DEAD BOMBERS TRACED
Personal documents of four suspected bombers were found near the bomb scenes of the London terror attacks, police have said.
All four suspected bombers died during the attacks, police suspect.
http://www.sky.com/skynews/article/0,,3 ... 27,00.html
London's 9/11
Wow. Looks as if al qaeda's taking a page out of the Mafia's manual.Ted wrote:DEAD BOMBERS TRACED
Personal documents of four suspected bombers were found near the bomb scenes of the London terror attacks, police have said.
All four suspected bombers died during the attacks, police suspect.
http://www.sky.com/skynews/article/0,,3 ... 27,00.html
"Most men, including those at ease with problems of the greatest complexity, can seldom accept even the simplest and most obvious truth if it would oblige them to admit the falsity of conclusions which they have delighted in explaining to colleagues, which they have proudly taught to others, and which they have woven, thread by thread, into the fabric of their lives." ~Leo Tolstoy
"It is the highest form of self-respect to admit our errors and mistakes and make amends for them. To make a mistake is only an error in judgment, but to adhere to it when it is discovered shows infirmity of character." ~Dale Turner
"Anyone who doesn't take truth seriously in small matters cannot be trusted in large ones either." ~Albert Einstein
"Truth is incontrovertible; malice may attack it and ignorance may deride it; but, in the end, there it is." ~Winston Churchill
"It is the highest form of self-respect to admit our errors and mistakes and make amends for them. To make a mistake is only an error in judgment, but to adhere to it when it is discovered shows infirmity of character." ~Dale Turner
"Anyone who doesn't take truth seriously in small matters cannot be trusted in large ones either." ~Albert Einstein
"Truth is incontrovertible; malice may attack it and ignorance may deride it; but, in the end, there it is." ~Winston Churchill
Britain's Unholy Alliance
By Steven Plaut
FrontPageMagazine.com | July 12, 2005
Well, I am sure you were all relieved to hear that neither Red Ken Livingstone, the mayor of London, nor George Galloway, the British pro-Baathist MP, were among the victims of the al-Qaeda bombers in London. While parts of the British Left have even exhibited some brand new outrage at "terrorism", much of it is reverting not only to character but to caricature of itself.
First, incredibly, the liberal British press is actually using the "T" word. They are referring to the London Underground perps as terrorists. Why is this so unusual? Because the liberal British media have been religiously scrupulous in referring to all terrorists and mass murderers who attack Jews as "activists" and "militants".
It is suddenly like a parallel universe out there, not the one with which we are familiar. The ‘’activists'’ and ‘’militants'’ are suddenly referred to as ‘’terrorists.'’ Even the Guardian and most notably the BBC have discovered the ‘’T'’ word. It was suddenly not a legitimate form of protest against occupation to mass-murder civilians in such mainstream media outfits, although it certainly is among the British radicals. Maybe it was because the "activists" in this case were not simply murdering Jews. Most however, while condemning the perps, insisted that the "underlying cause" of the atrocities was that Britain had joined the US in the war against Islamofascist terrorism, and also insisted that the REAL damage of the bombings would prove to be that the British establishment would institute oppressive anti-democratic measures. In these claims, the British press was not saying much that was distinguishable from what the pro-terror Arab media were saying.
The Independent wrote: "Aside from the human distress, these bombings have done more to ease the course of illiberal legislation through Parliament than anything else ever could." The Guardian was full of commentaries claiming Britain was just getting its comeuppance. The Telegraph carried an Op-Ed telling its readers that London was bombed because of poverty in the Third World and because of Britain's guilt in global warming.
But while the mainstream British liberals may have been showing some rare common sense in at least their willingness to call a terrorist a terrorist, the left-wing radicals and Lunabrits were having a field day. Britain has more than its fair share of socialists, "Trotskyists" and "anarchists". [I have never quite figured out why designer-jean radicals imagine that they are "anarchists" and have long believed that a better description of such groups would be "anarcho-fascist".]
The "Trotskyites" issued a statement blaming the bombings on the British government, stating, "The British government cannot avoid its responsibility for these terrible attacks, which are a consequence of its support for war and occupation in Iraq and Afghanistan. The best way to ensure that there are no more such terrible attacks is for British troops to be withdrawn from there immediately." Meanwhile, "Solidarity Online" condemned both political-Islamist terrorism and US and British imperialism. The "Movement for a Socialist Future" announced: " Terrorism cannot be defeated by the "war on terror", which only deepens the problem because it refuses to address the causes of terrorism.
Perhaps most incredible was the speed with which left-wing fascists and conspiracy nuts discovered "evidence" that the bombs were placed by Jews and not by Arab terrorists. Within hours of the bombings nearly every anarcho-fascist, communist, Palestinian, and neonazi web site on the planet was publishing a new conspiracy "theory" of the bombings. Most of these had long been promoting a similar conspiracy "theory" about the 9-11 bombings, which held that either the Bush Republicans or the Israeli Mossad had really knocked down the WTC towers while blaming the poor al-Qaeda Arabs for the crime.
Under their new "theory", Israeli former Prime Minister and current Finance Minister Benjamin Netanyahu had received "advanced warning" of the bombings, and had been advised to remain in his hotel. These "advanced warnings" prove that it was actually Israeli or Jewish agents who had planted the bombs in London in order to get the Brits angry at poor innocent Moslems.
Now as a matter of fact, Netanyahu did in fact receive a "warning", but it was from the British police and it was AFTER the bombs went off but before the full picture was clear, and the cops suggested to him that it would be prudent to stay in his hotel. Conspiracy nuts turned that into "evidence" that Israel was responsible for the bombings. There were in fact some reports that Israel had tipped off British Intelligence before the bombings that an al-Qaeda attack against London might be imminent, but that is not exactly the "proof" of nefarious conspiracy that the conspiracy nuts were seeking.
One interesting place to look for reactions to the atrocities in London is the British version of the "Indymedia" flagship web site of the anarcho-fascist movement. It was crawling with articles that insist that al-Qaeda is innocent of the bombings and being blamed for them because the conservatives need a patsy. Some postings claimed they were placed there by the CIA. Others went to lengths to clear al-Qaeda. Then there are the postings claiming that the bombings simply serve Blair’s interest in silencing the Left and their Islamist allies, and insisting that Blair’s people placed the bombs. And of course the postings blaming the bombings on the Jews or Israelis. John Pilger showed up on the site to blame Blair for the bombs: "They are 'Blair's bombs', and he ought not be allowed to evade culpability with yet another unctuous speech about 'our way of life', which his own rapacious violence in other countries has despoiled."
The UK Indymedia site even ran the raving article by San Francisco Dennis "Justin" Raimondo, editor of the neofascist pro-terror "antiwar.com" web site and columnist for Pravda. Raimondo had invented a "theory", crayoned into a self-published "book," claiming that Jews, and not al-Qaeda, knocked down the WTC on 9-11, this all on the basis of the fact that some Israeli moving men were picked up that day for visa violations and were found to have some dollar cash in a dirty sock.
Raimondo’s UK Indymedia piece (also published on his own antiwar.com site) claims that the Israelis planted the London bombs. Raimondo's evidence? The same fraudulent claims about how Netanyahu supposedly got "advance warnings of the bombs". But one of the most bizarre developments was that no sooner did Raimondo's lunatic "theory" appear across the web than a vicious attack against Raimondo was launched on some of those same web pages by Swedish neonazi "Israel Shamir." It seems that Raimondo, who is an anti-Semite, published a piece calling "Shamir" an anti-Semite, which he is. Raimondo wrote, “Shamir caters to his deranged constituency of Jew-haters,” and – somewhat mysteriously – Raimondo did not mean that as a compliment. Keeping these people apart is becoming such a burden!
In contrast, a nice critique of the Indymedia anarcho-fascists was published by the Freedom Institute of the Republic of Ireland, denouncing the Indymedia pro-terrorists. These Irish freedom fighters denounce the "anarchists" for violent rioting in Scotland against the G8 leaders meeting there, forcing police to divert manpower from London area just when they were needed there: "The regulars at the Institute for Autonomy, where most of the Indymedia UK inner circle hang out, are almost certainly unharmed, as they were engaging in recreational public disorder hundreds of miles away in Scotland and successfully diverting police resources from the capital. Well done compadres!"
The conspiracy "theory" about the Jews having placed the bombs spread through the internet, appears by now on every "Indymedia" web site, and has been repeated on such lunatic web sites as "The Simon", which wrote: "Considering the only Al Qaeda cell to ever be uncovered was a front for the Mossad, you’d think the perpetrators could at least come up with a clever new booga-booga name to grab headlines. Their arrogance is startling."
Meanwhile, George Galloway, Saddam Hussein’s paid agent in British politics, issued a statement about the bombs this week. You will not be surprised to learn that the lesson he insists that Britain draw from the mass murders is that the "occupation" of Iraq must be ended and of course that Israel must be destroyed:
"We urge the government to remove people in this country from harms way, as the Spanish government acted to remove its people from harm, by ending the occupation of Iraq and by turning its full attention to the development of a real solution to the wider conflicts in the Middle East. Only then will the innocents here and abroad be able to enjoy a life free of the threat of needless violence."
Tariq Ali, a British Moslem leftist and pro-terror militant, wrote an article blaming the bombings on the West's mistreatment of Moslems. Reprinted widely, including on Counterpunch, it stated, "The principal cause of this violence is the violence that is being inflicted on the people of the Muslim world. The bombing of innocent people is equally barbaric in Baghdad, Jenin, Kabul as it is in New York, Madrid or London. And unless this is recognized the horrors will continue.... The real solution lies in immediately ending the occupation of Iraq, Afghanistan and Palestine. "
Counterpunch, always to be relied upon to support anti-Western terrorists even when they target Alexander Cockburn’s own homeland, has already come out with at least one article that supports the terrorist bombers. It ran a piece by notorious British neonazi Gilad Atzmon, famous for his justifying the burning down of synagogues, and so openly anti-Semitic that large numbers of British leftists have been urging the Socialist Workers Party in the UK to cut all ties with him. Atzmon writes about the London bombings that the real lesson should be:
"It tells us that we must never again give our votes to war criminals. More than anything else it tells us that we have a moral duty. It is down to us to stop our governments. It is our duty to stand up and to demand the resignation of Blair who is responsible for the death of so many Iraqis and arguably now many Innocent Britons. We must remember that voting in a non-ethical politician makes us all into active shareholders in a criminal company…. It tells us that we must never again give our votes to war criminals."
Cockburn is truly a disciple of Oswald Mosley, who also cheered Britain's enemies while London was being bombed.
Finally, British lunacy is not restricted to the anarcho-fascists and the Albion lunatic fringe, but also can be found smack at Number 10 Downing. It is in the form of Cherie Blair who really "understand the motives" of the London bombers, justifying them and wishing to bond with them to find new common ground and mutual understandings. Cherie is so whacky that her pro-terror comments have been set to disco.
In fighting the terrorist threat to London, Tony Blair could do nothing more productive then muzzle his Misses. Cherie Blair has a long history of anti-American, pro-terror activism and statements. You may recall that she was the leading British voice denouncing the supposed mistreatment of al-Qaeda prisoners in Gitmo, and never mind that it turns out that they eat better than US troops do. And she dissed the American legal system - calling it a "grandfather clock" among "21st century timepieces" - and suggested it could learn lessons from Europe. She claims George Bush "stole" the election. Pro-terror Marxist web magazines love her. She has been up to her plucked eyebrows in a sleazy scandal involving Australian real estate, in cahoots with a notorious conman down under, in what the Brits are calling Cheriegate.
She provoked outrage in the British Jewish community two years ago when she said she understood why Palestinian suicide bombers were driven to do what they did. She told Palestinians that she understands and justifies suicide bombers.
