If this columnist from the right-wing Washington Times* is right, I'll definitely vote for Obama. Canada is exactly what these United States need to become.
http://www.washingtontimes.com/news/2008/jun/29/obamas-america-is-canada/
*True story: I shared a cab once in Jerusalem with a white South African who wrote for The Washington Times. He asked me if I'd heard of the paper. "Don't confuse it with the Washington Post," he said.
"Of course I've heard of it," I said. "It's a right-leaning paper." I said it matter-of-factly, not disparagingly. (I was in a good mood after negotiating a sweet fare for him and me. He was a bystander to the dickering process and then asked at the last second if he could jump in with me since he was going to the same place.)
"Oh no, oh no, it's not right-leaning at all," he expostulated. "It's a very mainstream paper." Right, but Fox News is also considered mainstream in our crazy country. That doesn't discount its being a right-wing network. Everyone knows that. I don't deny that The Nation is a left-leaning magazine, or "a liberal rag", in the words of one of my lefty friends.
Sunday, June 29, 2008
Monday, June 23, 2008
Strange Bedfellows
It's the damndest thing: finding yourself agreeing with those who hold views totally contrary to your own. Take Bill Bonner, editor of The Daily Reckoning (online financial newsletter), and author of two bestselling books on the economy.
Mr. Bonner is a libertarian. He believes that people should be left to fend for themselves, without government interference. "Let them get what they deserve," is his mantra. State involvement, he believes, only ruins economies and civilisations.
Bill is what you may call an old-school conservative, with a small c. How, then, does yours truly, a leftist, self-described "Old World Socialist", champion of universal health care and mandated redistribution of wealth, find himself admiring some of Bonner's views?
Perhaps because Mr. Bonner is so simple-spoken, more eager to write the truth, as he sees it, than to try to please his fearmongering conservative allies.
Let's take his look at "global terrorism", as explained in his column of last Friday (6/20/08):
The United States is an imperial power with one major leading industry: defense. But with no enemies capable of inflicting real damage to the country, the defense industry had to invent one: terrorism…and the people had to believe it.
Readers typically want to argue this point. "What about 9/11?" they ask.
Of course, terrorists always pose a danger to individuals. And if they are daring and determined enough, they pose a danger to many individuals. But they pose no real danger to the state…and none to the Pentagon. You could put all the world's terrorists together in a single army…they would still stand no chance whatsoever of defeating the United States of America.
Normally, it is the police who are charged with protecting citizens. The fuzz fight crime and criminals…even gangs of criminals. Terrorists in the U.S.A., as near as we can tell, are practically non-existent. They don't seem capable of breaking into a parking meter, let alone challenging the U.S. Army. There must be 10,000 paid cops for every one of them. Why bring the Pentagon onto the case?
As mentioned in these reckonings, the feds are adding to the official national debt at the rate of $1.5 billion per day. Still, neither Democrats nor Republicans dared challenge the Pentagon's latest $600 billion spendfest. No one wants to audit the Pentagon. No one wants to oppose it. The Pentagon is in a bubble of its own.
Like Ron Paul, I suppose, you gotta hand it to Mr. Bonner when he exposes problems like "international terror" to be little more than government-created bogeymen created to control a terrified populace. Like Mr. Paul, Mr. Bonner is against useless government spending. He just happens to see all government spending as useless. He may be wrong about that (as is Mr. Paul), but he is right about our military spending's justification being propped up by dubious threats.
Not so fast: Mr. Bonner is actually for the government spending when he thinks it will truly benefit the American public. Check this nugget out from the same column last Friday, regarding what our government should have done in the aftermath of the fall of the Soviet Union:
The sensible thing for the United States to do, following the fall of its one and only major enemy, would have been to cut the defense budget down to a nub…and invest the money in infrastructure and capital improvements, so Americans would be able to compete on better terms with the rising economies of their former enemies.
Is Bill Bonner a genius? Is he secretly a liberal, vehemently opposed to spending money on military adventurism while secretly praying the government will pump billions into creating jobs for Americans?
Or have I become a libertarian?
Mr. Bonner is a libertarian. He believes that people should be left to fend for themselves, without government interference. "Let them get what they deserve," is his mantra. State involvement, he believes, only ruins economies and civilisations.
