not interested in serving the human condition, and it is ultimately beholden to nobody, which is fine, really, since it's incapable of taking any kind of action against misbehaving member states, beyond issuing stern warnings over furrowed brows and narrowed eyes.
It's extremely difficult to coordinate things on a world scale without any real authority but the UN does do an extremely admirable job.
It's difficult to so much as get my roommates to pay their damn rent on the 1st of the month, I think we can all appreciate the complexity of the UN's job. I think the political structure of the organization is mutually exclusive with its own charter. Part of the problem is that the UN is full of petty dictators and does not set strict enough membership requirements. If the UN had a simple requirement that all members states must adhere to a minimum recognition of human rights, have a transparent process in place that met UN requirements for verification of those rights, we might get somewhere.
Whether it would handle the root servers well or not is a separate issue but don't critise out of a hand an organisation that has saved millions of lives.
And cost millions as well. I rarely see such logic used to defend American and British activity in the Iraq on these grounds. It's not because people can't recognize that lives might have been saved, but that the issue, in American political terms, is polarized between "George Bush is the fountain of black water from which all evil in the world spews" and "George Bush is the second coming of Jesus Christ." People have failed to abstract the reality of international, extensional issues such Iraq from their intensional representation of the leadership involved in such issues. This phenomenon is an error in symbolism and abstraction, and epidemic to the human species. Regardless, we've evolved to the point where organizations like the UN must exist to put such political squabbling behind enacting sensible policy to advance the human condition.
I engage in petty UN bashing here and there, largely because the organization appears to be impotent and corrupt. Now, government is corrupt by nature, to some degree, but we have plenty of sovereign governments that are less corrupt than the UN, and it is upon the premises of those types of political structures that the UN should be organized. That's an ideological and practical criticism.
It's not that I don't or can't appreciate the good that has come about because of the UN, or that I wish the organization never existed.
A world where people had to, gasp!, go out and talk to other people face-to-face to buy products or knew how to use a card catalog at the library.
Yes, less efficient societies are always better! Damn you people for having quick and easy access to information instead of slogging through a huge crate of cards.
While it's nice to remember how things were and the progress we've made, let's also not forget the things that we don't know how to do anymore.
I consider that a measure of progress, that I don't need to remember how to darn socks or resole my shoes. It frees my time up for the study of things that improve the human condition rather than maintain the status quo. Vote stlhawkeye in 2012!
We're so wrapped up (some of us anyway) in what's latest and greatest that we now have less overall free time to do things and spend most of our time trying to figure out how to schedule our days.
I think technology tends to advance the human condition and give us more free time and more to do with the free time we have. I don't have to hand-wash my dishes and clothes, I throw them into a big white box and they come out clean like magic. The only major exception is the American obsession with cars, which have resulted in clogged city highways on which Americans burn through millions of barrels of oil puttering along at 6 miles an hour for two hours a day.
No, I'm not a luddite. I'm just one of those who don't see the point in much of what people are gaga over nowadays (a cel phone which can do 20 different things except make a decent call for example).
I'm with you there. The cell phone has definitely made my life easier, safer (except on the highway), and more efficient. But that's because I place calls on it, not because it plays MP3s, take pictures, text messages my girlfriend, or gives me a hug when I feel bad.
Amen. I was playing poker with some buds the other day and he's got his iPod playing a rotation of his favorite music, and during that event, no less than 4 bands came on that I wanted to listen to more of. I wrote down the names of all the bands, checked out their CDs on iTunes when I got home, and bought 3 of their albums, put them on MY iPod, and am not listening to the Fruit Bats as I type this, a band I would never have heard of, nor bought any CDs from if not for the ease with which music can be sampled and purchased via the Int0rw3b.
...this decision is being pushed by the government because they want control over the current analog frequencies, which they will then resell and lease to private industry to generate another revenue stream for the government. And who is payinf ro it? As usual, we are.
"He had a reason, but it's irrational and insane... the motivations... are incomprehensible to reasonable, logical thinkers". seems pretty dismissive.
Again, I misrepresented my opinion and ideas on bin Laden when I said that, and I corrected it in other parts of this thread.
It was the "he's just nuts, we've done nothing wrong, we've just have to get rid of him (without any self-examination necessary)" angle that I was trying to object to.
I did not say or imply that we've done nothing wrong. I said and implied that there are people who think the United States is completely at fault and deserves any calamity that befalls it.
Also, from the GP: "You're attempting to explain the actions of terrorists through logic. "We deserve it," for some reason. "We caused this. This is our fault, if we hadn't (done whatever), then they wouldn't have done this"" (implying this is bad).
Not to suggest for a second that America had done anything to deserve an atrocity like 9/11, but (poor analogy time) if a guy from down the block breaks into my house, screams imprecations at me, punches me in the head and legs it, I might wonder if I'd done anything to upset him.
Naturally, I'd wonder that, too. "What in the world motivates such an irrational response?"
Especially if it's impossible for it to be a case of mistaken identity. Dismissing him as insane without trying to understand his motivations misses the point that I might very well have done something to deserve some retribution, even if his was over-the-top.
I would be interested in understanding his motivations but not interested in excusing his behavior.
I think you're missing a great deal of context, here. We're the ones causing that erosion.
The proliferation of American pop culture garbage is beyond my control, sadly. I decline to participate as much as possible. Whenever our representatives in the States try to enact new laws to restrict "indecency" or remove profanity or nudity or whatever from TV, they're derided as bunch of stodgy crackpot Christian conservative assholes who want Americans humping through holes cut in bedsheets and only after reading the Bible.
As a big advocate of Enlightenment liberalism, I tend to agree with this characterization and oppose legislation on behavior such as that. The consequence, unfortunately, is what you've described: even more stodgy crackpot religious people elsewhere decide that we're the root of evil in the world. It's no win situation. I either sacrifice some of my liberty to my government to appease terrorist sor I sacrifice it to my government so they "save" me from the same terrorists. The common element in this choice is that terrorists are threatening to murder civilians on the grounds that we pay taxes to our corrupt government. And if that wasn't motivation enough, they'd find some other reason why slaughtering American civilians is justified by the Quran. That's the very definition of rationalization, which is what you do when your behavior is otherwise unjustifiable.
imagine your young kids were eating brains, fucking on the sidewalk and murdering old people for fun - that's the kind of revulsion-level they're experiencing.
That's what Arab kids are told. That Jews grind up children and use their blood to make matzo.
Once again, I'm not suggesting they're right to feel like this, but it is understandable.
Feeling threatened by and afraid of the encroachment of an alien and terrifying culture that is 180 degrees the opposite of your own is completely understandable. It's one of America's primary motivations for fighting communism for 60 years. As you wrly note below, that doesn't make it "alright".
They may have "insane" axioms they're starting from, but the reasoning from there is perfectly comprehensible.
Granted. Perhaps I characterized the wrong element of this debate as "in
I said Germany and Japan were the only examples of such policies working and to do so required millions of lives being lost.
This is the part that you're missing - millions of lives were being lost in Germany anyway specifically because nobody was willing to act. What do you suggest the world should have done about Hitler? File charges and just let him walk all over Europe? It's not like nobody tried to play along with Germany and give them what they wanted. Fat lot of good it did them. Should we have just let the Germany have France? And Britain? And Russia? What's the alternative?