So to be consistent, shouldn’t she apply her same "reasoning" to the perps of the London subway bombings?
http://www.frontpagemag.com/Articles/Re ... p?ID=18730
By Steven Plaut
FrontPageMagazine.com | July 12, 2005
Well, I am sure you were all relieved to hear that neither Red Ken Livingstone, the mayor of London, nor George Galloway, the British pro-Baathist MP, were among the victims of the al-Qaeda bombers in London. While parts of the British Left have even exhibited some brand new outrage at "terrorism", much of it is reverting not only to character but to caricature of itself.
First, incredibly, the liberal British press is actually using the "T" word. They are referring to the London Underground perps as terrorists. Why is this so unusual? Because the liberal British media have been religiously scrupulous in referring to all terrorists and mass murderers who attack Jews as "activists" and "militants".
It is suddenly like a parallel universe out there, not the one with which we are familiar. The ‘’activists'’ and ‘’militants'’ are suddenly referred to as ‘’terrorists.'’ Even the Guardian and most notably the BBC have discovered the ‘’T'’ word. It was suddenly not a legitimate form of protest against occupation to mass-murder civilians in such mainstream media outfits, although it certainly is among the British radicals. Maybe it was because the "activists" in this case were not simply murdering Jews. Most however, while condemning the perps, insisted that the "underlying cause" of the atrocities was that Britain had joined the US in the war against Islamofascist terrorism, and also insisted that the REAL damage of the bombings would prove to be that the British establishment would institute oppressive anti-democratic measures. In these claims, the British press was not saying much that was distinguishable from what the pro-terror Arab media were saying.
The Independent wrote: "Aside from the human distress, these bombings have done more to ease the course of illiberal legislation through Parliament than anything else ever could." The Guardian was full of commentaries claiming Britain was just getting its comeuppance. The Telegraph carried an Op-Ed telling its readers that London was bombed because of poverty in the Third World and because of Britain's guilt in global warming.
But while the mainstream British liberals may have been showing some rare common sense in at least their willingness to call a terrorist a terrorist, the left-wing radicals and Lunabrits were having a field day. Britain has more than its fair share of socialists, "Trotskyists" and "anarchists". [I have never quite figured out why designer-jean radicals imagine that they are "anarchists" and have long believed that a better description of such groups would be "anarcho-fascist".]
The "Trotskyites" issued a statement blaming the bombings on the British government, stating, "The British government cannot avoid its responsibility for these terrible attacks, which are a consequence of its support for war and occupation in Iraq and Afghanistan. The best way to ensure that there are no more such terrible attacks is for British troops to be withdrawn from there immediately." Meanwhile, "Solidarity Online" condemned both political-Islamist terrorism and US and British imperialism. The "Movement for a Socialist Future" announced: " Terrorism cannot be defeated by the "war on terror", which only deepens the problem because it refuses to address the causes of terrorism.
Perhaps most incredible was the speed with which left-wing fascists and conspiracy nuts discovered "evidence" that the bombs were placed by Jews and not by Arab terrorists. Within hours of the bombings nearly every anarcho-fascist, communist, Palestinian, and neonazi web site on the planet was publishing a new conspiracy "theory" of the bombings. Most of these had long been promoting a similar conspiracy "theory" about the 9-11 bombings, which held that either the Bush Republicans or the Israeli Mossad had really knocked down the WTC towers while blaming the poor al-Qaeda Arabs for the crime.
Under their new "theory", Israeli former Prime Minister and current Finance Minister Benjamin Netanyahu had received "advanced warning" of the bombings, and had been advised to remain in his hotel. These "advanced warnings" prove that it was actually Israeli or Jewish agents who had planted the bombs in London in order to get the Brits angry at poor innocent Moslems.
Now as a matter of fact, Netanyahu did in fact receive a "warning", but it was from the British police and it was AFTER the bombs went off but before the full picture was clear, and the cops suggested to him that it would be prudent to stay in his hotel. Conspiracy nuts turned that into "evidence" that Israel was responsible for the bombings. There were in fact some reports that Israel had tipped off British Intelligence before the bombings that an al-Qaeda attack against London might be imminent, but that is not exactly the "proof" of nefarious conspiracy that the conspiracy nuts were seeking.
One interesting place to look for reactions to the atrocities in London is the British version of the "Indymedia" flagship web site of the anarcho-fascist movement. It was crawling with articles that insist that al-Qaeda is innocent of the bombings and being blamed for them because the conservatives need a patsy. Some postings claimed they were placed there by the CIA. Others went to lengths to clear al-Qaeda. Then there are the postings claiming that the bombings simply serve Blair’s interest in silencing the Left and their Islamist allies, and insisting that Blair’s people placed the bombs. And of course the postings blaming the bombings on the Jews or Israelis. John Pilger showed up on the site to blame Blair for the bombs: "They are 'Blair's bombs', and he ought not be allowed to evade culpability with yet another unctuous speech about 'our way of life', which his own rapacious violence in other countries has despoiled."
The UK Indymedia site even ran the raving article by San Francisco Dennis "Justin" Raimondo, editor of the neofascist pro-terror "antiwar.com" web site and columnist for Pravda. Raimondo had invented a "theory", crayoned into a self-published "book," claiming that Jews, and not al-Qaeda, knocked down the WTC on 9-11, this all on the basis of the fact that some Israeli moving men were picked up that day for visa violations and were found to have some dollar cash in a dirty sock.
Raimondo’s UK Indymedia piece (also published on his own antiwar.com site) claims that the Israelis planted the London bombs. Raimondo's evidence? The same fraudulent claims about how Netanyahu supposedly got "advance warnings of the bombs". But one of the most bizarre developments was that no sooner did Raimondo's lunatic "theory" appear across the web than a vicious attack against Raimondo was launched on some of those same web pages by Swedish neonazi "Israel Shamir." It seems that Raimondo, who is an anti-Semite, published a piece calling "Shamir" an anti-Semite, which he is. Raimondo wrote, “Shamir caters to his deranged constituency of Jew-haters,” and – somewhat mysteriously – Raimondo did not mean that as a compliment. Keeping these people apart is becoming such a burden!
In contrast, a nice critique of the Indymedia anarcho-fascists was published by the Freedom Institute of the Republic of Ireland, denouncing the Indymedia pro-terrorists. These Irish freedom fighters denounce the "anarchists" for violent rioting in Scotland against the G8 leaders meeting there, forcing police to divert manpower from London area just when they were needed there: "The regulars at the Institute for Autonomy, where most of the Indymedia UK inner circle hang out, are almost certainly unharmed, as they were engaging in recreational public disorder hundreds of miles away in Scotland and successfully diverting police resources from the capital. Well done compadres!"
The conspiracy "theory" about the Jews having placed the bombs spread through the internet, appears by now on every "Indymedia" web site, and has been repeated on such lunatic web sites as "The Simon", which wrote: "Considering the only Al Qaeda cell to ever be uncovered was a front for the Mossad, you’d think the perpetrators could at least come up with a clever new booga-booga name to grab headlines. Their arrogance is startling."
Meanwhile, George Galloway, Saddam Hussein’s paid agent in British politics, issued a statement about the bombs this week. You will not be surprised to learn that the lesson he insists that Britain draw from the mass murders is that the "occupation" of Iraq must be ended and of course that Israel must be destroyed:
"We urge the government to remove people in this country from harms way, as the Spanish government acted to remove its people from harm, by ending the occupation of Iraq and by turning its full attention to the development of a real solution to the wider conflicts in the Middle East. Only then will the innocents here and abroad be able to enjoy a life free of the threat of needless violence."
Tariq Ali, a British Moslem leftist and pro-terror militant, wrote an article blaming the bombings on the West's mistreatment of Moslems. Reprinted widely, including on Counterpunch, it stated, "The principal cause of this violence is the violence that is being inflicted on the people of the Muslim world. The bombing of innocent people is equally barbaric in Baghdad, Jenin, Kabul as it is in New York, Madrid or London. And unless this is recognized the horrors will continue.... The real solution lies in immediately ending the occupation of Iraq, Afghanistan and Palestine. "
Counterpunch, always to be relied upon to support anti-Western terrorists even when they target Alexander Cockburn’s own homeland, has already come out with at least one article that supports the terrorist bombers. It ran a piece by notorious British neonazi Gilad Atzmon, famous for his justifying the burning down of synagogues, and so openly anti-Semitic that large numbers of British leftists have been urging the Socialist Workers Party in the UK to cut all ties with him. Atzmon writes about the London bombings that the real lesson should be:
"It tells us that we must never again give our votes to war criminals. More than anything else it tells us that we have a moral duty. It is down to us to stop our governments. It is our duty to stand up and to demand the resignation of Blair who is responsible for the death of so many Iraqis and arguably now many Innocent Britons. We must remember that voting in a non-ethical politician makes us all into active shareholders in a criminal company…. It tells us that we must never again give our votes to war criminals."
Cockburn is truly a disciple of Oswald Mosley, who also cheered Britain's enemies while London was being bombed.
Finally, British lunacy is not restricted to the anarcho-fascists and the Albion lunatic fringe, but also can be found smack at Number 10 Downing. It is in the form of Cherie Blair who really "understand the motives" of the London bombers, justifying them and wishing to bond with them to find new common ground and mutual understandings. Cherie is so whacky that her pro-terror comments have been set to disco.
In fighting the terrorist threat to London, Tony Blair could do nothing more productive then muzzle his Misses. Cherie Blair has a long history of anti-American, pro-terror activism and statements. You may recall that she was the leading British voice denouncing the supposed mistreatment of al-Qaeda prisoners in Gitmo, and never mind that it turns out that they eat better than US troops do. And she dissed the American legal system - calling it a "grandfather clock" among "21st century timepieces" - and suggested it could learn lessons from Europe. She claims George Bush "stole" the election. Pro-terror Marxist web magazines love her. She has been up to her plucked eyebrows in a sleazy scandal involving Australian real estate, in cahoots with a notorious conman down under, in what the Brits are calling Cheriegate.
She provoked outrage in the British Jewish community two years ago when she said she understood why Palestinian suicide bombers were driven to do what they did. She told Palestinians that she understands and justifies suicide bombers.
So to be consistent, shouldn’t she apply her same "reasoning" to the perps of the London subway bombings?
http://www.frontpagemag.com/Articles/Re ... p?ID=18730
Again, I read this topic, and what I see is pages of outrage at what you guys perceive as "anti-americanism", but which plainly is a visceral anti-european attitude.
The previous time I read this topic I noted it was rather significant no one mentioned it was sad people had died in hirrible circumstances. By now I'm pretty certain the core group of posters on this topic is actually rather sad not more people died as a consequence of these bombings, because so many posts really exude the message SERVES YOU RIGHT, LIBERALS!
I'm not a fan of Blair and his candle-in-the-wind like delivery of these speeches, but it was mortifying to see Bush take the stage after Tony Balir's speech, last thursday and pretty much show to the world what a clueless idiot he is. The BBC gave Bush a minute max and then switched to other footage because it was just plain embarrassing. Yet another speech about dividing the world into the good guys and the bad guys, and how we are going to kill every bad guy (even though every bad guy killed spawns two more bad guys.)
The previous time I read this topic I noted it was rather significant no one mentioned it was sad people had died in hirrible circumstances. By now I'm pretty certain the core group of posters on this topic is actually rather sad not more people died as a consequence of these bombings, because so many posts really exude the message SERVES YOU RIGHT, LIBERALS!
I'm not a fan of Blair and his candle-in-the-wind like delivery of these speeches, but it was mortifying to see Bush take the stage after Tony Balir's speech, last thursday and pretty much show to the world what a clueless idiot he is. The BBC gave Bush a minute max and then switched to other footage because it was just plain embarrassing. Yet another speech about dividing the world into the good guys and the bad guys, and how we are going to kill every bad guy (even though every bad guy killed spawns two more bad guys.)
-
Ted
Congratulations HermanBy now I'm pretty certain the core group of posters on this topic is actually rather sad not more people died as a consequence of these bombings
That’s one of the more idiotic statements I’ve read in a while.