Bill is what you may call an old-school conservative, with a small c. How, then, does yours truly, a leftist, self-described "Old World Socialist", champion of universal health care and mandated redistribution of wealth, find himself admiring some of Bonner's views?
Perhaps because Mr. Bonner is so simple-spoken, more eager to write the truth, as he sees it, than to try to please his fearmongering conservative allies.
Let's take his look at "global terrorism", as explained in his column of last Friday (6/20/08):
The United States is an imperial power with one major leading industry: defense. But with no enemies capable of inflicting real damage to the country, the defense industry had to invent one: terrorism…and the people had to believe it.
Readers typically want to argue this point. "What about 9/11?" they ask.
Of course, terrorists always pose a danger to individuals. And if they are daring and determined enough, they pose a danger to many individuals. But they pose no real danger to the state…and none to the Pentagon. You could put all the world's terrorists together in a single army…they would still stand no chance whatsoever of defeating the United States of America.
Normally, it is the police who are charged with protecting citizens. The fuzz fight crime and criminals…even gangs of criminals. Terrorists in the U.S.A., as near as we can tell, are practically non-existent. They don't seem capable of breaking into a parking meter, let alone challenging the U.S. Army. There must be 10,000 paid cops for every one of them. Why bring the Pentagon onto the case?
As mentioned in these reckonings, the feds are adding to the official national debt at the rate of $1.5 billion per day. Still, neither Democrats nor Republicans dared challenge the Pentagon's latest $600 billion spendfest. No one wants to audit the Pentagon. No one wants to oppose it. The Pentagon is in a bubble of its own.
Like Ron Paul, I suppose, you gotta hand it to Mr. Bonner when he exposes problems like "international terror" to be little more than government-created bogeymen created to control a terrified populace. Like Mr. Paul, Mr. Bonner is against useless government spending. He just happens to see all government spending as useless. He may be wrong about that (as is Mr. Paul), but he is right about our military spending's justification being propped up by dubious threats.
Not so fast: Mr. Bonner is actually for the government spending when he thinks it will truly benefit the American public. Check this nugget out from the same column last Friday, regarding what our government should have done in the aftermath of the fall of the Soviet Union:
The sensible thing for the United States to do, following the fall of its one and only major enemy, would have been to cut the defense budget down to a nub…and invest the money in infrastructure and capital improvements, so Americans would be able to compete on better terms with the rising economies of their former enemies.
Is Bill Bonner a genius? Is he secretly a liberal, vehemently opposed to spending money on military adventurism while secretly praying the government will pump billions into creating jobs for Americans?
Or have I become a libertarian?
Saturday, June 21, 2008
India's Disappearing Females
An eye-opener from the BBC today, reporting on UK charity ActionAid's study on the frightening disparity between numbers of girls and boys in India. In one sample site, there were just 300 girls for every 1,000 boys.
Female foetuses are detected by ultrasound, which costs just a few dollars to perform, and aborted. Other practises include letting baby girls' umbilical cords get infected by heaping dirty soil on them and letting the girls die of septicaemia.
In other cultures that favour male children, such as China, there is not an outrageous number of female foetuses aborted; nor is female infanticide as prevalent as in India.
How will India, which has made so many strides to modernise and integrate into the "global economy" deal with this genocide of half its population?
OK, so "genocide" is too strong a word, you argue, and tossed around too casually. In the last 20 years - about a generation - 10 million female foetuses in India have been aborted, according to the esteemed British medical journal Lancet.
What if a Mozzlim nation had anything even near this sort of cultural practise? That's an issue we'll explore tomorrow as we cover an explosive book allegedly written by a Palestinian woman about her experience growing up as a woman in the West Bank.
For now, here's the link to the Indian foeticide/infanticide article:
http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/south_asia/7466916.stm
(And be sure to check out the side bar on the BBC site for links to seven related articles that round out the story a bit.)
Female foetuses are detected by ultrasound, which costs just a few dollars to perform, and aborted. Other practises include letting baby girls' umbilical cords get infected by heaping dirty soil on them and letting the girls die of septicaemia.
In other cultures that favour male children, such as China, there is not an outrageous number of female foetuses aborted; nor is female infanticide as prevalent as in India.