By taking a militant [...] position, the United States has repeatedly found itself on the side of the oppressors and against the people, or, in other words, against local nationalism.
The United States has repeatedly found itself picking the most America-compliant of two unreasonable regimes. Do you think the Ayatollah have really done a lot of good for the people of Iran? The Shah at least gave them their land back.
Unless the US begins thinking in terms of Kurdistan and talking to the EU about getting Turkey to hand over parts of its country to it than they will fail. Maybe not now or in 10 years but without a solution that establishes countries of peoples united more by idealogy than geography no measure of liberty from our bloody actions will stand the test of time.
Oh, I agree there. One need only look at the example of Czechoslovakia. And I said that our "plan" for Iraq is pretty sparse.
What do you suggest we do in Iraq? Get up and leave? How do we deal with terrorism? Just move all of our forces out of the Middle East, abandon Israel to its fate?
Let's say we do that. Will the terrorists now put down their guns and leave the rest of the world alone? Or will they (or like-minded people) work on seizing control of various Arab states and reclaiming lost land? Once the West has been moved out of the Middle East, there'll be no more bombings, no more planes hijacked, no more subways blown up?
What is your plan to combat terrorism? Because we've (as in, those of us who are not terrorists, regardless of nationality and political affiliation) have tried a lot of stuff and none of it has worked yet.
Lol, stop repeating bushisms like they hate democracy and such.
If that's what Bush says, then so be it. It's what I think, and I can't help it if the President manages to be right now and then. His opinion isn't my problem. Should I disagree with him on everything just because I disapprove of his policies? How does that make me anything but a partisan hack?
I've been over and over the flaw in my oversimplification in bin Laden's motives in this thread, if you're interested in anything more than pounding on somebody you (erroneously) have assumed to be a Republican hack, go read the rest of it.
The reasons we should not be in the mideast are..we have no idea how long it will take
That's not an argument not to wage war. Granted, democracies, and America in particular, do not suffer prolonged conflict well. World War II was an exception (in some ways) because of the depression. And the conventional wisdom is that wars should be ended as quickly as possible. However, the "war" part of Iraq was over with in a matter of weeks. What's left would be called terrorism if it were happening anywhere else. Our role is a combination of a national defense force and an occupying power. Our role as "occupiers" is fading since occupiers typically exert political control over the state they occupy. The amount of political influence that we've exerted over Iraq's new constitution is far less than the conditions that MacArthur put on, say, the Japanense, and I actually think it's a mistake. If we're going to go to all this trouble and expense, we damn well better make sure that what emerges from Iraq is a nation with an excellent shot at accomplishing our foreign policy aims (Islamic democracy).
That doesn't mean that I think we should hand-pick their people, only that we should have made a more clear and precise plan as to what kind of government we would nurture there. MacArthur made Hirohito admit that he's not divine (although he quietly reaffirmed this later in his life), but allowed him to maintain a ceremonial role as Emperor to give the Japanese a sense of continuity from the Dai Nippon to the republic of Japan. There's no such continuity in Iraq. Perhaps for the better, time will tell. MacArthur also insisted on women being involved in democracy because he knew, as some modern pundits do, that women have a stabilizing affect on men and thus on policy, and that women's rights would help mitigate the samurai culture of Japan. In many ways, I think MacArthur did right by Japan, despite imposing limitations and rules on their new government that America would, today, be widely blasted and condemned for attempting to impose on Iraq or anybody else.
The political situations are not analogous (Iraq never bombed Iraq), but the social climate of Dai Nippon and Hussein's Iraq have paralels from which we can draw lessons in history. Long story short: the "war" part is over. What we're seeing now is normal, and not something that should cause us to tuck tail and run.
I would like to see the President outline his exit strategy for Iraq. I see one emerging, but I think it's by force of accident rather than planning. Bush may luck into an amazing success story in Iraq that will redefine the political structure of the Middle East in a fundamental and mostly good way.
democracy by obliteration works only on countries already united like germany or japan after the war
Two flaws in your argument. First, you state this as a fact without providing any logical or emperical support for it. Second, you employ use of an analogy when the circumstances of the modern-day case do not match the key elements of the compared case. We were fighting the sovereign nations of Japan and Germany. We were fighting against their governments and military. We are not fighting the government of Iraq or it's military. We're setting up one and training the other.
and by doing anything in the region at this point will only creat
I was wondering about that myself. I think I'll have to pick up that book. Thanks for the pointer!
Another one along those lines is The Road to Serfdom by Freidrich Hayek. It's dated; it was written in the midst of World War 2, and it comes from the perspective of what passed for conservatism at the time, and it's a bit dry, but it's a very valuable book to digest.
Sharansky's book is a fast read and be forewarned; he's a Soviet Jew and his perspective is that of a nationalized Israeli on how to solve the problem of the Arab-Israeli conflict. However, he is appropriately critical of the mistakes made by his own government, as well as that of the United States, in the 1990's and even recently.
What I found very interesting about his book was his analysis of the Soviet Union and where its demise began. I really did reshape a lot of my ideas and political theory after reading his book.
We install or support with weapons 3 of the most repressive regimes in the history of the region, Iran, Saudi Arabia and Iraq.
This is all true. Why then, do so many Americans oppose fixing the problems we've caused?
Than we pursue their 'freedom fighters' like dogs into caves and other underground places and you are telling me that is not backing them into a corner?
Who was being pursued into a cave in 1993? Stop with the red herrings. Nobody is forcing them to fight. They're fighting because they don't want a democracy. Another poster nailed it - this is about power, and a free Islamic state threatens the power base of a fear society.
If New York was being bombed by Pakistan to liberate us from Bush don't you think that our freedom fighters would use similiar methods to lessen support in the middle east for an attack on the united states?
If Bush had slaughtered the entire population of Ohio with mustard gas, thrown political opponents off rooftops, allowed his relatives to kidnap and rape civilians, tortured and killed people who openly voiced dissent who didn't go to church on Sunday, and had racked up a death toll of over 1 million Americans, and Pakistan invaded the nation, overthrew him, and began to set up a democracy in his place, while fighting off American militia who were trying to push them out, I would run up and give every Pakistani soldier I saw a big wet smooch on the cheek.
Aaaah. Nothing quite like demonising your opponent, is there?
Demonizing? You mean by calling people who blow themselves up in an effort to murder other innocent people "crazy"? Then yes, there's nothing quite like it.
It allows you to safely ignore any trace of humanity on their part or consider addressing your own side's shortcomings.
If you're asserting that this is the purpose of my response, I disagree strongly. Post some evidence to back up this conclusion.
I am merely an informed, educated and interested British citizen, with a comparatively unbiased (state-owned!) media and a basic grasp of history.
I am an informed, educated and interested American citizen, who ignores the TV news and has a basic grasp of history.
Now, why would Bin Laden hate the USA so much?
I've addressed the oversimplification of my point in several other posts, I won't rehash it here.
However, when the older fundamentalist generation sees their cultures values being eroded, and sees their children becoming more and more influenced by a culture that embodies (to them) everything immoral and evil (half-naked women, religious tolerance, blasphemy, drug/alcohol consumption, etc, etc, etc), you start to see where dislike might start.