If we Americans are too uncaring for you may I suggest you post on a BBS more in keeping with your superior standards and leave us to our heathenish ways
Jeers
t
Don't take it seriously, Ted--he's just trolling. Best not to rise to the bait. See Internet TrollsTed wrote:Congratulations HermanBy now I'm pretty certain the core group of posters on this topic is actually rather sad not more people died as a consequence of these bombings
That’s one of the more idiotic statements I’ve read in a while.
If we Americans are too uncaring for you may I suggest you post on a BBS more in keeping with your superior standards and leave us to our heathenish ways
Jeers
t
"Most men, including those at ease with problems of the greatest complexity, can seldom accept even the simplest and most obvious truth if it would oblige them to admit the falsity of conclusions which they have delighted in explaining to colleagues, which they have proudly taught to others, and which they have woven, thread by thread, into the fabric of their lives." ~Leo Tolstoy
"It is the highest form of self-respect to admit our errors and mistakes and make amends for them. To make a mistake is only an error in judgment, but to adhere to it when it is discovered shows infirmity of character." ~Dale Turner
"Anyone who doesn't take truth seriously in small matters cannot be trusted in large ones either." ~Albert Einstein
"Truth is incontrovertible; malice may attack it and ignorance may deride it; but, in the end, there it is." ~Winston Churchill
"It is the highest form of self-respect to admit our errors and mistakes and make amends for them. To make a mistake is only an error in judgment, but to adhere to it when it is discovered shows infirmity of character." ~Dale Turner
"Anyone who doesn't take truth seriously in small matters cannot be trusted in large ones either." ~Albert Einstein
"Truth is incontrovertible; malice may attack it and ignorance may deride it; but, in the end, there it is." ~Winston Churchill
Ted and David: I don't share your take on Herman's post - especially the quick and brief excerpt quoted.
I've read his posts on various subjects over the years, and while I don't always agrfee with him, he is a thoughtful and respectable voice here.
True, many posts here reek of sel-righteousness that's easy to disdain, and Bush fans may not like all of Herman's posts. But so what? Look at all the other stuff we see here!
I've read his posts on various subjects over the years, and while I don't always agrfee with him, he is a thoughtful and respectable voice here.
True, many posts here reek of sel-righteousness that's easy to disdain, and Bush fans may not like all of Herman's posts. But so what? Look at all the other stuff we see here!
Werner Isler
-
Ted
WernerI've read his posts on various subjects over the years, and while I don't always agrfee with him, he is a thoughtful and respectable voice here
An idiotic statement is an idiotic statement no matter how “thoughtful” or “respectful” its author is.
On the other hand, on your say … he gets a pass from me…
temporarily…
for what that’s worth..
Which isn’t much….
If anything
t
Ted:
I've read a lot better stuff from you than this - so you get a pass from me.
As they say Down Under - or wherever - cheers.
I've read a lot better stuff from you than this - so you get a pass from me.
As they say Down Under - or wherever - cheers.
Last edited by Werner on Tue Jul 12, 2005 10:04 pm, edited 1 time in total.
Werner Isler
-
Ted
If sick-minded ideas such as the above represent a consensus in European political and social thought, it is natural for Americans to assume a visceral anti-European attitude.herman wrote:Again, I read this topic, and what I see is pages of outrage at what you guys perceive as "anti-americanism", but which plainly is a visceral anti-european attitude.
The previous time I read this topic I noted it was rather significant no one mentioned it was sad people had died in hirrible circumstances. By now I'm pretty certain the core group of posters on this topic is actually rather sad not more people died as a consequence of these bombings, because so many posts really exude the message SERVES YOU RIGHT, LIBERALS!
-
Corlyss_D
- Site Administrator
- Posts: 27613
- Joined: Fri Mar 25, 2005 2:25 am
- Location: The Great State of Utah
- Contact:
Well, you sure got guts, Herman. I'll say that for you.herman wrote:Again, I read this topic, and what I see is pages of outrage at what you guys perceive as "anti-americanism", but which plainly is a visceral anti-european attitude.
The previous time I read this topic I noted it was rather significant no one mentioned it was sad people had died in hirrible circumstances. By now I'm pretty certain the core group of posters on this topic is actually rather sad not more people died as a consequence of these bombings, because so many posts really exude the message SERVES YOU RIGHT, LIBERALS!
I'm not a fan of Blair and his candle-in-the-wind like delivery of these speeches, but it was mortifying to see Bush take the stage after Tony Balir's speech, last thursday and pretty much show to the world what a clueless idiot he is. The BBC gave Bush a minute max and then switched to other footage because it was just plain embarrassing. Yet another speech about dividing the world into the good guys and the bad guys, and how we are going to kill every bad guy (even though every bad guy killed spawns two more bad guys.)
To invoke the dead, which you yourself have not mourned here, to flog us with them for insensitivity, denounce our president yet again, then wonder how we can be so boorishly critical of our European betters is a tour de force.
In response to Gregory's post, I remarked that our sorrow over the dead was a given but you can't fault us for moving quickly on to what we knew was coming next, even before the body count was complete: it was the glee of George Galloway, and the finger-wagging lectures from the Guardian. Twin apologist for the "bombers" if ever there were any: Britain suffered because of Iraq, because of Afghanistan, because of Georrrrrrrrrrge Booooooooosh, the cunning simpleton. No, the Islamofacists were mere bit players to the real crime, i.e., stupid thick-tongued George Bush suckering bright articulate Tony Blair into Iraq.
Without speaking for others here, I'll say that my own frustration which surfaces frequently on the subject of the Europeans is a product of admiring so much about European civilization on the one hand while seeing its ideals repeatedly dishonored by Europeans themselves on the other. I'll be honest with you: it's a f**king mystery to me what happened to the standard bearers of Western civilization in the last 60 years. Many on this thread like myself are still waiting for the Europeans, including you there in the Dutch Sierra, to wake up and grasp the situation your collective short-sighted policies have deposited you in. The vipers are all around you. They don't care that you despise George Bush. They don't care that you don't want to be involved, that you'll happily let them have whatever they want in return for being left alone. They won't be content with that. They want to crush the West, to crush you, to reduce the West to the state in which they believe themselves to be living, and they will do it to Europe faster than they will do it to us because we have not forgotten how to fight back or that we have something worth fighting back for. As I said in a long ago post, sometimes I wish we could leave you Europeans to your fate with the monsters who will suck the life out of you. Unfortunately you are too important to leave to them.
******************************************************
By Harold Evans
A Time to Stand Firm
When Britain stood alone against the fascist dictators early in 1941--Pearl Harbor was nearly a year away--Franklin Roosevelt, beset by an isolationist Congress, sent his aide Harry Hopkins to shore up the morale of the British. Winston Churchill entertained Hopkins toward the end of his visit at a state dinner. He and the cabinet were nervous about what Hopkins might report back to Washington, since Britain could not hope to sustain the fight without American aid.
The slight and diffident Hopkins rose to speak with words that are as vivid and memorable today in the light of the atrocities wreaked upon London. This is what he said: "I suppose you wish to know what I am going to say to President Roosevelt on my return.
"Well, I am going to quote to you one verse from the Book of Ruth: 'Whither thou goest, I will go; and where thou lodgest, I will lodge; thy people shall be my people, and thy God my God.' " Hopkins paused and then very quietly said, "Even to the end."
Churchill was moved to tears. Today, the American people feel even more close to Britain than they felt in 1941, when a majority, wiser than Congress, wanted to give all aid to Britain against Hitler. In New York and Washington we know what it is to be visited by the obscene new fascists--the Islamifascists, whose random brutality is matched only by the puerility and sterility of their profane doctrines (to call them religion is itself a blasphemy). Britain has been America's closest ally in the war on terrorism--not only close in the level of its significant military commitment in Iraq, exceeding by many factors the nominal contributions from other powers, but Prime Minister Tony Blair has shared from the beginning a clear appreciation of the evil we have to confront and an admirable eloquence in articulating his perception.
And he has been as sure as any of us that the equivocation in the face of evil invites further assault just as appeasement in the '30s invited and then guaranteed the subjugation of the whole of Europe.
Freedom's enemies. Alas, that the whole of Europe is not so committed. The expressions of revulsion from the leaders of the Group of Eight countries have been swift, necessary, and right, and no doubt security everywhere will be improved at the margins. But words and bag checks are only a beginning. The G-8 leaders commendably met to devise a strategy for Africa; they need to devise a strategy for the survival of western civilization.
Isn't that putting it a bit strongly? After all, the fabric of democracy is strong, the Islamifascist cowards dare not work in the open, and even now the cumulative deaths from terrorism, all cause of grief, are nonetheless not on the scale of the 50 million killed in World War II. But it is necessary to put things strongly, just as it was necessary for Churchill to sound the alarms that were held by many back then to be absurd. The Islamifascist tactic in the world at large, and in Iraq, is to do all it can to slice the salami, to erode public morale so that we do not stay the course. It has to be noted that even in America a majority tell pollsters they are no longer convinced the sacrifices in Iraq are worthwhile. In Spain, by a conflict of circumstances, a dreadful bombing of a railway train was followed by the withdrawal of Spanish forces in Iraq. The same in the Philippines.
What message did that send? To the Islamifascists, they are winning. So they are, with every whimper, every retreat, and with every endorsement of the nascent anti-Semitism among the elites of Europe (always ready to condemn an Israeli response but never to withdraw support from the suicide bombers and their Muslim financiers).
How much freedom do you give to enemies of freedom? In the classic question, Britain has been notably tolerant of Muslim dissidents. They have been free to preach their baleful idiocies and use their supposedly sacred mosques as recruiting grounds for al Qaeda. Only a few days ago, before the outrages, Blair's sensible plan to introduce biometric identity cards was met by a wail of disapproval from the left, sincere in their devotion to civil liberties but as blind as ever to the real nature of evil.
The terrorists misjudge the inner spiritual resources of the democracies just as Hitler did when he asked, "What is America but millionaires, beauty queens, stupid phonograph records, and Hollywood?" But they have to be shown what they do not see. The strategy to defeat the evildoers must be as cunning and resolute as they are. It must unite the West, and it must unite the West with the forces of freedom in the East (notably India and Japan). Grave mistakes were made over Iraq, in diplomacy before and in military containment thereafter, and the lessons must be absorbed. But the coalition efforts in Iraq deserve the unremitting support of all the democracies. And every country must cooperate in a new drive to root out the cancerous cells. Even to the end.
http://www.usnews.com/usnews/opinion/ar ... 18edit.htm
Corlyss
Contessa d'EM, a carbon-based life form
Contessa d'EM, a carbon-based life form
Don't be the least bit impressed, Corlyss. Such people have neither guts nor a sense of human decency. They expect the same of others as well, and when they are surprised by people of principle and good-will, they lash out against them with the most vile and disgusting venom possible.Corlyss_D wrote:
Well, you sure got guts, Herman. I'll say that for you.
To invoke the dead, which you yourself have not mourned here, to flog us with them for insensitivity, denounce our president yet again, then wonder how we can be so boorishly critical of our European betters is a tour de force.
What such people do have in unlimited abundance is an ingrained cynicism that permeates every thought and fuels every statement. They are miserable specimens of humanity. Pity them.
Werner: I don't understand how you could read the post in question and not recognize it as blatantly insulting and offensive. Granted, some of H's posts offer thoughtful, well-presented opinions and information on music and related topics. Some are fouled by petulant outbursts of self-righteousness, as you note. But some are nasty, small-minded, deceitful, and vile attacks designed to insult, inflame, and otherwise stir up trouble--like the one in question:Werner wrote:Ted and David: I don't share your take on Herman's post - especially the quick and brief excerpt quoted.
I've read his posts on various subjects over the years, and while I don't always agrfee with him, he is a thoughtful and respectable voice here.
True, many posts here reek of sel-righteousness that's easy to disdain, and Bush fans may not like all of Herman's posts. But so what? Look at all the other stuff we see here!