How will India, which has made so many strides to modernise and integrate into the "global economy" deal with this genocide of half its population?
OK, so "genocide" is too strong a word, you argue, and tossed around too casually. In the last 20 years - about a generation - 10 million female foetuses in India have been aborted, according to the esteemed British medical journal Lancet.
What if a Mozzlim nation had anything even near this sort of cultural practise? That's an issue we'll explore tomorrow as we cover an explosive book allegedly written by a Palestinian woman about her experience growing up as a woman in the West Bank.
For now, here's the link to the Indian foeticide/infanticide article:
http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/south_asia/7466916.stm
(And be sure to check out the side bar on the BBC site for links to seven related articles that round out the story a bit.)
Friday, June 20, 2008
Israel Endorses McCain (?) or Israel Challenges Obama (?)
This is the curious headline of a speculative piece published in The Nation. Robert Dreyfuss analyses Israel's recent practise runs on bombing Iran based on a Pentagon official's anonymous quotes.
A short article, and I know it will suffer rot link soon, so here's the link and the full piece. (Interestingly, Dreyfuss deems Iran "not a suicide nation", whereas that is the exact phraseology Dershowitz uses to describe that country. Dershowitz says that Iran and its people have a suicide wish consistent with their Shi'a religion, and that this exemplifies itself in what he sees as sabre-rattling with Israel.)
http://news.yahoo.com/s/thenation/20080620/cm_thenation/1096331437
START ARTICLE:
The stunning display of air power by Israel in early June, unannounced but widely noticed by intelligence services worldwide, means that Israel has officially signed on to John McCain's presidential bid.
By sending more than a hundred F-15s and F-16s across Greece and the Mediterranean in a practice mission for a large-scale attack on Iran, the Israelis have upped the ante dramatically. The New York Times, which reported the action, quotes a Pentagon official who said that it was all about sending messages:
"They wanted us to know, they wanted the Europeans to know, and they wanted the Iranians to know," the Pentagon official said. "There's a lot of signaling going on at different levels."
But the most important message is to the American political system. McCain has made a point of his willigness, even eagerness, to escalate the crisis with Iran. And while Barack Obama has said repeatedly that he won't take the threat of military action off the table, he's challenged McCain over the Arizonan's refusal to talk to Iran.
So Israel is challenging Obama, too.
Most analysts do not believe that Israel has the capability to conduct an effective attack against Iran. It's too far away, its air defenses, while weak, aren't nil, and its facilities are too scattered and buried to be destroyed in the sort of attack that Israel might mount. So what does this mean?
Of course, Israel could strike Iran even in a limited way, do some damage to a limited number of Iran's nuclear facilities, and then sit back and watch the crisis unfold. Perhaps the Israelis might hope that Iran will strike back at American targets (say, in Iraq), and Israel might hope to draw the United States into a broader war with Iran. But I don't believe Iran would respond to an Israeli strike by attacking American targets, because that would be suicidal. So, if Israel acts alone, and Iran doesn't respond, Israel would suffer overwhelming world condemnation -- especially in light of the American National Intelligence Estimate saying that Iran halted its bomb-making five years ago. Israel would also be blamed by many friends and allies (say, India and Europe) for pushing oil prices toward $200 a barrel or more.
So it's most likely that Israel is hoping to push the post-Bush president of the United States into taking a more confrontational stance toward Iran. That's called blackmail. It's the "Samson complex": do what we want or we will bring the whole temple crashing down. For Obama, it's a bluff worth calling--because, ultimately, like Iran, Israel is not a suicide nation. And bombing Iran would be suicidal for Israel.
END ARTICLE
A short article, and I know it will suffer rot link soon, so here's the link and the full piece. (Interestingly, Dreyfuss deems Iran "not a suicide nation", whereas that is the exact phraseology Dershowitz uses to describe that country. Dershowitz says that Iran and its people have a suicide wish consistent with their Shi'a religion, and that this exemplifies itself in what he sees as sabre-rattling with Israel.)
http://news.yahoo.com/s/thenation/20080620/cm_thenation/1096331437
START ARTICLE:
The stunning display of air power by Israel in early June, unannounced but widely noticed by intelligence services worldwide, means that Israel has officially signed on to John McCain's presidential bid.