Are you kidding? That's happening here, this isn't a phenomenon unique to the Middle East. I look at half-dressed 13 year old girls at shopping malls and think, "how in the world do their mothers allow them out of the house looking like that?"
But I'm not strapping explosives to myself and murdering everybody shopping at The Gap.
However, are you aware that the entire destabilised state of the present-day middle east is due almost entirely to British and US involvement?
Yes. Our endlessly meddling in the internal affairs of Iran since before World War II alone is horrible, and it has nothing to do with what's best for the Iranian people, it was initially about securing a supply line to the Soviet Union during World War 2, and after that, about fighting communist encroachment into the region. The Iranians were terrified of all of us. The Soviet Union annexed the northern portion of their country, and Imperial Britan scared the bejeezus out of them. The Americans propped up the Shah, who did a lot of good for Iran, but was also a brutal dictator in his own way. He just wasn't a communist one, so we propped him up until the Soviets weren't a threat, and then allowed him to fall in favor of the Ayatollah. I'm actually working on a fantasy novel whose plot revolves around a nation whose history parallels that of Iran since about 1920.
Throughout most of this century the US has waged an intensively invasive foreign policy, actively encouraging and supplying rebellions and terrorism, destabilising governments and economically ruining states, solely to secure supplies of cheap, plentiful oil.
This really got started because we needed a way to get supplies during World War 2. The ends may not always justify the means, but in this case, they just might. They even had a nickname for Iran during this period - "The Persian Channel" or the Persian Corridor or something like that.
This is not left-wing propaganda or make-believe - this is all documented history.
I know. I probably know more about Iranian history than 99% of the people in my country or yours.
FWIW, if you try to look this up you'll have a much easier time using non-US sources. US culture has practiced self-censorship (through a mixture of isolationist disinterest and active suppression) for years, and it's only recently become aware of it itself.
This information is all readily available in American libraries and has been for decades. I respectfully submit that your impression of American information suppression is based too much on what's on our television stations. Interested Americans have easy access to all the resources t
We have backed these people in a corner and forced them to fight like this.
Nobody is forcing them to pick up a gun and fight. What corner were they backed into in 1993? We left Iraq. How in the world were our leftover bases in Saudi Arabia "backing them into a corner"?
He doesn't think of Christians and Jews as abominations.
No, I was generalizing the radical Islamic response to Christianity and Judaism, and incorreectly personifying it in bin Laden. Lots of people responding to me have pointed this same thing out, I oversimplified my opinion/argument and was unclear.
Your life would be easier if you stopped watching Fox news.
Ok, what is it with the knee-jerk response that I'm some kind of right wing Fox News junkie? I don't watch TV news, and you're right, it does make my life easier. Less stressful anyway.
It's a stupid, irrational reason, but that's religion for you.
Which is what I said in my original statement, although you omitted that part from your quote above. Nice cherry picking!
Because Al Queda likes to think big. Simple suicide bombings in a food court are too small potatoes. Also, their main goal was to get America to invade, occupy and brutalise an Arab nation. Mission Accomplished.
I thought their goal was "the expulsion of American Armed forces from the sacred sites of Islam [Saudi Arabia]".
Al Queda is not a monolithic group. It's the umbrella name given by the West to the world-wide Islamist insurgency that views OBL as their role-model. Most of the "Al Queda" fighters in Iraq are locals and from neighbouring states. The cells are very likely still alive and kicking. Just waiting for their next order.
I'm aware of that. Our best intelligent indicates, last I checked, that "al Qaeda" may not really be organized at all outside of the highest levels of bin Laden's inner circle.
As for "cess-pools", that would be true if they were poor.
Most of them are. Arabs, I mean, living in these countries.
Almost all of the known Al Queda operatives captures or killed came from very nice, middle-class Arab families.
Ah. This is why you disagree. I was either unclear or you misunderstood.
Try reading any of Michael Sheurer's [wikipedia.org] books. It'll help you understand what we're up against and how to fight them. The only bad thing I can say about him is that he instigated and supported the "rendition" program of the CIA that transported terrorist suspects to friendly nations for torture and interrogation.
I will check them out. I'm woefully behind on my summer reading list but that's no reason to avoid lengthening it.
My concern was the way you worded your original two paragraphs, it looked like it was suggesting the non-appearance of mainland America terrorist activity was something new since 9/11/2001, and it was, therefore, because of the way Bush had handled 9/11, that Clinton had somehow failed to do. I'm glad that isn't what you intended to mean.
No, not at all. I emphasized Bill Clinton to emphasize "a different president." I was trying to point out that Clinton's response to terrorist was far more restrained than Bushes and yet we kept getting attacked anyway, and then finally 9/11 happened.
I was also not at all postulating that Bush's domestic or foreign policy is keeping us safe. I put worth 3 hypotheses on why we aren't being attacked, and one of them does include new security measures and another the Iraq war. These are hypotheses, however, and not statements of opinion. I really can't figure out why we're not getting attacked. Spain got hit. London just got hit. Why not us? We're the biggest power over there with the most ground troops, why not us? I really don't know. Maybe they don't think it'll work? Maybe they want to erode support first?
It's a question to discuss, but I wasn't trying to suggest that I had the answer.
You appear to be judging Clinton and Bush by different yardsticks.
I'm not judging either of them. I'm pointing out that we've experienced two different reactions to terrorism, and neither have been effective in ending it. I fully supported President Clinton's foreign policy on the Middle East.
But then the suggestion Clinton ignored terrorists is also false. Clinton made a number of high profile attempts to deal with Osama Bin Laden, much of which was ignored at the time because of the impeachment proceedings. The controversy over his bombing of a factory that turned out to manufacture children's asprin is one example.
The evidence that Clinton had to work with at the time rather clearly pointed to that factory being connected with both bin Laden and Iraq. Our intelligence operatives found a rare chemical compound in soil outside the factory that is used in the creation of VX gas. The factory was also part of the Oil-for-Food program that we now know was an utterly corrupt money laundering disaster. I don't think the case is as open-and-shut on the Sudanese factory as we'd like to believe. I think President Clinton did the right thing, based on the intelligence he had at the time.
Clearly though, the factor that ensured there were no terrorist attacks on American soil from 1993 to 2001 had much to do with the way the government of the time managed the threat.
I don't think that's clear at all. Nor is it clear that our current policy is preventing them. I put forth some hypotheses on why there aren't more attacks, and I'm really not sure if any of them are responsible. Those hypotheses are my gut instinct on what might be responsible for our relative domestic peace. They could be way off, I don't know.
This isn't really a day to make political points.
I'm responding to political points.
Your posting, at least these two paragraphs, came across as a bizarre example of Clinton bashing that were both unnecessary and highly misleading.
I'm not bashing Clinton. He's been one of the best presidents of my lifetime.
No. Terrorist organisations have an interesting property: They start out fighting for a cause. To do this, they need money. Since they're already doing illegal things, getting the money illegally is the easiest course of action. So they start dealing with drugs, robbing banks, smuggling, whatever. Slowly, they turn from an idealistic organisation into a purely criminal organisation which uses its original cause to get new members.