This is trolling. It's dishonest, small-minded, offensive, and inflamatory. And it's no mistake. He's obviously intelligent and articulate enough to know just what he's doing and to express himself exactly as he intends. He's not as consistently or blatantly trollish as some. Many, probably most of his posts seem like thoughtful contributions. Thus I used to think that he just got cranky sometimes. Like you, I used to give him the benefit of the doubt. But I've seen his pattern of nastiness and dishonesty here and on the other forum much too often to mistake it for mere crankiness. I've even seen him stir up trouble, then revise his offensive posts and play the wounded innocent, so those late to the party wonder what the fuss was all about. Eventually I saw more than enough to dispell all doubts. If it walks like a troll and quacks like a troll, chances are...it's a troll!herman wrote:The previous time I read this topic I noted it was rather significant no one mentioned it was sad people had died in hirrible circumstances. By now I'm pretty certain the core group of posters on this topic is actually rather sad not more people died as a consequence of these bombings, because so many posts really exude the message SERVES YOU RIGHT, LIBERALS!
From the Internet Trolls website: The only way to deal with trolls is to limit your reaction to reminding others not to respond to trolls.
"Most men, including those at ease with problems of the greatest complexity, can seldom accept even the simplest and most obvious truth if it would oblige them to admit the falsity of conclusions which they have delighted in explaining to colleagues, which they have proudly taught to others, and which they have woven, thread by thread, into the fabric of their lives." ~Leo Tolstoy
"It is the highest form of self-respect to admit our errors and mistakes and make amends for them. To make a mistake is only an error in judgment, but to adhere to it when it is discovered shows infirmity of character." ~Dale Turner
"Anyone who doesn't take truth seriously in small matters cannot be trusted in large ones either." ~Albert Einstein
"Truth is incontrovertible; malice may attack it and ignorance may deride it; but, in the end, there it is." ~Winston Churchill
"It is the highest form of self-respect to admit our errors and mistakes and make amends for them. To make a mistake is only an error in judgment, but to adhere to it when it is discovered shows infirmity of character." ~Dale Turner
"Anyone who doesn't take truth seriously in small matters cannot be trusted in large ones either." ~Albert Einstein
"Truth is incontrovertible; malice may attack it and ignorance may deride it; but, in the end, there it is." ~Winston Churchill
If these statements are intended to tell me you are not viscerally anti-European, I don't think you've persuaded me yet. As long as I am aware of your material you have been moaning and whining that Europeans are so anti-American. I don't think that's true at all. But what I do notice in many of your posts is visceral resentment towards Europe. Just look at your sign-off lines. I probably know more about Texas history than 99% of the American population; and yet you get a kick out of reiterating that kind of puerile bull crap.Corlyss_D wrote:As I said in a long ago post, sometimes I wish we could leave you Europeans to your fate with the monsters who will suck the life out of you.
I was a bit rushed last night, but anyway, what strikes me about all these posts - and I'll skip DavidRoss's wanting to handbag me out of the place for being sooo bad for not putting on my pink stockings!!!! David you are such a little minx, I'll spank you sometime soon, no, first I'll call your mommy to tell on you! - is that in virtually all posts it's a given that the attacks on London are only about one thing. It's time for Europe to do what Washington says. In other words. Europe is irrlevant. It's just an accesory to Washington politics. We have to make one front against terror.
Well, thank you, but that's what caused the loss of these innocent lives. It's been an unexpected boon that Blair this time chose not to parrot the Washington line - partly because Bush's speech at Glenneagles was unusually imbecile. It was just incoherent bawling. Have you guys ever considered what it feels like to look at the "most powerful man in the world" or "the leader of the free west" and see he's a complete idiot? If you add to that the unending numbers of casualties, you might, if you have an milligram of humanity, start to figure out people are not that eager any longer to follow this lead.
Anyway what I read in these posts is the attacks in Europe (and there was Madrid, too, and a political assassination in Amsterdam) were not really in Europe, but in the US colonies. And now we have to listen to the master's voice.
That's terror indeed, because by now we know that the master's voice was very wrong. In Europe, just as in the US there is a pretty clear understanding that the Bush strategy in Iraq has produced terribly undesirable results. Terrorist attacks costing dozens of lives, have become a daily news item. It was sold as a war to end terrorism, but it turned out to be the war to boost terrorism. Great for the arms industry - they can test run stuff indefinitely - but what's that to us? I'm not saying everybody in the US feels this way, but a significant proportion of the population feels that way. Check the polls. And in Europe virtually everybody feels this way. We want to get out. The war on terror is just a meaningless meat grinder.
When Manhattan was attacked the mood in Yurp was, immediately, how can we help? What I'm reading into your posts is: Yurp has been attacked (again) so now they cannot but help us. That's a big difference to me.
I'm sorry Herman, but this wouldn't be the first time that Europe's masses are overwhelmingly opposed to something that is necessary for their survival and the survival of their culture.
As I keep saying, it will probably be many more years before we know if going into Iraq was the correct thing to do. Fifty or 75 years from now, historians may consider it the beginning of the end of Islamic extremism as a world force. Of course, the reverse could turn out to be the case as well. It's simply too early to make such sweeping pronouncements as yours.
One thing we do know about Europe is that they repeatedly make the same mistakes. After World War I, they were so anxious to avoid another war at any cost, that they paid the ultimate cost. One could certainly argue that they are doing the same thing now. At times, I don't think Europe would take action to defend itself under virtually any circumstances short of enemy troops breaking down their doors (It's ten years since Srebrenica, when Europe once again demonstrated that they won't lift a hand to stop ethnic cleansing in its own back yard).
And this is coming from someone who admires European culture (more than American culture in some respects). But you guys can really be boneheads (too stubborn to acknowledge what needs to be done) when it comes to dealing with foreign policy and security threats. Then there is the huge anti-Semitism problem.
You guys have enough problems of your own is what I'm basically trying to say.
And if you are going to cite polls to support your argument, you may as well at least acknowledge that polling in Europe has shown that Europeans hold a negative view of the U.S. in large numbers.
As I keep saying, it will probably be many more years before we know if going into Iraq was the correct thing to do. Fifty or 75 years from now, historians may consider it the beginning of the end of Islamic extremism as a world force. Of course, the reverse could turn out to be the case as well. It's simply too early to make such sweeping pronouncements as yours.
One thing we do know about Europe is that they repeatedly make the same mistakes. After World War I, they were so anxious to avoid another war at any cost, that they paid the ultimate cost. One could certainly argue that they are doing the same thing now. At times, I don't think Europe would take action to defend itself under virtually any circumstances short of enemy troops breaking down their doors (It's ten years since Srebrenica, when Europe once again demonstrated that they won't lift a hand to stop ethnic cleansing in its own back yard).
And this is coming from someone who admires European culture (more than American culture in some respects). But you guys can really be boneheads (too stubborn to acknowledge what needs to be done) when it comes to dealing with foreign policy and security threats. Then there is the huge anti-Semitism problem.
You guys have enough problems of your own is what I'm basically trying to say.
And if you are going to cite polls to support your argument, you may as well at least acknowledge that polling in Europe has shown that Europeans hold a negative view of the U.S. in large numbers.
Last edited by Barry on Wed Jul 13, 2005 5:19 pm, edited 1 time in total.
"If this is coffee, please bring me some tea; but if this is tea, please bring me some coffee." - Abraham Lincoln
"Although prepared for martyrdom, I preferred that it be postponed." - Winston Churchill
"Before I refuse to take your questions, I have an opening statement." - Ronald Reagan
http://www.davidstuff.com/political/wmdquotes.htm
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2pbp0hur ... re=related
"Although prepared for martyrdom, I preferred that it be postponed." - Winston Churchill
"Before I refuse to take your questions, I have an opening statement." - Ronald Reagan
http://www.davidstuff.com/political/wmdquotes.htm
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2pbp0hur ... re=related
-
Ted
DavidIf it walks like a troll and quacks like a troll, chances are...it's a troll!
I tend to agree with you
For some reason I’m not too familiar with Herman but I am quickly getting up to speed
As I mentioned to Werner last night, once can be an affable moron, a description that seems to fit Herman like a glove.
Unfortunately, unless irritants like Herman are over the top in ad hominem type attacks, there isn’t much gentle, law abiding forum members like you and me can do except hope they crawl back to the underbrush from whence they came
Cheers
t
Herman may see the world situation much differently than many of us, but I've never considered him a troll or someone whose intent is to cause trouble. He expresses his views. Nobody is obliged to agree with him.
"If this is coffee, please bring me some tea; but if this is tea, please bring me some coffee." - Abraham Lincoln
"Although prepared for martyrdom, I preferred that it be postponed." - Winston Churchill
"Before I refuse to take your questions, I have an opening statement." - Ronald Reagan
http://www.davidstuff.com/political/wmdquotes.htm
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2pbp0hur ... re=related
"Although prepared for martyrdom, I preferred that it be postponed." - Winston Churchill
"Before I refuse to take your questions, I have an opening statement." - Ronald Reagan
http://www.davidstuff.com/political/wmdquotes.htm
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2pbp0hur ... re=related
Corlyss: Thank you for posting the Evans op ed piece. What he says should be obvious to all, but many prefer comfortable delusions to disturbing realities. Yet I'm still astonished that Europe, after the ravages of the 20th Century, seems determined to defy Santayana's warning about those who forget the past.
"Most men, including those at ease with problems of the greatest complexity, can seldom accept even the simplest and most obvious truth if it would oblige them to admit the falsity of conclusions which they have delighted in explaining to colleagues, which they have proudly taught to others, and which they have woven, thread by thread, into the fabric of their lives." ~Leo Tolstoy
"It is the highest form of self-respect to admit our errors and mistakes and make amends for them. To make a mistake is only an error in judgment, but to adhere to it when it is discovered shows infirmity of character." ~Dale Turner
"Anyone who doesn't take truth seriously in small matters cannot be trusted in large ones either." ~Albert Einstein
"Truth is incontrovertible; malice may attack it and ignorance may deride it; but, in the end, there it is." ~Winston Churchill
"It is the highest form of self-respect to admit our errors and mistakes and make amends for them. To make a mistake is only an error in judgment, but to adhere to it when it is discovered shows infirmity of character." ~Dale Turner
"Anyone who doesn't take truth seriously in small matters cannot be trusted in large ones either." ~Albert Einstein
"Truth is incontrovertible; malice may attack it and ignorance may deride it; but, in the end, there it is." ~Winston Churchill
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Corlyss_D
- Site Administrator
- Posts: 27613
- Joined: Fri Mar 25, 2005 2:25 am
- Location: The Great State of Utah
- Contact:
'Sokay. Despite some effort on my part to couch my comments in a more nuanced position, you selectively focus on the parts that show my anger and frustration. Over the months of our dialog on this topic, I continue to be angry about the short-sightedness of Europeans, esp. when they tart up their shortsightedness as some kind of moral policy choice and try to use their shortsightedness masquerading as moral policy choice to cling to our ankles and prevent us from doing what has to be done; and you continue to be indignant about the fact that the US has decided to put an end to Islamofacism and how we choose to go about it. I don't see much common ground for us.herman wrote:If these statements are intended to tell me you are not viscerally anti-European, I don't think you've persuaded me yet.Corlyss_D wrote:As I said in a long ago post, sometimes I wish we could leave you Europeans to your fate with the monsters who will suck the life out of you.
Well! Bully for you!Just look at your sign-off lines. I probably know more about Texas history than 99% of the American population;
yet you get a kick out of reiterating that kind of puerile bull crap.
Boy! My signature sure has your knickers in a twist! Like I said on the other forum, I like signtures that make me laff. Charlie Cook is a pretty sophisticated political observer - it's his job. I don't think there's anything puerile about it, and it certainly isnt' bull crap.No, it's time for Europe to wake up and realize the jeopardy their shortsighted policies have put them in.what strikes me about all these posts is that in virtually all posts it's a given that the attacks on London are only about one thing. It's time for Europe to do what Washington says.