By sending more than a hundred F-15s and F-16s across Greece and the Mediterranean in a practice mission for a large-scale attack on Iran, the Israelis have upped the ante dramatically. The New York Times, which reported the action, quotes a Pentagon official who said that it was all about sending messages:
"They wanted us to know, they wanted the Europeans to know, and they wanted the Iranians to know," the Pentagon official said. "There's a lot of signaling going on at different levels."
But the most important message is to the American political system. McCain has made a point of his willigness, even eagerness, to escalate the crisis with Iran. And while Barack Obama has said repeatedly that he won't take the threat of military action off the table, he's challenged McCain over the Arizonan's refusal to talk to Iran.
So Israel is challenging Obama, too.
Most analysts do not believe that Israel has the capability to conduct an effective attack against Iran. It's too far away, its air defenses, while weak, aren't nil, and its facilities are too scattered and buried to be destroyed in the sort of attack that Israel might mount. So what does this mean?
Of course, Israel could strike Iran even in a limited way, do some damage to a limited number of Iran's nuclear facilities, and then sit back and watch the crisis unfold. Perhaps the Israelis might hope that Iran will strike back at American targets (say, in Iraq), and Israel might hope to draw the United States into a broader war with Iran. But I don't believe Iran would respond to an Israeli strike by attacking American targets, because that would be suicidal. So, if Israel acts alone, and Iran doesn't respond, Israel would suffer overwhelming world condemnation -- especially in light of the American National Intelligence Estimate saying that Iran halted its bomb-making five years ago. Israel would also be blamed by many friends and allies (say, India and Europe) for pushing oil prices toward $200 a barrel or more.
So it's most likely that Israel is hoping to push the post-Bush president of the United States into taking a more confrontational stance toward Iran. That's called blackmail. It's the "Samson complex": do what we want or we will bring the whole temple crashing down. For Obama, it's a bluff worth calling--because, ultimately, like Iran, Israel is not a suicide nation. And bombing Iran would be suicidal for Israel.
END ARTICLE
Wednesday, June 18, 2008
Physicians for Human Rights: Medical Exams Prove Torture in Guantanamo and Iraq
If there was any doubt in your mind - and some of my American friends do doubt - about our brave American boys in uniform torturing those evil Eye-rackis and ragheads, let the medical record speak for itself.
Physicians for Human Rights, an organisation to which I belong, has published a report (Broken Laws, Broken Lives) documenting torture of prisoners after conducting extensive, two-day long examinations of patients who were in U.S. custody.
http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/25218584/
http://brokenlives.info/
The scariest part is, these were the people deemed innocent by our military, men released from prison. What of those others (who may yet be innocent) who remain in prison and continue to be tortured? And what of those silent many who died while being tortured? (In a separate vein, what of those American physicians who falsified death certificates to hide that prisoners were tortured to death? This is a subject my wife has tackled elsewhere.)
Bush, Rumsfeld, and other governmental higher-ups have continually denied that we torture, issuing the feeble "bad apple" argument, but declassified documents have proven time and again that torture was authorised from the highest levels.
Why don't Americans protest against this? Where are the mass demonstrations in the streets declaring "Not in our name"? Since I don't see Americans forcefully and unequivocally denouncing the torture we routinely practise, I can only conclude that we condone it, celebrate it, even applaud it. This is precisely the argument American political commentators make regarding Mozzlims and their supposed lack of public opposition to terrorism.
Remember, it's only terrorism when "they" do it.
Physicians for Human Rights, an organisation to which I belong, has published a report (Broken Laws, Broken Lives) documenting torture of prisoners after conducting extensive, two-day long examinations of patients who were in U.S. custody.
http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/25218584/
http://brokenlives.info/
The scariest part is, these were the people deemed innocent by our military, men released from prison. What of those others (who may yet be innocent) who remain in prison and continue to be tortured? And what of those silent many who died while being tortured? (In a separate vein, what of those American physicians who falsified death certificates to hide that prisoners were tortured to death? This is a subject my wife has tackled elsewhere.)
Bush, Rumsfeld, and other governmental higher-ups have continually denied that we torture, issuing the feeble "bad apple" argument, but declassified documents have proven time and again that torture was authorised from the highest levels.