That's a really good point. Very insightful, actually. I recently read a book that included some critical thinking along these lines to explain how benevolent philosophies like Socialism and Communism lead to brutal governments like Nazi Germany or Stalinist Russia. The book was The Case for Democracy, by Natan Sharansky, a former political prisoner of the Soviet Union. It's light on facts and documentation, but the guy's political theory on the difference between fear societies and free societies is worth reading. He challenged much of what I've held as political gospel and forced me to rethink the nature of freedom and what separates nations like the US and UK from places like, well, Iraq or Afghanistan. His thesis is that true freedom all begins with human rights and holding a government accountable for its human rights record, and that it was this that truly brought about the collapse of the Soviet Union, and it is this that will bring about peace in the Middle East. A very fascinating read, and I see much of Sharansky's theory on fear societies in your post.
That would be a very convenient explanation. It's quite unfortunate that it has no base in reality whatsoever. Bin Laden is no stupid religious fundamentalist who wants to kill all infidels. That's the rhetorics he often uses in his videos to get his followers rallied up, but his actual goal is to get the western countries out of arabic countries.
I almost went back and amended by post before writing to include this. But I figured that Slashdot would know what I meant. Your rank and file Islamic terrorist believes all this drek.
Do you think that the terrorism against America and the West will end if we just pull all of our military presence out of the Arab world? I really doubt it. Next they'll attack because we keep supporting Israel, America's surrogate in the middle east. And if we abandon Israel, they'll want us to stop meddling in the Arab economies with our oil purchases, and once we do that, they'll....
This shit won't stop if we acquisce (sp) to their demands. I do realize that you did not, in your post, suggest that we should, only that my summation of bin Laden's motivations is inaccurate. And I actually do realize that and grant you the point.
This is about power, not religion.
I forget who said it, probably my plumber, but this quote jumps out at me: "all fighting is about money or sex." Religion is the rally point, I agree with you.
there hasn't been an attack on our soil for 4 years? big deal, there wasn't one for 8 year prior to 9/11.
Because we kept catching people trying to pull them off.
what does that mean? you're an idiot if you think aggression towards others doesn't cause retaliation.
Of course it does. Hence, our presence in Afghanistan.
they are saying that this violence doesn't happen in a vacuum. no, it is not all because of the gulf war, history actually extends beyond 1990. maybe that was the year you were born.
1976 actually. And I'm aware that history goes further back, but the original poster failed to indicate what specific event or events he was referring to that has fomented Islamic fundamentalist hostility towards the west.
perhaps instead of being content to "have no idea" what people are talking about, read some chompsky and stop watching fox news.
I'm not content. I asked the poster to explain himself. If you've got nothing to respond with but infantile ad hominem attacks on my age, intelligence, or television viewing habits, don't bother responding.
we have declared a war on terror, you can't expect it to be one-sided. perhaps you really think they are just crazy and looking for an excuse for conflict.
They are crazy. What sane, rational person straps explosives to himself and runs into a crowded area and blows himself up because he believes that a big invisible man in the sky will reward him with 13 virgins in the afterlife? Nobody.
Violence is a means to an end for them, it's not the end itself.
let me ask you this: do you like to fight with crazy bums? i know i do, hence my reply to your rant:)
I didn't rant. The lack of substance in your response can't be hidden by passive-aggressive personal attacks and mischaracterizations of what I said.
True, but lets not include Iraq in "the war on terror". According to the U.S. state department, Iraq was the only county in the middle east which did NOT have any al Qaeda connections.
Oh yeah, and lets not forget that we could have killed al Zarqawi in the past, because we knew right where he was and we had had him cornered. This was not our agenda however, so we let him live.
Which is also why President Clinton declined to take custody of bin Laden when offered him. Hindsight is always 20/20, ain't it?
I would also like to point out that a "War" is often defined as clashing armies, or states, or coilitions. Not generally civilians.
A war is an armed conflict.
You cannot have a "war" on terror. War simply spreads more terror.
Yes, you can. And yes, it does.
If a people are being oppressed (from their prespective, not ours), they will spread terror against their oppressors.
That's a naive viewpoint. It's hard to terrorize your oppressors when your oppressor can gas an entire village of people and slaughter them all. If revolutions were this simple, there'd be no more dictators.
A man is the most dangerous when you take away his hopes and dreams, and from their perspective this is exactly what we have done (I am sure I stole that quote from somewhere).
*double take* BWUAH!? We have taken whose hopes and dreams? Al Qaeda's? Well, yeah, then good, fuck them. Iraq? How in the world have the hopes and dreams of Iraqis been dashed by the United States?
Lets not forget that only one nation has ever used a Nuclear Bomb during warfare, and it was used on civilians, TO SPREAD TERROR!
Everybody loves to drag this one out. I think the power of the bomb could have been demonstrated without as much loss of life, but I wasn't sitting in the Oval Office in 1945 looking at casualty lists and projecting casualty lists of an invasion of Japan's homeland and trying to make a decision. I think that Truman really thought he was doing the right thing for America. The bomb was not dropped to "spread terror," that was an ancillary benefit.
At least the polls are starting to show that Americans have started to figure out that Bush is evil, however it is too bad it took this long! Don't blame me, I voted for Kodos.
I don't believe the man is evil. Men like Osama bin Laden are evil. Men like Saddam Hussein are evil. It's a little disturbing how comfortably and easily you draw a moral equivilency between a regime that fed political opponents into plastic shredders and the current American president.
I truly believe that if we left Iraq tomorrow, the insurgency would collapse in a short time because they'd have no real reason to exist. The true terrorists would have no freedom fighter status in which to cloak themselves, and the nationalist insurgents would likely turn against the terrorists.
They wouldn't collapse, they'd form a government and we'd be right back where we were in 1980. The nationalist insurgents ARE terrorists.
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Yes. I bought a Honda with no intention of ever so much as changing the oil myself. I pay somebody else to do it, because it's a dirty, annoying, time-consuming process that I have no natural aptitude for. I suck at all things mechanical, I can't drive a nail properly half of the time. So I buy cars that I'm confident will require little to no maintenance to be done by myself.
Having a license to operate the vehicle is utterly unrelated to being qualified to service it, and this is where your analogy falls apart. Millions of people drive cars who couldn't diagnose and solve the most simplistic problem. I, at least, recognize the symptoms of a failing alternator, slipped belt, bad starter, loose air hose, low coolant, etc. But it's naive, asinine, and a little smug of you to look down your nose at the masses of people who don't give a flying shit about your stupid computer hobby and the high standards to which you wish to hold anybody else to dares to dabbled their finger in it. This attitude is alarmingly widespread among our ilk. I've seen people on Slashdot even suggest that unless you're willing to learn how to program, you have no business using a computer, because you don't know how it works.
Well, then I expect you move out of your apartment into a cardboard box in Antarctica, because the average Slashdot poster can't maintain basic operating systems of a common house, has never so much as changed a furnace filter in their lives, can't make a simple mitre cut with a backsaw and a box, doesn't know what kind of bit to use for masonry drilling, can't shingle a roof, service their own lawnmower, or ground a circuit.