I think we have arrived at the nub of your complaint. It's not our fault. You have worked for over 100 years to produce this results.In other words. Europe is irrlevant.
But, Herman, that has been the case since 1945! Are you just now tumbling to the situation???? Of course, you would never credit that the preservation of Euorpe has been central American foreign policy since 1940, but what the hey! If you want to say that Europe is a "mere" adjunct to US politics, fine. You made my point very effectively.It's just an accesory to Washington politics.
We have to make one front against terror.
It would save time and money and make sense for this to be a collaborative effort, since you are at much greater risk, as I have said till I'm blue in the face, than we are. It don't make a bit of sense for you to surrender while we're trying to save your butts and have a better than 50-50 chance of doing so.
You can think that if you want, but it is simply a fashionable European illusion - like the Deacon's One Horse Shay, it looked great until the instant it turned to dust. You are not irrelevant to the Arabs because they think if they can split you from us, they will have won a signal victory in their plans to subjugate Europe and restore the caliphate.Well, thank you, but that's what caused the loss of these innocent lives.
You don't have a choice any more. The only two choices you have are to 1) debase yourself before Allah and accept Islamic law; or 2) fight back. There really is no commity to be had with these people or the states that support them.If you add to that the unending numbers of casualties, you might, if you have an milligram of humanity, start to figure out people are not that eager any longer to follow this lead.
the attacks in Europe (and there was Madrid, too, and a political assassination in Amsterdam) were not really in Europe, but in the US colonies.
We prefer the term allies in referring to sovereign states. It would be nice if you behaved as allies once in a while, and if you can't do that, stay out of our way.In Iraq, not in the US. There never was any ambiguity about how long this would take or how violent it was going to get or how many nations would be involved.the Bush strategy in Iraq has produced terribly undesirable results. Terrorist attacks costing dozens of lives, have become a daily news item.
Well, if you thought the Iraq war was "sold as a war to end terrorism" you were probably so busy obsessing over Bush-the-cunning-moron that you didn't listen to what he said. He has never said that Iraq was the war to end terrorism; he has always maintained what most of us knew, that the Iraq war was a front in the much longer and much more geographically spread war against terrorism.It was sold as a war to end terrorism, but it turned out to be the war to boost terrorism.
Well, of course you want out. You wanted out of WW2, you wanted out of the Cold War, you wanted out of Gulf War I. That's what Europeans do - feed the monster until someone else has to do your fighting and dying for you. No problem as long as its Americans doing the dying. If you factor in the scant European deaths, you guys haven't suffered at all meaningfully, so I don't know what you are whining about. Comparatively speaking, your complaints seem grossly self-indulgent. Americans and Iraqis are bearing the brunt of this war. The Dutch have lost only one man that I'm aware of. All deaths are regrettable, but this struggle known as the war on terrorism is about more than merely the avoidance of death.And in Europe virtually everybody feels this way. We want to get out.
Well, really, what could you do? I mean honestly. Not a lot, frankly, except stand on the sidelines and sympathize. Now you can't even do that.When Manhattan was attacked the mood in Yurp was, immediately, how can we help?
Corlyss
Contessa d'EM, a carbon-based life form
Contessa d'EM, a carbon-based life form
But don't you see this is the mother of all sweeping statements? We should just go on killing people, creating terrorists as we go along and say "well, you never know, it may be the right thing to do"?Barry Z wrote:I'm sorry Herman, but this wouldn't be the first time that As I keep saying, it will probably be many more years before we know if going into Iraq was the correct thing to do. Fifty or 75 years from now, historians may consider it the beginning of the end of Islamic extremism as a world force. Of course, the reverse could turn out to be the case as well. It's simply too early to make such sweeping pronouncements as yours.
Where's the leadership in this? And that's why I keep referring to Bush's imbecile speech at the G8.
The US, UK and several continental countries (including the one I'm living in now) went to war in Iraq on a casus belli that turned out to be empty (WMD, remember?). That's wrong. And now we have to persevere in being wrong beause it wouldnt look right?
And about Europe being wrong historically - please allow to speak one word that resembles the current situation most closely: Vietnam. Or is that two words.
Oh, and thank you Barry for a breath of fresh honest air, between those horrid gossipy "let's try to ban this guy; he doesn't think like us" posts.
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Corlyss_D
- Site Administrator
- Posts: 27613
- Joined: Fri Mar 25, 2005 2:25 am
- Location: The Great State of Utah
- Contact:
Oh, yeah. You want to stand up Viet Nam, in which you guys didn't expend any lives to my knowledge - correct me if I'm wrong - against WW1 and WW2 and the Cold War! That's ludicrous even if I take your point that the US was wrong about Viet Nam! The US wasn't wrong about the war itself; it was wrong in the way it fought the war.herman wrote:And about Europe being wrong historically - please allow to speak one word that resembles the current situation most closely: Vietnam. Or is that two words.
Corlyss
Contessa d'EM, a carbon-based life form
Contessa d'EM, a carbon-based life form
I would say this is what the US should do. The got themselves in yet another Vietnam, and soooner or later they are going to pull out. It just depends how many dead they can sustain for no good. There are no positive results to the Iraq War. Just like you can't win a guerilla war in the conventiona way, you can't win a "war on terrorism" by bombing people.Corlyss_D wrote:No, it's time for Europe to wake up and realize the jeopardy their shortsighted policies have put them in.
That's true. The War in Iraq was going to last, what was it? Three weeks? Three months? If forgot how brief and fast they told us it would be, but clearly you have (conveniently) forgotten 100% that this war was sold as campaign rather than an endless sinking away in a pool of destruction.There never was any ambiguity about how long this would take or how violent it was going to get or how many nations would be involved.
Perhaps you do remember Bush's photo op Mission Accomplished? Or are you even too blinkered for that? And when was that?
I remember your crowing on this board that the Iraqi resistance was in its last throes, and that was over a year ago.
BTW I say "conveniently" but I don't really see what's so convenient about it for you either. What's so good about all these people getting killed for absolutely nothing.
Two things have been accomplished by the Iraq war: it's been an unprecedented boon for terrorist recruiters, and not since Vietnam has it been shown how impotent the US army basically is. It can destroy things, but there's no way it can win this. Oh, and a third thing would be Guantanomo Bay and Abu Graib (or however you spell it): the US has lost its credibility as a defender of freedom and decency.
Last edited by herman on Wed Jul 13, 2005 8:50 pm, edited 1 time in total.
Herman,
It's not a case of "you never know; it may be the right thing to do." Whether it was before the war or not, the fact is Iraq is now a major front in the war against Islamic jihadists. Turning tale and running simply isn't an option.
It's not a case of "you never know; it may be the right thing to do." Whether it was before the war or not, the fact is Iraq is now a major front in the war against Islamic jihadists. Turning tale and running simply isn't an option.
"If this is coffee, please bring me some tea; but if this is tea, please bring me some coffee." - Abraham Lincoln
"Although prepared for martyrdom, I preferred that it be postponed." - Winston Churchill
"Before I refuse to take your questions, I have an opening statement." - Ronald Reagan
http://www.davidstuff.com/political/wmdquotes.htm
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2pbp0hur ... re=related
"Although prepared for martyrdom, I preferred that it be postponed." - Winston Churchill
"Before I refuse to take your questions, I have an opening statement." - Ronald Reagan
http://www.davidstuff.com/political/wmdquotes.htm
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2pbp0hur ... re=related
Ergo: Bush has created this big sinkhole of destruction and we're just expected to pour more young ives intothat meatgrinder, because it wouldn't look good to think of a way to change tack.Barry Z wrote:Herman,
It's not a case of "you never know; it may be the right thing to do." Whether it was before the war or not, the fact is Iraq is now a major front in the war against Islamic jihadists. Turning tale and running simply isn't an option.
Meanwhile it is the biggest advertisment for Muslim radicalism and terrorism ever.
As I said, where's the leadership in all o fthis?
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Brendan
Yet another view:
Having created these fundamentalists, are we condemned to fight them all our lives?
London: the aftermath
After the suicide-murders, the autopsy. After the deaths, the contradictory explanations. By now, almost every Londoner has gone through the nervous ritual of getting back on the Tube, minding far more than the gap. And by now, most of us have heard a thousand conflicting reasons why: They hate our freedom. They hate the occupation of Afghanistan and Iraq. They hate the pillaging of the Middle East's oil supplies. They hate the Infidel. They just hate.
Even as bodies lie rotting in the tunnels below King's Cross station, it is right to ask why. Some people are saying these massacres of civilians were simply mindless psychopathy, with no more purpose than Fred and Rosemary West's butchery of young girls in Gloucester. That is wrong. These were vile acts of political murder, emerging from a political context created, in part, by Western statecraft and driven by political goals. It is always better to know what you are up against.
In occupied Palestine, in Syria and in London, I have met radical Islamists who support the slaughter of civilians; some have pined to commit these killings themselves. In the rash of explanations this week, I have yet to hear an account that explains how they came to exist or what they think. So here is my attempt.
For more than 60 years, Britain and America created, armed and funded tyrants across Muslim lands in exchange for access to oil and for co-operation in the Cold War. Whenever there were shoots of democracy or Islamic reformation - like the election of Mossadeq in 1951 in Iran - our governments destroyed them. Any wannabe democrats were swiftly tortured and killed. Generations of Arab democrats - their Garibaldis, Jeffersons or Chartists - were lost to history.
In this warped environment, an undemocratic opposition movement was born. The Middle East was turned into a petri dish for the virus of Wahhabi Islamic fundamentalism. Since democracy was not an option, this austere form of Islam grew in popularity as the only alternative outlet for rage at the obvious corruption of Western proxy rulers. It is a simple philosophy, expressed eloquently by every radical Islamist I have met.
Wahhabis are obsessed with purity. They believe in complete unquestioning subjection to Sharia law, which is the one and eternal source of morality. They believe that reason and democracy are evil sources of "Westoxification", bent on weakening the True Muslims. Every other form of Islam - those practised by most Muslims - are to them as disgusting as Christianity, Judaism or atheism. Although this ideology was born in the Middle East, it has spread across the world, to Indonesia, Chechnya and now - it seems - Yorkshire.
It is tempting to assume that a movement born in reaction to injustice must be just. It is tempting to project your own concerns - your desire for a two-state solution in Israel/Palestine, or for a free Chechnya, or for an end to poverty in the Arab world - on to the bombers. When I sat opposite an Islamic Jihad suicide-bomber in Gaza, I wanted to imagine he was angry about the same things as me. But then he explained that gays and Jews should all be killed, that poverty is a good thing because it makes people more "spiritually pure", and that all women should be shrouded in burkas for life.
We have been here before. In a situation of terrible injustice, a totalitarian movement has been born with goals of its own. Nazism was born in the stunned and cruel humiliation of the Versailles Treaty. Marxist-Leninism was born in the torture chambers of Tsarism and it became its mirror-image. Each created their own set of monstrous injustices to replace the last.
Nobody should now doubt that Islamism is totalitarian. Talk to its followers: they are admirably candid. They seek absolute control of individuals, even if they do not share their beliefs, in order to subject them to a 9th-century code of ethics. Realise their concerns are not your concerns; they have a logic of their own and it was in place before the invasions of Iraq and Afghanistan.
The reasoning of the perpetrators is explained in the 2001 book Knights Under the Prophet's Banner by Ayman al-Zawahiri, the man Bin Laden describes as his "mentor". Into the 1990s, the Islamists became frustrated that they could not rally the "Muslim masses" to overthrow their local tyrants. So they decided to strike the "big enemy" - Western states - to re-energise Wahhabi jihadism and precipitate revolutions throughout the Middle East.