Why don't Americans protest against this? Where are the mass demonstrations in the streets declaring "Not in our name"? Since I don't see Americans forcefully and unequivocally denouncing the torture we routinely practise, I can only conclude that we condone it, celebrate it, even applaud it. This is precisely the argument American political commentators make regarding Mozzlims and their supposed lack of public opposition to terrorism.
Remember, it's only terrorism when "they" do it.
Tuesday, June 17, 2008
Gore Vidal Interview in NY Times
.
http://www.nytimes.com/2008/06/15/magazine/15wwln-Q4-t.html?_r=2&oref=slogin&ref=magazine&pagewanted=print&oref=slogin
my god, he is truly brilliant. i would literally pay money to see him debate hitchens.
i think we do still have public intellectuals, but they're different now. dumber. media-savvy. michael moore is an example. those old-style public intellectuals like noam chomsky exist only in places like france and egypt (and in egypt they're more private than public).
vidal is like rushdie in that his essays are better than his novels. i read creation, perhaps his most-heralded, and i was already a fan of his nonfiction, ready to embrace and love everything he's ever written, and man, creation sucked. coincidentally, i was at one point travelling through the same part of ancient pakistan as a scene i was reading in the book, and even that failed to provide any frisson.
yes, i just said ancient pakistan.
http://www.nytimes.com/2008/06/15/magazine/15wwln-Q4-t.html?_r=2&oref=slogin&ref=magazine&pagewanted=print&oref=slogin
my god, he is truly brilliant. i would literally pay money to see him debate hitchens.
i think we do still have public intellectuals, but they're different now. dumber. media-savvy. michael moore is an example. those old-style public intellectuals like noam chomsky exist only in places like france and egypt (and in egypt they're more private than public).
vidal is like rushdie in that his essays are better than his novels. i read creation, perhaps his most-heralded, and i was already a fan of his nonfiction, ready to embrace and love everything he's ever written, and man, creation sucked. coincidentally, i was at one point travelling through the same part of ancient pakistan as a scene i was reading in the book, and even that failed to provide any frisson.
yes, i just said ancient pakistan.
Sunday, June 15, 2008
Who's to Blame for Repubs Winning the White House? Why, Whitey, of course!
No, no, there's no racism in this statement, just pure truth, unadulterated and clear like spring water (except the kind infected by Giardia, which is most spring water).
In the last ten presidential elections, Republicans have won the majority of white male voters. Even Clinton, in his trouncing of Bob Dole and George Bush, lost the white male vote. In fact, he lost the overall male vote to Bob Dole in 1996 (my fact-checkers are researching whether he also lost the overall male vote to Bush in 1992).
The only reason Clinton or any other Democrat has had a prayer of winning the White House boils down to one thing: women voters. Women overwhelmingly vote Democrat, even in close races. Al Gore demolished Bush by 25 points among women voters. John Kerry owned a whopping 24-point margin over Bush among women voters. It was only the male voters in general, and white male voters in particular, who allowed Bush to win (see, it wasn't Nader, it wasn't Bush's cronies in the Supreme Court - OK, maybe it was the Supreme Court).
Bob Dole held a slight lead over Clinton among male voters, but Clinton won the election handily thanks to crushing good ol' Bob among female voters.
So "liberals", I have one thing to say to you: get men to vote Democrat. Don't even worry about the women, their vote is in the bag. Get after the men, the white men. That's where the money is.
In the last ten presidential elections, Republicans have won the majority of white male voters. Even Clinton, in his trouncing of Bob Dole and George Bush, lost the white male vote. In fact, he lost the overall male vote to Bob Dole in 1996 (my fact-checkers are researching whether he also lost the overall male vote to Bush in 1992).
The only reason Clinton or any other Democrat has had a prayer of winning the White House boils down to one thing: women voters. Women overwhelmingly vote Democrat, even in close races. Al Gore demolished Bush by 25 points among women voters. John Kerry owned a whopping 24-point margin over Bush among women voters. It was only the male voters in general, and white male voters in particular, who allowed Bush to win (see, it wasn't Nader, it wasn't Bush's cronies in the Supreme Court - OK, maybe it was the Supreme Court).
Bob Dole held a slight lead over Clinton among male voters, but Clinton won the election handily thanks to crushing good ol' Bob among female voters.