Insightful my ass. I used to be really nice in most posts because I valued the extra exposure I get for having nice karma, but I just don't care any more. You're a prick, and you deserve to be called one.
Like Hillary Clinton? Tipper Gore?
Not a new OS. A Linux distro. Googlix!
I'm not judging you, don't haul out the Christian persecution line. You said that you were disgusted with people who are "apathetic about this sort of thing," that you have been "pushing" your friends and family to "boycott the RIAA and MPAA based on their recent tactics," and even though you "have explained to them time and time again that the artist makes practically nothing from CD sales," they continue to not spend their money the way that you think they should. Or, another to put it, despite them not changing their spending habits, you continue to tell them "time and time again" why their actions are not the "RightThing(tm)."
You also say that you "hate being surrounded by apathy" and imply that despite the "simply solutions" people "aren't willing to make just a little extra effort to do the RightThing(tm)."
Now, I can't really resolve the conflict between this somewhat aggressive and resigned characterization of your good fight to convince your friends and family to behave the way that your morals dictate that they ought to, and your backpedalling revision of this stance, where you say that, "[w]e don't try and control eachother, by any means," yet you're still trying to get them to stop buying CDs. You've tried "time and time again" and they keep doing it anyway, to your chagrin.
I'm not going to make any Christian jokes, I am a Christian. Roman Catholic if you're curious. But I, at least, don't shove unsolicited advice at people based on my moral understanding of the world, and doggedly insist on trying to get everybody I know to spend their own money in ways that conform to my moral guidance.
So, maybe your friends and family tolerate your nose in their business because you're all cut from the same type of cloth, but if I behaved like that towards my friends, they'd rightly tell me to take a long walk off a short pier. It's one thing if somebody is gambling away their college tuition. "Hey, Dave, we're concerned that you're fucking your life up." Or snorting their income up their nose, or whatever. Even then, we have a quick intervention, tell whoever the screwup is what we think, and let him go make his decisions after that with no further follow-up.
You, however, characterized yourself as the lone informed and moral voice in your community of well-meaning but thick-headed friends and family who just can't seem to figure out why your moral clarity is the "RightThing(tm)" to do, and their is not.
Again, if you were my buddy, and started that shit with me, over a fucking CD purchase, we'd be buddies no more.
Or maybe your friends and family are bright enough to be offender at you trying to tell them what to do with their that they earned based on your principles. If I was your friend and you started in on that shit, I'll tell you that the instant you go to my job, and do my work, and collect my paycheck for me, you can decide how it gets spent, and until then, keep your fucking opinion on how I spend my own money to yourself. What an asshole.
I use Gmail exclusively for all email transactions, and I haven't loaded up an email client since I got Gmail. Granted, I'm a sample size of one, so my standard deviation is infinity...
The UN cherry-picks its battles based on the financial interests of its primary governers. This is why Germany, France, and Russia all condemned any activity in Iraq by anybody, not just the Americans. The UN manages to sometimes accidentally benefit people as a side affect to lining the pockets of its overseers.
We can bash Bush to our collective hearts' delights over his blundering and bungling of the Iraq public relationships campaign, but what was the UN doing about villages full of slaughtered Kurds? Mass graves? Political opponents fed into plastic shredders? People speaking against Hussein thrown off buildings? What did they do about WMD use in Iran-Iraq? The UN is happy to sit on its collective hands and let the world's petty dictators do whatever the hell they want, and if anybody decides to give the UN the one-finger salute and go do something, they're mercilessly attacked for it. This isn't a pro-America flag-waving penisfest, either, it's happened to every major western power. Britain and France have both been exposed to this on various levels. The UN is just not interested in serving the human condition, and it is ultimately beholden to nobody, which is fine, really, since it's incapable of taking any kind of action against misbehaving member states, beyond issuing stern warnings over furrowed brows and narrowed eyes.
It's extremely difficult to coordinate things on a world scale without any real authority but the UN does do an extremely admirable job.
It's difficult to so much as get my roommates to pay their damn rent on the 1st of the month, I think we can all appreciate the complexity of the UN's job. I think the political structure of the organization is mutually exclusive with its own charter. Part of the problem is that the UN is full of petty dictators and does not set strict enough membership requirements. If the UN had a simple requirement that all members states must adhere to a minimum recognition of human rights, have a transparent process in place that met UN requirements for verification of those rights, we might get somewhere.
Whether it would handle the root servers well or not is a separate issue but don't critise out of a hand an organisation that has saved millions of lives.
And cost millions as well. I rarely see such logic used to defend American and British activity in the Iraq on these grounds. It's not because people can't recognize that lives might have been saved, but that the issue, in American political terms, is polarized between "George Bush is the fountain of black water from which all evil in the world spews" and "George Bush is the second coming of Jesus Christ." People have failed to abstract the reality of international, extensional issues such Iraq from their intensional representation of the leadership involved in such issues. This phenomenon is an error in symbolism and abstraction, and epidemic to the human species. Regardless, we've evolved to the point where organizations like the UN must exist to put such political squabbling behind enacting sensible policy to advance the human condition.
I engage in petty UN bashing here and there, largely because the organization appears to be impotent and corrupt. Now, government is corrupt by nature, to some degree, but we have plenty of sovereign governments that are less corrupt than the UN, and it is upon the premises of those types of political structures that the UN should be organized. That's an ideological and practical criticism.
It's not that I don't or can't appreciate the good that has come about because of the UN, or that I wish the organization never existed.
Yes, less efficient societies are always better! Damn you people for having quick and easy access to information instead of slogging through a huge crate of cards.
While it's nice to remember how things were and the progress we've made, let's also not forget the things that we don't know how to do anymore.
I consider that a measure of progress, that I don't need to remember how to darn socks or resole my shoes. It frees my time up for the study of things that improve the human condition rather than maintain the status quo. Vote stlhawkeye in 2012!
We're so wrapped up (some of us anyway) in what's latest and greatest that we now have less overall free time to do things and spend most of our time trying to figure out how to schedule our days.
I think technology tends to advance the human condition and give us more free time and more to do with the free time we have. I don't have to hand-wash my dishes and clothes, I throw them into a big white box and they come out clean like magic. The only major exception is the American obsession with cars, which have resulted in clogged city highways on which Americans burn through millions of barrels of oil puttering along at 6 miles an hour for two hours a day.
No, I'm not a luddite. I'm just one of those who don't see the point in much of what people are gaga over nowadays (a cel phone which can do 20 different things except make a decent call for example).
I'm with you there. The cell phone has definitely made my life easier, safer (except on the highway), and more efficient. But that's because I place calls on it, not because it plays MP3s, take pictures, text messages my girlfriend, or gives me a hug when I feel bad.
Amen. I was playing poker with some buds the other day and he's got his iPod playing a rotation of his favorite music, and during that event, no less than 4 bands came on that I wanted to listen to more of. I wrote down the names of all the bands, checked out their CDs on iTunes when I got home, and bought 3 of their albums, put them on MY iPod, and am not listening to the Fruit Bats as I type this, a band I would never have heard of, nor bought any CDs from if not for the ease with which music can be sampled and purchased via the Int0rw3b.
...this decision is being pushed by the government because they want control over the current analog frequencies, which they will then resell and lease to private industry to generate another revenue stream for the government. And who is payinf ro it? As usual, we are.