So Islamism is more a response to the decisions of Winston Churchill and Franklin Roosevelt than of Bush and Blair. Last Thursday was not the price for Afghanistan and Iraq; it was the price of decades of trading oil for tyranny without any regard to the consequences. These recent wars may have been useful propaganda tools for the jihadists, but saying they were their primary motivations does not match the evidence.
So where do we go from here? Having created a totalitarian movement, are we condemned to fight it for the rest of our lives?
There is one simple solution that I think will fail, and one complex solution I think could succeed in time. The bad solution is simple: give the totalitarian movement what they desire. One letter-writer to The Independent expressed this view well yesterday: "Osama bin Laden is very clear about what he wants: remove Western support from the regions' tyrants, withdraw the occupying troops and the attacks will stop. It really is that simple."
Right now this is a view confined to a Gallowayite minority, but if there is an 11 September, Madrid or 7 July every 18 months for decades to come, it will swell. If the attackers ever get dirty bombs or worse, it may become a majority view.
And it sounds so persuasive, doesn't it? Except when you realise that Osama Bin Laden considers Spain (or "Andalucia", as he calls it) to be a Muslim land because it was an Islamic territory until 1492. Not to mention all of Israel (Bin Laden is no fan of the 1967 borders), much of the Balkans and all of Kashmir.
So where does the logic of the Gallowayites stop? Once the Middle East is handed over to sharia law, would we then cede Spain, Tel Aviv, Kosovo and chunks of India to get al-Qa'ida off our backs? There are good arguments for withdrawing the troops from Iraq - but doing it because Bin Laden wants us to is not one of them. No matter how many steaks we feed this tiger, it will not become vegetarian.
I'll discuss a more effective - albeit agonisingly slow-burning - solution on Friday. But for now, we must not allow myths to emerge about the motives of the bombers or of jihadists across the world. They speak very clearly for themselves. This was a fight that began long ago. If it is going to end in our lifetimes - if we want to be able to have a worry-free Tube ride again one day - we have to look out not only for suspicious packages, but for suspiciously simple explanations.
j.hari@independent.co.uk
Having created these fundamentalists, are we condemned to fight them all our lives?
London: the aftermath
After the suicide-murders, the autopsy. After the deaths, the contradictory explanations. By now, almost every Londoner has gone through the nervous ritual of getting back on the Tube, minding far more than the gap. And by now, most of us have heard a thousand conflicting reasons why: They hate our freedom. They hate the occupation of Afghanistan and Iraq. They hate the pillaging of the Middle East's oil supplies. They hate the Infidel. They just hate.
Even as bodies lie rotting in the tunnels below King's Cross station, it is right to ask why. Some people are saying these massacres of civilians were simply mindless psychopathy, with no more purpose than Fred and Rosemary West's butchery of young girls in Gloucester. That is wrong. These were vile acts of political murder, emerging from a political context created, in part, by Western statecraft and driven by political goals. It is always better to know what you are up against.
In occupied Palestine, in Syria and in London, I have met radical Islamists who support the slaughter of civilians; some have pined to commit these killings themselves. In the rash of explanations this week, I have yet to hear an account that explains how they came to exist or what they think. So here is my attempt.
For more than 60 years, Britain and America created, armed and funded tyrants across Muslim lands in exchange for access to oil and for co-operation in the Cold War. Whenever there were shoots of democracy or Islamic reformation - like the election of Mossadeq in 1951 in Iran - our governments destroyed them. Any wannabe democrats were swiftly tortured and killed. Generations of Arab democrats - their Garibaldis, Jeffersons or Chartists - were lost to history.
In this warped environment, an undemocratic opposition movement was born. The Middle East was turned into a petri dish for the virus of Wahhabi Islamic fundamentalism. Since democracy was not an option, this austere form of Islam grew in popularity as the only alternative outlet for rage at the obvious corruption of Western proxy rulers. It is a simple philosophy, expressed eloquently by every radical Islamist I have met.
Wahhabis are obsessed with purity. They believe in complete unquestioning subjection to Sharia law, which is the one and eternal source of morality. They believe that reason and democracy are evil sources of "Westoxification", bent on weakening the True Muslims. Every other form of Islam - those practised by most Muslims - are to them as disgusting as Christianity, Judaism or atheism. Although this ideology was born in the Middle East, it has spread across the world, to Indonesia, Chechnya and now - it seems - Yorkshire.
It is tempting to assume that a movement born in reaction to injustice must be just. It is tempting to project your own concerns - your desire for a two-state solution in Israel/Palestine, or for a free Chechnya, or for an end to poverty in the Arab world - on to the bombers. When I sat opposite an Islamic Jihad suicide-bomber in Gaza, I wanted to imagine he was angry about the same things as me. But then he explained that gays and Jews should all be killed, that poverty is a good thing because it makes people more "spiritually pure", and that all women should be shrouded in burkas for life.
We have been here before. In a situation of terrible injustice, a totalitarian movement has been born with goals of its own. Nazism was born in the stunned and cruel humiliation of the Versailles Treaty. Marxist-Leninism was born in the torture chambers of Tsarism and it became its mirror-image. Each created their own set of monstrous injustices to replace the last.
Nobody should now doubt that Islamism is totalitarian. Talk to its followers: they are admirably candid. They seek absolute control of individuals, even if they do not share their beliefs, in order to subject them to a 9th-century code of ethics. Realise their concerns are not your concerns; they have a logic of their own and it was in place before the invasions of Iraq and Afghanistan.
The reasoning of the perpetrators is explained in the 2001 book Knights Under the Prophet's Banner by Ayman al-Zawahiri, the man Bin Laden describes as his "mentor". Into the 1990s, the Islamists became frustrated that they could not rally the "Muslim masses" to overthrow their local tyrants. So they decided to strike the "big enemy" - Western states - to re-energise Wahhabi jihadism and precipitate revolutions throughout the Middle East.
So Islamism is more a response to the decisions of Winston Churchill and Franklin Roosevelt than of Bush and Blair. Last Thursday was not the price for Afghanistan and Iraq; it was the price of decades of trading oil for tyranny without any regard to the consequences. These recent wars may have been useful propaganda tools for the jihadists, but saying they were their primary motivations does not match the evidence.
So where do we go from here? Having created a totalitarian movement, are we condemned to fight it for the rest of our lives?
There is one simple solution that I think will fail, and one complex solution I think could succeed in time. The bad solution is simple: give the totalitarian movement what they desire. One letter-writer to The Independent expressed this view well yesterday: "Osama bin Laden is very clear about what he wants: remove Western support from the regions' tyrants, withdraw the occupying troops and the attacks will stop. It really is that simple."
Right now this is a view confined to a Gallowayite minority, but if there is an 11 September, Madrid or 7 July every 18 months for decades to come, it will swell. If the attackers ever get dirty bombs or worse, it may become a majority view.
And it sounds so persuasive, doesn't it? Except when you realise that Osama Bin Laden considers Spain (or "Andalucia", as he calls it) to be a Muslim land because it was an Islamic territory until 1492. Not to mention all of Israel (Bin Laden is no fan of the 1967 borders), much of the Balkans and all of Kashmir.
So where does the logic of the Gallowayites stop? Once the Middle East is handed over to sharia law, would we then cede Spain, Tel Aviv, Kosovo and chunks of India to get al-Qa'ida off our backs? There are good arguments for withdrawing the troops from Iraq - but doing it because Bin Laden wants us to is not one of them. No matter how many steaks we feed this tiger, it will not become vegetarian.
I'll discuss a more effective - albeit agonisingly slow-burning - solution on Friday. But for now, we must not allow myths to emerge about the motives of the bombers or of jihadists across the world. They speak very clearly for themselves. This was a fight that began long ago. If it is going to end in our lifetimes - if we want to be able to have a worry-free Tube ride again one day - we have to look out not only for suspicious packages, but for suspiciously simple explanations.
j.hari@independent.co.uk
Barry,Barry Z wrote:I'm sorry Herman, but this wouldn't be the first time that Europe's masses are overwhelmingly opposed to something that is necessary for their survival and the survival of their culture.
As I keep saying, it will probably be many more years before we know if going into Iraq was the correct thing to do. Fifty or 75 years from now, historians may consider it the beginning of the end of Islamic extremism as a world force. Of course, the reverse could turn out to be the case as well. It's simply too early to make such sweeping pronouncements as yours.
One thing we do know about Europe is that they repeatedly make the same mistakes. After World War I, they were so anxious to avoid another war at any cost, that they paid the ultimate cost. One could certainly argue that they are doing the same thing now. At times, I don't think Europe would take action to defend itself under virtually any circumstances short of enemy troops breaking down their doors (It's ten years since Srebrenica, when Europe once again demonstrated that they won't lift a hand to stop ethnic cleansing in its own back yard).
And this is coming from someone who admires European culture (more than American culture in some respects). But you guys can really be boneheads (too stubborn to acknowledge what needs to be done) when it comes to dealing with foreign policy and security threats. Then there is the huge anti-Semitism problem.
You guys have enough problems of your own is what I'm basically trying to say.
And if you are going to cite polls to support your argument, you may as well at least acknowledge that polling in Europe has shown that Europeans hold a negative view of the U.S. in large numbers.
Well said.
"Free trade, one of the greatest blessings which a government can confer on a people, is in almost every country unpopular."
-Thomas Macaulay
-Thomas Macaulay
Cor,Corlyss_D wrote:Oh, yeah. You want to stand up Viet Nam, in which you guys didn't expend any lives to my knowledge - correct me if I'm wrong - against WW1 and WW2 and the Cold War! That's ludicrous even if I take your point that the US was wrong about Viet Nam! The US wasn't wrong about the war itself; it was wrong in the way it fought the war.herman wrote:And about Europe being wrong historically - please allow to speak one word that resembles the current situation most closely: Vietnam. Or is that two words.
How true, the Vietnam analogy is completely without merit. I think it is made now almost as an unthinking reflex response.
"Free trade, one of the greatest blessings which a government can confer on a people, is in almost every country unpopular."
-Thomas Macaulay
-Thomas Macaulay
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Ralph
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We were wrong about Vietnam and tens of thousands of fellow veterans agree with that position. It was the wrong war in the wrong place.Corlyss_D wrote:Oh, yeah. You want to stand up Viet Nam, in which you guys didn't expend any lives to my knowledge - correct me if I'm wrong - against WW1 and WW2 and the Cold War! That's ludicrous even if I take your point that the US was wrong about Viet Nam! The US wasn't wrong about the war itself; it was wrong in the way it fought the war.
"Only two things are infinite, the universe and human stupidity, and I'm not sure about the former."
Albert Einstein
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Corlyss_D
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What a relief that you can't vote here.herman wrote:I would say this is what the US should do.
I'm sure you would have said the same thing in 1940. Fact is, Herman, you ain't got a clue. You just know you want the whole thing to go away, preferably with the US and Bush humiliated.There are no positive results to the Iraq War.
Sure ends the careers of the terrorists bombed.you can't win a "war on terrorism" by bombing people.
I haven't forgotten anything. You find me some reference where Bush ever said 1) the war in Iraq was the sum and substance of the entire war on terrorism; 2) the war in terrorism would be concluded by the war in Iraq; 3) offensive combat operations would take less than 3 weeks. Your memory is as bad as your politics. You'll never find any such references.That's true. The War in Iraq was going to last, what was it? Three weeks? Three months? If forgot how brief and fast they told us it would be, but clearly you have (conveniently) forgotten 100% that this war was sold as campaign rather than an endless sinking away in a pool of destruction.
Sure. Do you remember what he said at the time, from underneath the banner? Do you even know why he said it?Perhaps you do remember Bush's photo op Mission Accomplished?
So you don't remember what Bush said that you have been arguing so vehemently about here, but you remember what I said?I remember your crowing on this board that the Iraqi resistance was in its last throes, and that was over a year ago.
You can't conclude how the play will end from the second scene of the first act.What's so good about all these people getting killed for absolutely nothing.