So "liberals", I have one thing to say to you: get men to vote Democrat. Don't even worry about the women, their vote is in the bag. Get after the men, the white men. That's where the money is.
Saturday, June 14, 2008
U.S. Doesn't Care About Democracy (in case you were wondering)
This article from the Associated Press tells ye all that ye need to know.
Bangladesh's government has gone on a witch hunt, arresting at least 10,000 civilians on dubious charges. Human rights activists internationally have condemned this act, calling it a "crackdown on democracy". And the U.S. government? Its voice has remained "low key".
"In contrast to its loud and repeated criticism of the governments of Myanmar and Zimbabwe, which the United States believes are subverting democracy, the Bush administration says little about a makeshift government in Bangladesh that has curtailed citizens' democratic rights since taking power in January 2007." (AP, 14 June 2008)
Richard Boucher, U.S. assistant secretary for South Asia, said that his country "needs to understand [the situation] a little better". That's odd. No one needs to "understand the situation" in Zimbabwe before condemning Mugabe as a criminal despot, which he is. No one needs to understand China's situation in Tibet before blanket condemnation of a "military crackdown" is issued.
The best response was that of Sean McCormack, spokesman for the State Department. When asked if the U.S. had any comment whatsoever on the Bangladeshi government's crackdown, he replied, "No," and said nothing else.
"As long as Bangladesh's government is doing the things the U.S. wants it to do, 'I don't think (the U.S.) is going to be terribly upset about other issues,' said Christine Fair, a South Asia specialist at the RAND Corp." (AP, 14 June 2008)
In other words, we don't care about democracy. That is, we only care about democracy when it gives us an excuse to invade your country, to commit war crimes, to murder children sleeping in their cribs, to carry out premeditated plans to rape 12-year-old girls and then shoot their witness families.
Otherwise, we don't give two shits about democracy in those ass-backward camel-fucking nations.
link to AP article by Foster Klug: http://news.yahoo.com/s/ap/20080614/ap_on_go_pr_wh/us_bangladesh
Bangladesh's government has gone on a witch hunt, arresting at least 10,000 civilians on dubious charges. Human rights activists internationally have condemned this act, calling it a "crackdown on democracy". And the U.S. government? Its voice has remained "low key".
"In contrast to its loud and repeated criticism of the governments of Myanmar and Zimbabwe, which the United States believes are subverting democracy, the Bush administration says little about a makeshift government in Bangladesh that has curtailed citizens' democratic rights since taking power in January 2007." (AP, 14 June 2008)
Richard Boucher, U.S. assistant secretary for South Asia, said that his country "needs to understand [the situation] a little better". That's odd. No one needs to "understand the situation" in Zimbabwe before condemning Mugabe as a criminal despot, which he is. No one needs to understand China's situation in Tibet before blanket condemnation of a "military crackdown" is issued.
The best response was that of Sean McCormack, spokesman for the State Department. When asked if the U.S. had any comment whatsoever on the Bangladeshi government's crackdown, he replied, "No," and said nothing else.
"As long as Bangladesh's government is doing the things the U.S. wants it to do, 'I don't think (the U.S.) is going to be terribly upset about other issues,' said Christine Fair, a South Asia specialist at the RAND Corp." (AP, 14 June 2008)
In other words, we don't care about democracy. That is, we only care about democracy when it gives us an excuse to invade your country, to commit war crimes, to murder children sleeping in their cribs, to carry out premeditated plans to rape 12-year-old girls and then shoot their witness families.
Otherwise, we don't give two shits about democracy in those ass-backward camel-fucking nations.
link to AP article by Foster Klug: http://news.yahoo.com/s/ap/20080614/ap_on_go_pr_wh/us_bangladesh
Sunday, June 8, 2008
On Invading Iran (Guest Column)
Guest column by DJ Razza:
I get sick every time we get ready to invade another Muslim country. This occurs at a pre-rational level. Even before I can verbalise all the arguments for or against invading, the thought of all those bombs dropping on all those children makes me nauseous.