Again, I misrepresented my opinion and ideas on bin Laden when I said that, and I corrected it in other parts of this thread.
It was the "he's just nuts, we've done nothing wrong, we've just have to get rid of him (without any self-examination necessary)" angle that I was trying to object to.
I did not say or imply that we've done nothing wrong. I said and implied that there are people who think the United States is completely at fault and deserves any calamity that befalls it.
Also, from the GP: "You're attempting to explain the actions of terrorists through logic. "We deserve it," for some reason. "We caused this. This is our fault, if we hadn't (done whatever), then they wouldn't have done this"" (implying this is bad).
Not to suggest for a second that America had done anything to deserve an atrocity like 9/11, but (poor analogy time) if a guy from down the block breaks into my house, screams imprecations at me, punches me in the head and legs it, I might wonder if I'd done anything to upset him.
Naturally, I'd wonder that, too. "What in the world motivates such an irrational response?"
Especially if it's impossible for it to be a case of mistaken identity. Dismissing him as insane without trying to understand his motivations misses the point that I might very well have done something to deserve some retribution, even if his was over-the-top.
I would be interested in understanding his motivations but not interested in excusing his behavior.
I think you're missing a great deal of context, here. We're the ones causing that erosion.
The proliferation of American pop culture garbage is beyond my control, sadly. I decline to participate as much as possible. Whenever our representatives in the States try to enact new laws to restrict "indecency" or remove profanity or nudity or whatever from TV, they're derided as bunch of stodgy crackpot Christian conservative assholes who want Americans humping through holes cut in bedsheets and only after reading the Bible.
As a big advocate of Enlightenment liberalism, I tend to agree with this characterization and oppose legislation on behavior such as that. The consequence, unfortunately, is what you've described: even more stodgy crackpot religious people elsewhere decide that we're the root of evil in the world. It's no win situation. I either sacrifice some of my liberty to my government to appease terrorist sor I sacrifice it to my government so they "save" me from the same terrorists. The common element in this choice is that terrorists are threatening to murder civilians on the grounds that we pay taxes to our corrupt government. And if that wasn't motivation enough, they'd find some other reason why slaughtering American civilians is justified by the Quran. That's the very definition of rationalization, which is what you do when your behavior is otherwise unjustifiable.
imagine your young kids were eating brains, fucking on the sidewalk and murdering old people for fun - that's the kind of revulsion-level they're experiencing.
That's what Arab kids are told. That Jews grind up children and use their blood to make matzo.
Once again, I'm not suggesting they're right to feel like this, but it is understandable.
Feeling threatened by and afraid of the encroachment of an alien and terrifying culture that is 180 degrees the opposite of your own is completely understandable. It's one of America's primary motivations for fighting communism for 60 years. As you wrly note below, that doesn't make it "alright".
They may have "insane" axioms they're starting from, but the reasoning from there is perfectly comprehensible.
Granted. Perhaps I characterized the wrong element of this debate as "in
This is the part that you're missing - millions of lives were being lost in Germany anyway specifically because nobody was willing to act. What do you suggest the world should have done about Hitler? File charges and just let him walk all over Europe? It's not like nobody tried to play along with Germany and give them what they wanted. Fat lot of good it did them. Should we have just let the Germany have France? And Britain? And Russia? What's the alternative?
By taking a militant [...] position, the United States has repeatedly found itself on the side of the oppressors and against the people, or, in other words, against local nationalism.
The United States has repeatedly found itself picking the most America-compliant of two unreasonable regimes. Do you think the Ayatollah have really done a lot of good for the people of Iran? The Shah at least gave them their land back.
Unless the US begins thinking in terms of Kurdistan and talking to the EU about getting Turkey to hand over parts of its country to it than they will fail. Maybe not now or in 10 years but without a solution that establishes countries of peoples united more by idealogy than geography no measure of liberty from our bloody actions will stand the test of time.
Oh, I agree there. One need only look at the example of Czechoslovakia. And I said that our "plan" for Iraq is pretty sparse.
What do you suggest we do in Iraq? Get up and leave? How do we deal with terrorism? Just move all of our forces out of the Middle East, abandon Israel to its fate?
Let's say we do that. Will the terrorists now put down their guns and leave the rest of the world alone? Or will they (or like-minded people) work on seizing control of various Arab states and reclaiming lost land? Once the West has been moved out of the Middle East, there'll be no more bombings, no more planes hijacked, no more subways blown up?
What is your plan to combat terrorism? Because we've (as in, those of us who are not terrorists, regardless of nationality and political affiliation) have tried a lot of stuff and none of it has worked yet.
If that's what Bush says, then so be it. It's what I think, and I can't help it if the President manages to be right now and then. His opinion isn't my problem. Should I disagree with him on everything just because I disapprove of his policies? How does that make me anything but a partisan hack?
I've been over and over the flaw in my oversimplification in bin Laden's motives in this thread, if you're interested in anything more than pounding on somebody you (erroneously) have assumed to be a Republican hack, go read the rest of it.
The reasons we should not be in the mideast are..we have no idea how long it will take
That's not an argument not to wage war. Granted, democracies, and America in particular, do not suffer prolonged conflict well. World War II was an exception (in some ways) because of the depression. And the conventional wisdom is that wars should be ended as quickly as possible. However, the "war" part of Iraq was over with in a matter of weeks. What's left would be called terrorism if it were happening anywhere else. Our role is a combination of a national defense force and an occupying power. Our role as "occupiers" is fading since occupiers typically exert political control over the state they occupy. The amount of political influence that we've exerted over Iraq's new constitution is far less than the conditions that MacArthur put on, say, the Japanense, and I actually think it's a mistake. If we're going to go to all this trouble and expense, we damn well better make sure that what emerges from Iraq is a nation with an excellent shot at accomplishing our foreign policy aims (Islamic democracy).
That doesn't mean that I think we should hand-pick their people, only that we should have made a more clear and precise plan as to what kind of government we would nurture there. MacArthur made Hirohito admit that he's not divine (although he quietly reaffirmed this later in his life), but allowed him to maintain a ceremonial role as Emperor to give the Japanese a sense of continuity from the Dai Nippon to the republic of Japan. There's no such continuity in Iraq. Perhaps for the better, time will tell. MacArthur also insisted on women being involved in democracy because he knew, as some modern pundits do, that women have a stabilizing affect on men and thus on policy, and that women's rights would help mitigate the samurai culture of Japan. In many ways, I think MacArthur did right by Japan, despite imposing limitations and rules on their new government that America would, today, be widely blasted and condemned for attempting to impose on Iraq or anybody else.
The political situations are not analogous (Iraq never bombed Iraq), but the social climate of Dai Nippon and Hussein's Iraq have paralels from which we can draw lessons in history. Long story short: the "war" part is over. What we're seeing now is normal, and not something that should cause us to tuck tail and run.