And we are cleverly killing them since most of them are so stupid they rush to the battlefield in Iraq.Two things have been accomplished by the Iraq war: it's been an unprecedented boon for terrorist recruiters,
It was the feckless political leadership that lost the war in Viet Nam, not the US military. I'm sure you take great comfort in what you perceive to be the impotence of the US military in Iraq because it confirms in your mind the pointlessness of spending money on defense, so you can be reassured that spending it on public works and welfare and other statist projects is really okay. You should never underestimate the American fighting man: if we lose the war on terrorism, it will be because the political leadership failed us, not because the American military couldn't do the job.and not since Vietnam has it been shown how impotent the US army basically is.
Only among people who can't tell the difference between gulags and Club Fed, like, oh, I dunno, NGOs like the Red Cross and Amnesty International and Human Rights Watch and Herman.the US has lost its credibility as a defender of freedom and decency.
Corlyss
Contessa d'EM, a carbon-based life form
Contessa d'EM, a carbon-based life form
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Corlyss_D
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No we weren't. Just because you fought in it don't mean you have the perspective of history to address it. I say no Boomer has the perspective to address the war properly because we were all too emotionally invested in it at impressionable ages. It'll take the passage of many more decades to sort out the strategic facts about the Viet Nam war and its importance and who was right, the administrations that got us into the conflict or the public that abandoned it.Ralph wrote:We were wrong about Vietnam and tens of thousands of fellow veterans agree with that position. It was the wrong war in the wrong place.
Corlyss
Contessa d'EM, a carbon-based life form
Contessa d'EM, a carbon-based life form
The Jerusalem Post Internet Edition
Terrorism works
EVELYN GORDON, THE JERUSALEM POST Jul. 14, 2005
There has been much talk about terrorism's "root causes" following last week's London bombings, but I have yet to hear anyone mention the most important cause of all: the fact that terrorism has thus far proven extremely effective – thereby encouraging the terrorists to continue.
If you accept the West's formulation of the terrorists' goals, that may sound counterintuitive. The Israeli "occupation," for instance, could have ended in 2000, when Israel offered to uproot most settlements and establish a Palestinian state, with east Jerusalem as its capital, in some 97 percent of the territories. But since the Palestinians responded by launching a terrorist war, not only is there still no Palestinian state, but Israel has reconquered areas it vacated in 1995. Thus the terror would seem to have been counterproductive.
The same is true of the 9/11 attacks. At the time, al-Qaida's main stated grievance against America was its troops' presence in Saudi Arabia. But not only did American troops not leave Saudi Arabia after 9/11, they invaded two other Muslim countries, Afghanistan and Iraq. Again, a seeming defeat for the terrorists.
Yet if you examine the terrorists' real goals, rather than the West's starry-eyed interpretation of them, it turns out that terrorism has scored tremendous achievements over the past five years.
In Israel's case, for instance, Hamas, which pioneered suicide bombings inside Israel, has never concealed the fact that its goal is Israel's eradication. And many Palestinians share this goal: Opinion polls repeatedly found that while 40-50 percent of Palestinians viewed the intifada's goal as expelling Israel from the territories, the other 40-50% (exact proportions varied) viewed the goal as "liberating all of historic Palestine," including pre-1967 Israel.
Rephrasing the question produced even larger majorities: In a Pew Research poll published in June 2003, 80% of Palestinians said their "rights and needs" cannot be met as long as Israel exists.
Toward this goal, terrorism has produced substantial progress – because a necessary precursor to eradicating Israel is destroying its international legitimacy, which is precisely what has been occurring over the last five years. For the first time since Israel's founding, the question of whether Israel has a right to exist has become an open and acceptable topic of debate in the West. And even when not discussed explicitly, the idea of Israel's illegitimacy is gaining ground implicitly – as in the Christian divestment campaign, or the famous December 2003 poll in which 59 percent of Europeans deemed Israel the greatest threat to world peace.
Clearly, eradicating a major threat to world peace would be less objectionable than eradicating a harmless nation.
And this change in the West's view of Israel has occurred not despite, but because of the terrorist attacks against it: Israel is viewed not as the victim, but as the cause of the violence. Hence Israel, not the terrorists, is the major threat to world peace; hence Christian churches are divesting from Israel rather than from the Palestinian Authority, which has consistently refused to act against terrorists.
In fact, as polls, media reports and diplomatic pronouncements reveal, Israel is viewed as the cause twice over. First, it provoked the terrorists via "the occupation": That the violence erupted in response to Israel's offer to end the occupation appears to have been completely forgotten. Then, it provoked the terrorists again by responding to their attacks with military action that succeeding in drastically reducing Israel's body count.
THE SAME paradigm holds for al-Qaida's attacks on America. While initially America was viewed as the victim, that view quickly shifted. Even in the West, opinion polls in recent years have consistently ranked America second only to Israel on the list of most hated countries and greatest threats to world peace. Just last month, a Pew poll found that most Europeans – even in Britain, America's closest ally – view repressive China more favorably than America. Moreover, while Europe once largely accepted America's global leadership, it now overwhelmingly rejects it.
Again, this shift has occurred not despite but because of the terrorist attacks: America is widely accused of provoking terrorism by invading Afghanistan and Iraq. As with the intifada, the fact that 9/11 preceded these invasions appears to have been completely forgotten. And this shift constitutes major progress toward al-Qaida's ultimate goal of global Muslim dominance – because for this purpose, a divided West, immersed in blaming itself (or parts of itself) rather than focusing on the real enemy, and with its leading power discredited and delegitimized, is essential.
Now, this same process is occurring with the London attacks: A growing number of media pundits and politicians, both in Britain and abroad, have already shifted the blame from the terrorists to Britain's "provocative" presence in Iraq. Even Tony Blair has proclaimed that Arab-Muslim grievances must be addressed.
While these intangibles are their greatest success, the terrorists have also reaped some tangible achievements. One, obviously, was the upset victory for Spain's socialists and the subsequent withdrawal of Spanish forces from Iraq produced by the 2004 Madrid bombings. Another is Israel's withdrawal from Gaza without getting anything in exchange, which 72 percent of Palestinians rightly deem a victory for terror.
But no such concession will ever end terrorism, because new grievances can always be found. Israel's withdrawal from Lebanon in 2000 offers a prime example: Hizbullah, instead of ending attacks on Israel, invented a new bit of "occupied Lebanese territory," the Shaba farms, to justify their continuation. And true to form, despite Hizbullah's refusal to honor the UN-certified international border, the EU still has not declared it a terrorist organization – while media reports routinely term Shaba "disputed territory," forgetting the UN's determination that the area is not Lebanese.
Individual terrorists may be irrational, but terrorist organizers and leaders generally are not: They launch attacks out of a cold-blooded calculation that such attacks serve their goals.
And terrorism will continue to serve their goals for precisely so long as the world, despite its lip-service condemnations, responds by blaming the victims and seeking to address the terrorists' "grievances."
Terrorism works
EVELYN GORDON, THE JERUSALEM POST Jul. 14, 2005
There has been much talk about terrorism's "root causes" following last week's London bombings, but I have yet to hear anyone mention the most important cause of all: the fact that terrorism has thus far proven extremely effective – thereby encouraging the terrorists to continue.
If you accept the West's formulation of the terrorists' goals, that may sound counterintuitive. The Israeli "occupation," for instance, could have ended in 2000, when Israel offered to uproot most settlements and establish a Palestinian state, with east Jerusalem as its capital, in some 97 percent of the territories. But since the Palestinians responded by launching a terrorist war, not only is there still no Palestinian state, but Israel has reconquered areas it vacated in 1995. Thus the terror would seem to have been counterproductive.
The same is true of the 9/11 attacks. At the time, al-Qaida's main stated grievance against America was its troops' presence in Saudi Arabia. But not only did American troops not leave Saudi Arabia after 9/11, they invaded two other Muslim countries, Afghanistan and Iraq. Again, a seeming defeat for the terrorists.
Yet if you examine the terrorists' real goals, rather than the West's starry-eyed interpretation of them, it turns out that terrorism has scored tremendous achievements over the past five years.
In Israel's case, for instance, Hamas, which pioneered suicide bombings inside Israel, has never concealed the fact that its goal is Israel's eradication. And many Palestinians share this goal: Opinion polls repeatedly found that while 40-50 percent of Palestinians viewed the intifada's goal as expelling Israel from the territories, the other 40-50% (exact proportions varied) viewed the goal as "liberating all of historic Palestine," including pre-1967 Israel.
Rephrasing the question produced even larger majorities: In a Pew Research poll published in June 2003, 80% of Palestinians said their "rights and needs" cannot be met as long as Israel exists.
Toward this goal, terrorism has produced substantial progress – because a necessary precursor to eradicating Israel is destroying its international legitimacy, which is precisely what has been occurring over the last five years. For the first time since Israel's founding, the question of whether Israel has a right to exist has become an open and acceptable topic of debate in the West. And even when not discussed explicitly, the idea of Israel's illegitimacy is gaining ground implicitly – as in the Christian divestment campaign, or the famous December 2003 poll in which 59 percent of Europeans deemed Israel the greatest threat to world peace.
Clearly, eradicating a major threat to world peace would be less objectionable than eradicating a harmless nation.
And this change in the West's view of Israel has occurred not despite, but because of the terrorist attacks against it: Israel is viewed not as the victim, but as the cause of the violence. Hence Israel, not the terrorists, is the major threat to world peace; hence Christian churches are divesting from Israel rather than from the Palestinian Authority, which has consistently refused to act against terrorists.
In fact, as polls, media reports and diplomatic pronouncements reveal, Israel is viewed as the cause twice over. First, it provoked the terrorists via "the occupation": That the violence erupted in response to Israel's offer to end the occupation appears to have been completely forgotten. Then, it provoked the terrorists again by responding to their attacks with military action that succeeding in drastically reducing Israel's body count.
THE SAME paradigm holds for al-Qaida's attacks on America. While initially America was viewed as the victim, that view quickly shifted. Even in the West, opinion polls in recent years have consistently ranked America second only to Israel on the list of most hated countries and greatest threats to world peace. Just last month, a Pew poll found that most Europeans – even in Britain, America's closest ally – view repressive China more favorably than America. Moreover, while Europe once largely accepted America's global leadership, it now overwhelmingly rejects it.
Again, this shift has occurred not despite but because of the terrorist attacks: America is widely accused of provoking terrorism by invading Afghanistan and Iraq. As with the intifada, the fact that 9/11 preceded these invasions appears to have been completely forgotten. And this shift constitutes major progress toward al-Qaida's ultimate goal of global Muslim dominance – because for this purpose, a divided West, immersed in blaming itself (or parts of itself) rather than focusing on the real enemy, and with its leading power discredited and delegitimized, is essential.
Now, this same process is occurring with the London attacks: A growing number of media pundits and politicians, both in Britain and abroad, have already shifted the blame from the terrorists to Britain's "provocative" presence in Iraq. Even Tony Blair has proclaimed that Arab-Muslim grievances must be addressed.
While these intangibles are their greatest success, the terrorists have also reaped some tangible achievements. One, obviously, was the upset victory for Spain's socialists and the subsequent withdrawal of Spanish forces from Iraq produced by the 2004 Madrid bombings. Another is Israel's withdrawal from Gaza without getting anything in exchange, which 72 percent of Palestinians rightly deem a victory for terror.
But no such concession will ever end terrorism, because new grievances can always be found. Israel's withdrawal from Lebanon in 2000 offers a prime example: Hizbullah, instead of ending attacks on Israel, invented a new bit of "occupied Lebanese territory," the Shaba farms, to justify their continuation. And true to form, despite Hizbullah's refusal to honor the UN-certified international border, the EU still has not declared it a terrorist organization – while media reports routinely term Shaba "disputed territory," forgetting the UN's determination that the area is not Lebanese.
Individual terrorists may be irrational, but terrorist organizers and leaders generally are not: They launch attacks out of a cold-blooded calculation that such attacks serve their goals.