My aunts, uncles, cousins - almost my entire family - are Muslims. They're not terrorists or mullahs or crazy people excited about murdering Americans. Yet this is what our media tell us about every person in "those countries" whenever we get ready to invade one. Even if they don't use those exact words to paint "all Mozzlims" as evil (and frequently, they do), this is the perception they give. How do I know? Because when I talk to my fellow Americans, the ones who consume television news and read the papers, these are their ideas.
As a reader letter published in TIME magazine once said, "In countries like that [Afghanistan and Sudan] there is no such thing as an innocent civilian."
No matter how much you try to explain to Americans that innocent people will die, innocent people who love freedom and honesty and decency as much you do, they simply will not get it. They will either counter with pseudoscholarly arguments like, "Islam is not compatible with democracy," or "Those people want to die for Allah, let's give 'em their wish!" or will give lip service to feeling sorry for the "collateral damage" caused by a very necessary and very just American invasion. (Only in the United States are dark-skinned human beings who live in foreign countries referred to as "collateral".)
The truth is, however, if one truly felt sorry about the "collateral damage" caused by our invasions, which perforce will exceed the "intended damage" on "military targets", then one would not invade in the first place. Britain never carpet-bombed Northern Ireland even when she was subjected to horrendous terrorist bombings, for the simple reason that the British, however much they disagreed with the politics and methods of the terrorists they could not bear to lay waste to an entire country, even though the broad majority of that country morally and materially suppoted the terrorists. No doubt they had no qualms laying waste to entire continents (Africa, the Indian Subcontinent) but Britons felt too much empathy for the Irish people, had too much contact with them, knew them too well, to be able to bomb them back to the Stone Age at the end of the 20th century.
If Americans really felt even the slightest empathy for "Eye-rackis" or "Eye-rain-ians" - and most will tell you frankly that they never have and never will (popular U.S. commentator Bill O'Reilly calls Iraqis "a primitive people" who are too stupid and ungrateful to take full advantage of the blessing of America's destroying their country) - they would not have the stomach to invade and bomb and rape 13-year-old girls. They would feel nauseous at the thought of it.
I get sick every time we get ready to invade another Muslim country. This occurs at a pre-rational level. Even before I can verbalise all the arguments for or against invading, the thought of all those bombs dropping on all those children makes me nauseous.
My aunts, uncles, cousins - almost my entire family - are Muslims. They're not terrorists or mullahs or crazy people excited about murdering Americans. Yet this is what our media tell us about every person in "those countries" whenever we get ready to invade one. Even if they don't use those exact words to paint "all Mozzlims" as evil (and frequently, they do), this is the perception they give. How do I know? Because when I talk to my fellow Americans, the ones who consume television news and read the papers, these are their ideas.
As a reader letter published in TIME magazine once said, "In countries like that [Afghanistan and Sudan] there is no such thing as an innocent civilian."
No matter how much you try to explain to Americans that innocent people will die, innocent people who love freedom and honesty and decency as much you do, they simply will not get it. They will either counter with pseudoscholarly arguments like, "Islam is not compatible with democracy," or "Those people want to die for Allah, let's give 'em their wish!" or will give lip service to feeling sorry for the "collateral damage" caused by a very necessary and very just American invasion. (Only in the United States are dark-skinned human beings who live in foreign countries referred to as "collateral".)
The truth is, however, if one truly felt sorry about the "collateral damage" caused by our invasions, which perforce will exceed the "intended damage" on "military targets", then one would not invade in the first place. Britain never carpet-bombed Northern Ireland even when she was subjected to horrendous terrorist bombings, for the simple reason that the British, however much they disagreed with the politics and methods of the terrorists they could not bear to lay waste to an entire country, even though the broad majority of that country morally and materially suppoted the terrorists. No doubt they had no qualms laying waste to entire continents (Africa, the Indian Subcontinent) but Britons felt too much empathy for the Irish people, had too much contact with them, knew them too well, to be able to bomb them back to the Stone Age at the end of the 20th century.
If Americans really felt even the slightest empathy for "Eye-rackis" or "Eye-rain-ians" - and most will tell you frankly that they never have and never will (popular U.S. commentator Bill O'Reilly calls Iraqis "a primitive people" who are too stupid and ungrateful to take full advantage of the blessing of America's destroying their country) - they would not have the stomach to invade and bomb and rape 13-year-old girls. They would feel nauseous at the thought of it.
Subscribe to:
Posts (Atom)