I would like to see the President outline his exit strategy for Iraq. I see one emerging, but I think it's by force of accident rather than planning. Bush may luck into an amazing success story in Iraq that will redefine the political structure of the Middle East in a fundamental and mostly good way.
democracy by obliteration works only on countries already united like germany or japan after the war
Two flaws in your argument. First, you state this as a fact without providing any logical or emperical support for it. Second, you employ use of an analogy when the circumstances of the modern-day case do not match the key elements of the compared case. We were fighting the sovereign nations of Japan and Germany. We were fighting against their governments and military. We are not fighting the government of Iraq or it's military. We're setting up one and training the other.
and by doing anything in the region at this point will only creat
Another one along those lines is The Road to Serfdom by Freidrich Hayek. It's dated; it was written in the midst of World War 2, and it comes from the perspective of what passed for conservatism at the time, and it's a bit dry, but it's a very valuable book to digest.
Sharansky's book is a fast read and be forewarned; he's a Soviet Jew and his perspective is that of a nationalized Israeli on how to solve the problem of the Arab-Israeli conflict. However, he is appropriately critical of the mistakes made by his own government, as well as that of the United States, in the 1990's and even recently.
What I found very interesting about his book was his analysis of the Soviet Union and where its demise began. I really did reshape a lot of my ideas and political theory after reading his book.
This is all true. Why then, do so many Americans oppose fixing the problems we've caused?
Than we pursue their 'freedom fighters' like dogs into caves and other underground places and you are telling me that is not backing them into a corner?
Who was being pursued into a cave in 1993? Stop with the red herrings. Nobody is forcing them to fight. They're fighting because they don't want a democracy. Another poster nailed it - this is about power, and a free Islamic state threatens the power base of a fear society.
If New York was being bombed by Pakistan to liberate us from Bush don't you think that our freedom fighters would use similiar methods to lessen support in the middle east for an attack on the united states?
If Bush had slaughtered the entire population of Ohio with mustard gas, thrown political opponents off rooftops, allowed his relatives to kidnap and rape civilians, tortured and killed people who openly voiced dissent who didn't go to church on Sunday, and had racked up a death toll of over 1 million Americans, and Pakistan invaded the nation, overthrew him, and began to set up a democracy in his place, while fighting off American militia who were trying to push them out, I would run up and give every Pakistani soldier I saw a big wet smooch on the cheek.
Demonizing? You mean by calling people who blow themselves up in an effort to murder other innocent people "crazy"? Then yes, there's nothing quite like it.
It allows you to safely ignore any trace of humanity on their part or consider addressing your own side's shortcomings.
If you're asserting that this is the purpose of my response, I disagree strongly. Post some evidence to back up this conclusion.
I am merely an informed, educated and interested British citizen, with a comparatively unbiased (state-owned!) media and a basic grasp of history.
I am an informed, educated and interested American citizen, who ignores the TV news and has a basic grasp of history.
Now, why would Bin Laden hate the USA so much?
I've addressed the oversimplification of my point in several other posts, I won't rehash it here.
However, when the older fundamentalist generation sees their cultures values being eroded, and sees their children becoming more and more influenced by a culture that embodies (to them) everything immoral and evil (half-naked women, religious tolerance, blasphemy, drug/alcohol consumption, etc, etc, etc), you start to see where dislike might start.
Are you kidding? That's happening here, this isn't a phenomenon unique to the Middle East. I look at half-dressed 13 year old girls at shopping malls and think, "how in the world do their mothers allow them out of the house looking like that?"
But I'm not strapping explosives to myself and murdering everybody shopping at The Gap.
However, are you aware that the entire destabilised state of the present-day middle east is due almost entirely to British and US involvement?
Yes. Our endlessly meddling in the internal affairs of Iran since before World War II alone is horrible, and it has nothing to do with what's best for the Iranian people, it was initially about securing a supply line to the Soviet Union during World War 2, and after that, about fighting communist encroachment into the region. The Iranians were terrified of all of us. The Soviet Union annexed the northern portion of their country, and Imperial Britan scared the bejeezus out of them. The Americans propped up the Shah, who did a lot of good for Iran, but was also a brutal dictator in his own way. He just wasn't a communist one, so we propped him up until the Soviets weren't a threat, and then allowed him to fall in favor of the Ayatollah. I'm actually working on a fantasy novel whose plot revolves around a nation whose history parallels that of Iran since about 1920.
Throughout most of this century the US has waged an intensively invasive foreign policy, actively encouraging and supplying rebellions and terrorism, destabilising governments and economically ruining states, solely to secure supplies of cheap, plentiful oil.
This really got started because we needed a way to get supplies during World War 2. The ends may not always justify the means, but in this case, they just might. They even had a nickname for Iran during this period - "The Persian Channel" or the Persian Corridor or something like that.
This is not left-wing propaganda or make-believe - this is all documented history.
I know. I probably know more about Iranian history than 99% of the people in my country or yours.
FWIW, if you try to look this up you'll have a much easier time using non-US sources. US culture has practiced self-censorship (through a mixture of isolationist disinterest and active suppression) for years, and it's only recently become aware of it itself.
This information is all readily available in American libraries and has been for decades. I respectfully submit that your impression of American information suppression is based too much on what's on our television stations. Interested Americans have easy access to all the resources t
Nobody is forcing them to pick up a gun and fight. What corner were they backed into in 1993? We left Iraq. How in the world were our leftover bases in Saudi Arabia "backing them into a corner"?
No, I was generalizing the radical Islamic response to Christianity and Judaism, and incorreectly personifying it in bin Laden. Lots of people responding to me have pointed this same thing out, I oversimplified my opinion/argument and was unclear.
Your life would be easier if you stopped watching Fox news.
Ok, what is it with the knee-jerk response that I'm some kind of right wing Fox News junkie? I don't watch TV news, and you're right, it does make my life easier. Less stressful anyway.
It's a stupid, irrational reason, but that's religion for you.
Which is what I said in my original statement, although you omitted that part from your quote above. Nice cherry picking!
Because Al Queda likes to think big. Simple suicide bombings in a food court are too small potatoes. Also, their main goal was to get America to invade, occupy and brutalise an Arab nation. Mission Accomplished.
I thought their goal was "the expulsion of American Armed forces from the sacred sites of Islam [Saudi Arabia]".
Al Queda is not a monolithic group. It's the umbrella name given by the West to the world-wide Islamist insurgency that views OBL as their role-model. Most of the "Al Queda" fighters in Iraq are locals and from neighbouring states. The cells are very likely still alive and kicking. Just waiting for their next order.
I'm aware of that. Our best intelligent indicates, last I checked, that "al Qaeda" may not really be organized at all outside of the highest levels of bin Laden's inner circle.
As for "cess-pools", that would be true if they were poor.
Most of them are. Arabs, I mean, living in these countries.
Almost all of the known Al Queda operatives captures or killed came from very nice, middle-class Arab families.
Ah. This is why you disagree. I was either unclear or you misunderstood.
Try reading any of Michael Sheurer's [wikipedia.org] books. It'll help you understand what we're up against and how to fight them. The only bad thing I can say about him is that he instigated and supported the "rendition" program of the CIA that transported terrorist suspects to friendly nations for torture and interrogation.
I will check them out. I'm woefully behind on my summer reading list but that's no reason to avoid lengthening it.
No, not at all. I emphasized Bill Clinton to emphasize "a different president." I was trying to point out that Clinton's response to terrorist was far more restrained than Bushes and yet we kept getting attacked anyway, and then finally 9/11 happened.
I was also not at all postulating that Bush's domestic or foreign policy is keeping us safe. I put worth 3 hypotheses on why we aren't being attacked, and one of them does include new security measures and another the Iraq war. These are hypotheses, however, and not statements of opinion. I really can't figure out why we're not getting attacked. Spain got hit. London just got hit. Why not us? We're the biggest power over there with the most ground troops, why not us? I really don't know. Maybe they don't think it'll work? Maybe they want to erode support first?
It's a question to discuss, but I wasn't trying to suggest that I had the answer.
I'm not judging either of them. I'm pointing out that we've experienced two different reactions to terrorism, and neither have been effective in ending it. I fully supported President Clinton's foreign policy on the Middle East.
But then the suggestion Clinton ignored terrorists is also false. Clinton made a number of high profile attempts to deal with Osama Bin Laden, much of which was ignored at the time because of the impeachment proceedings. The controversy over his bombing of a factory that turned out to manufacture children's asprin is one example.
The evidence that Clinton had to work with at the time rather clearly pointed to that factory being connected with both bin Laden and Iraq. Our intelligence operatives found a rare chemical compound in soil outside the factory that is used in the creation of VX gas. The factory was also part of the Oil-for-Food program that we now know was an utterly corrupt money laundering disaster. I don't think the case is as open-and-shut on the Sudanese factory as we'd like to believe. I think President Clinton did the right thing, based on the intelligence he had at the time.
Clearly though, the factor that ensured there were no terrorist attacks on American soil from 1993 to 2001 had much to do with the way the government of the time managed the threat.
I don't think that's clear at all. Nor is it clear that our current policy is preventing them. I put forth some hypotheses on why there aren't more attacks, and I'm really not sure if any of them are responsible. Those hypotheses are my gut instinct on what might be responsible for our relative domestic peace. They could be way off, I don't know.
This isn't really a day to make political points.
I'm responding to political points.
Your posting, at least these two paragraphs, came across as a bizarre example of Clinton bashing that were both unnecessary and highly misleading.
I'm not bashing Clinton. He's been one of the best presidents of my lifetime.
That's a really good point. Very insightful, actually. I recently read a book that included some critical thinking along these lines to explain how benevolent philosophies like Socialism and Communism lead to brutal governments like Nazi Germany or Stalinist Russia. The book was The Case for Democracy, by Natan Sharansky, a former political prisoner of the Soviet Union. It's light on facts and documentation, but the guy's political theory on the difference between fear societies and free societies is worth reading. He challenged much of what I've held as political gospel and forced me to rethink the nature of freedom and what separates nations like the US and UK from places like, well, Iraq or Afghanistan. His thesis is that true freedom all begins with human rights and holding a government accountable for its human rights record, and that it was this that truly brought about the collapse of the Soviet Union, and it is this that will bring about peace in the Middle East. A very fascinating read, and I see much of Sharansky's theory on fear societies in your post.
I almost went back and amended by post before writing to include this. But I figured that Slashdot would know what I meant. Your rank and file Islamic terrorist believes all this drek.
Do you think that the terrorism against America and the West will end if we just pull all of our military presence out of the Arab world? I really doubt it. Next they'll attack because we keep supporting Israel, America's surrogate in the middle east. And if we abandon Israel, they'll want us to stop meddling in the Arab economies with our oil purchases, and once we do that, they'll....
This shit won't stop if we acquisce (sp) to their demands. I do realize that you did not, in your post, suggest that we should, only that my summation of bin Laden's motivations is inaccurate. And I actually do realize that and grant you the point.
This is about power, not religion.
I forget who said it, probably my plumber, but this quote jumps out at me: "all fighting is about money or sex." Religion is the rally point, I agree with you.
Because we kept catching people trying to pull them off.
what does that mean? you're an idiot if you think aggression towards others doesn't cause retaliation.
Of course it does. Hence, our presence in Afghanistan.
they are saying that this violence doesn't happen in a vacuum. no, it is not all because of the gulf war, history actually extends beyond 1990. maybe that was the year you were born.
1976 actually. And I'm aware that history goes further back, but the original poster failed to indicate what specific event or events he was referring to that has fomented Islamic fundamentalist hostility towards the west.
perhaps instead of being content to "have no idea" what people are talking about, read some chompsky and stop watching fox news.
I'm not content. I asked the poster to explain himself. If you've got nothing to respond with but infantile ad hominem attacks on my age, intelligence, or television viewing habits, don't bother responding.
we have declared a war on terror, you can't expect it to be one-sided. perhaps you really think they are just crazy and looking for an excuse for conflict.
They are crazy. What sane, rational person straps explosives to himself and runs into a crowded area and blows himself up because he believes that a big invisible man in the sky will reward him with 13 virgins in the afterlife? Nobody.
Violence is a means to an end for them, it's not the end itself.
let me ask you this: do you like to fight with crazy bums? i know i do, hence my reply to your rant :)
I didn't rant. The lack of substance in your response can't be hidden by passive-aggressive personal attacks and mischaracterizations of what I said.
The state department is wrong.
Oh yeah, and lets not forget that we could have killed al Zarqawi in the past, because we knew right where he was and we had had him cornered. This was not our agenda however, so we let him live.
Which is also why President Clinton declined to take custody of bin Laden when offered him. Hindsight is always 20/20, ain't it?
I would also like to point out that a "War" is often defined as clashing armies, or states, or coilitions. Not generally civilians.
A war is an armed conflict.
You cannot have a "war" on terror. War simply spreads more terror.
Yes, you can. And yes, it does.
If a people are being oppressed (from their prespective, not ours), they will spread terror against their oppressors.
That's a naive viewpoint. It's hard to terrorize your oppressors when your oppressor can gas an entire village of people and slaughter them all. If revolutions were this simple, there'd be no more dictators.
A man is the most dangerous when you take away his hopes and dreams, and from their perspective this is exactly what we have done (I am sure I stole that quote from somewhere).
*double take* BWUAH!? We have taken whose hopes and dreams? Al Qaeda's? Well, yeah, then good, fuck them. Iraq? How in the world have the hopes and dreams of Iraqis been dashed by the United States?
Lets not forget that only one nation has ever used a Nuclear Bomb during warfare, and it was used on civilians, TO SPREAD TERROR!
Everybody loves to drag this one out. I think the power of the bomb could have been demonstrated without as much loss of life, but I wasn't sitting in the Oval Office in 1945 looking at casualty lists and projecting casualty lists of an invasion of Japan's homeland and trying to make a decision. I think that Truman really thought he was doing the right thing for America. The bomb was not dropped to "spread terror," that was an ancillary benefit.
At least the polls are starting to show that Americans have started to figure out that Bush is evil, however it is too bad it took this long! Don't blame me, I voted for Kodos.
I don't believe the man is evil. Men like Osama bin Laden are evil. Men like Saddam Hussein are evil. It's a little disturbing how comfortably and easily you draw a moral equivilency between a regime that fed political opponents into plastic shredders and the current American president.
They wouldn't collapse, they'd form a government and we'd be right back where we were in 1980. The nationalist insurgents ARE terrorists.