And terrorism will continue to serve their goals for precisely so long as the world, despite its lip-service condemnations, responds by blaming the victims and seeking to address the terrorists' "grievances."
herman wrote:you can't win a "war on terrorism" by bombing people.
You just don't get it. Just like in Vietnam, you kill one guy, next day there will be three of those guys. They could have been citizens with electricity, running water and some way of making a living; the war has turned them into terrorist recruiting material. This war is OBL's dream come true. That's what makes it so dumb. You clearly think the US has a right to kill these people and ruin their homes and gut their economic infrastructure. Strangely they feel differently. That's why Iraq is an endless sinkhole of destruction.Corlyss_D wrote:Sure ends the careers of the terrorists bombed.
herman wrote: I remember your crowing on this board that the Iraqi resistance was in its last throes, and that was over a year ago.
Well, I am talking to you, am I not? You were parrotting, as you always do, the ideologically colored facts you imbibe by the gallon, and so you were saying, spring 2004, the war in Iraq was all but over. I said it wasn't, pointing out that casualty numbers were still going up.Corlyss_D wrote:So you don't remember what Bush said that you have been arguing so vehemently about here, but you remember what I said?
The war in Iraw is still continuing.
So what do you think this says about your and my grasp on what's happening there? You were wrong; I was right.
herman wrote: What's so good about all these people getting killed for absolutely nothing?
Do you ever go to plays? Have you ever seen a really lousy play? You can tell when it's going nowhere. Terrorism should be dealt with, but this is clearly not the way. Like Vietnam this is the wrong war because it is the wrong way. This war promotes terrorism, rather than combating it.Corlyss_D wrote: You can't conclude how the play will end from the second scene of the first act.
You also have this funny, irrational way of thinking people like me are happy the war is not going well, and that it may end in terrible humiliation for the US. That is not true. I happen to think Bush is a political imbecile and a danger to the world, but I love America. I have lived for many years. The reason why I think Bush is an imbecile is not because he's a bad speaker, though occasionally he reveals aspects of his cluelessness that are beyond bad speaking. The huge problem is he is eroding the US's power in the world and its efficacy as a power for freedom and democracy. If this goes on long enough the only superpower will be China, and I'm not looking forward to that.
Last edited by herman on Thu Jul 14, 2005 3:54 am, edited 1 time in total.
Corlyss_D wrote: That's ludicrous even if I take your point that the US was wrong about Viet Nam! The US wasn't wrong about the war itself; it was wrong in the way it fought the war.
Ralph wrote:We were wrong about Vietnam and tens of thousands of fellow veterans agree with that position. It was the wrong war in the wrong place.
This is grotesque. You're telling Ralph he doesn't have the right to say it was the wrong war, no one has, but you claim to have the right to say it was only the wrong way, ergo it was a right war?Corlyss_D wrote:No we weren't. Just because you fought in it don't mean you have the perspective of history to address it. I say no Boomer has the perspective to address the war properly because we were all too emotionally invested in it at impressionable ages. It'll take the passage of many more decades to sort out the strategic facts about the Viet Nam war and its importance and who was right, the administrations that got us into the conflict or the public that abandoned it.
What makes you the single exception to your self-crafted rule no one is to judge?
There goes Hermie again, exaggerating and misstating what his critics say. Take another look Hermie, and tell us why Ralph's lack of "perspective" is equal to an absence of "rights"? Where did Corlyss say anything about Ralph's "rights"? As far as "judging" is concerned, if you had actually read what she wrote with any measure of understanding, you would have seen that she included herself as one who is incapable of judging that issue at this time.herman wrote:Corlyss_D wrote: That's ludicrous even if I take your point that the US was wrong about Viet Nam! The US wasn't wrong about the war itself; it was wrong in the way it fought the war.Ralph wrote:We were wrong about Vietnam and tens of thousands of fellow veterans agree with that position. It was the wrong war in the wrong place.This is grotesque. You're telling Ralph he doesn't have the right to say it was the wrong war, no one has, but you claim to have the right to say it was only the wrong way, ergo it was a right war?Corlyss_D wrote:No we weren't. Just because you fought in it don't mean you have the perspective of history to address it. I say no Boomer has the perspective to address the war properly because we were all too emotionally invested in it at impressionable ages. It'll take the passage of many more decades to sort out the strategic facts about the Viet Nam war and its importance and who was right, the administrations that got us into the conflict or the public that abandoned it.
What makes you the single exception to your self-crafted rule no one is to judge?
Why do you try to get by with that sort of crap? We know your uncontrollable penchant for distortion and we'll catch you every time.
OK, so Corlyss says he, and nobody else has the "perspective to address" the Vietnam War, but apparently she is the exception?
And how, in practical terms, is this different from saying I'm not going to take you seriously, you might as well shut up etc etc?
I take it there is to be no inferring whatsoever, and, even when we quote the material over our responses, we are only to work with the verbatim material and make not the slightest inference?
And what makes you so sure you have the "perspective to address" my "uncontrollable penchants" etc?
However, I believe I am not "uncorntrollably inferring" that she's talking about baby boomers. Well. the good news is I am not a babyboomer, and so I think that makes me the legit person to "address" the Vietnam war. Well, I say it was a big mistake.
And how, in practical terms, is this different from saying I'm not going to take you seriously, you might as well shut up etc etc?
I take it there is to be no inferring whatsoever, and, even when we quote the material over our responses, we are only to work with the verbatim material and make not the slightest inference?
And what makes you so sure you have the "perspective to address" my "uncontrollable penchants" etc?
However, I believe I am not "uncorntrollably inferring" that she's talking about baby boomers. Well. the good news is I am not a babyboomer, and so I think that makes me the legit person to "address" the Vietnam war. Well, I say it was a big mistake.
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Corlyss_D
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You got your teeth into that Viet Nam thing and you're just not going to let go no matter how many facts dispute your analogy.herman wrote:Just like in Vietnam,
Don't be ridiculous. You're claiming that all the dead are innocent peace-loving Iraqis turned into insurgents by American policy. That's true only in the one-sided European press. If the Iraqi people were against us, our 130,000 troops would not be able to withstand the assault.you kill one guy, next day there will be three of those guys. They could have been citizens with electricity, running water and some way of making a living;
You were telling me what Bush was doing, announcing the end of the war on under the banner Mission Accomplished. Yet you don't remember what he said there which put the lie to your claim that he announced the end of the war. You've been saying the Iraq war was sold as the war to end terrorism and it clearly never was. You have a selective memory that serves your arguments very poorly.herman wrote:Well, I am talking to you, am I not?
The war is over. The killing isn't.Herman wrote:you were saying, spring 2004, the war in Iraq was all but over. I said it wasn't, pointing out that casualty numbers were still going up.
No you weren't. You still don't know what you are talking about.You were wrong; I was right.
Both debateable points.herman wrote: The huge problem is he is eroding the US's power in the world and its efficacy as a power for freedom and democracy. If this goes on long enough the only superpower will be China, and I'm not looking forward to that.
Corlyss
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Contessa d'EM, a carbon-based life form
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Corlyss_D
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You're having trouble reading English too? I'm disagreeing with Ralph. No body said anything about rights to do anything. I'm a Boomer too. I don't have the perspective of history, but I am staking out a position for future historians who will have a different assessment from that of people like Ralph and me who are too near the thing.herman wrote:You're telling Ralph he doesn't have the right to say it was the wrong war,
Corlyss
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Contessa d'EM, a carbon-based life form
This is basically the point I often try to make about the Iraq War, including on this thread.Corlyss_D wrote: ....I don't have the perspective of history, but I am staking out a position for future historians who will have a different assessment from that of people like Ralph and me who are too near the thing.
"If this is coffee, please bring me some tea; but if this is tea, please bring me some coffee." - Abraham Lincoln
"Although prepared for martyrdom, I preferred that it be postponed." - Winston Churchill
"Before I refuse to take your questions, I have an opening statement." - Ronald Reagan
http://www.davidstuff.com/political/wmdquotes.htm
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2pbp0hur ... re=related
"Although prepared for martyrdom, I preferred that it be postponed." - Winston Churchill
"Before I refuse to take your questions, I have an opening statement." - Ronald Reagan
http://www.davidstuff.com/political/wmdquotes.htm
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2pbp0hur ... re=related
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Corlyss_D
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I hope the co*ckroaches preserve our cyberscribblings . . .Barry Z wrote:This is basically the point I often try to make about the Iraq War, including on this thread.Corlyss_D wrote: ....I don't have the perspective of history, but I am staking out a position for future historians who will have a different assessment from that of people like Ralph and me who are too near the thing.
Corlyss
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Contessa d'EM, a carbon-based life form
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Ralph
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*****Corlyss_D wrote:You're having trouble reading English too? I'm disagreeing with Ralph. No body said anything about rights to do anything. I'm a Boomer too. I don't have the perspective of history, but I am staking out a position for future historians who will have a different assessment from that of people like Ralph and me who are too near the thing.herman wrote:You're telling Ralph he doesn't have the right to say it was the wrong war,
None of us knows what future historians will write but a revisionist view of the largely accepted thesis that Vietnam was a tragic mistake strikes me as unlikely.
"Only two things are infinite, the universe and human stupidity, and I'm not sure about the former."
Albert Einstein
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Ralph
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*****Corlyss_D wrote:You're having trouble reading English too? I'm disagreeing with Ralph. No body said anything about rights to do anything. I'm a Boomer too. I don't have the perspective of history, but I am staking out a position for future historians who will have a different assessment from that of people like Ralph and me who are too near the thing.herman wrote:You're telling Ralph he doesn't have the right to say it was the wrong war,
Just for the record I've never thought for a New York Minute that Corlyss questions anyone's right to hold and post any viewpoint.
Vietnam is a continuing difficult issue. The father of one of my favorite students was a casualty of the war. He killed himself last August after decades of being torn apart by what he saw and did as a 101st Airborne grunt. I KNOW people come out of EVERY war disabled not only in body but also in mind so don't bother telling me that.
What made this man's anguish worse is that he was one of many thousands of us who knew, not thought, that the sacrifices were the wrong ones.
Corlyss was exhilarated by those times. I was challenged, tested and ultimately saddened and disillusioned (I volunteered for the Army-there wasn't a chance of being drafted if I didn't want to go in).
"Only two things are infinite, the universe and human stupidity, and I'm not sure about the former."
Albert Einstein
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Corlyss_D
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Thank you, Ralph. I never doubted for a moment that you knew I wasn't telling you you had no right to your opinion.Ralph wrote: Just for the record I've never thought for a New York Minute that Corlyss questions anyone's right to hold and post any viewpoint.
I don't doubt either that it was personally difficult for men and women serving in Viet Nam and their families. I'm not denegrating their sacrifice, or yours, or the personal anguish of many.
But as we have discussed before, I don't believe more can be claimed for the anecdotal than that it is the experience of one, or two or ten. It's not the judgment of history. I'm thinking particularly of Bruce Catton's memoirs, in which he describes what it was like as a boy in Michigan talking with the old men who had fought in the civil war. All of their tales were moving and heroic or tragic stories. Catton's offhand remark was, "Nothing they ever did in their lives was as important as that." For all the anguish and pain and loss, their's was only one view of what was happening; it wasn't the entire picture, any more than your view or mine is the totality of what was happening then.
Corlyss
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Ralph
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I certainly don't qualify as a historian for the Vietnam period. But there are very many fine books, including a number by former military officers, that deal with the decision-making process that got us into an escalating conflict and most find two successive administrations at fault.
A real eye-opener is McMaster's Dereliction of Duty which excoriates the process whereby the Army's top generals virtually abandoned their responsibility to properly and authoritatively advise the President. Remarkably, McMasters was an up-and-coming lieutenant colonel when he wrote his book and it's generally known that the Army's highest officers were very pleased with the work. It's certainly OOP now but well worth finding online.
A real eye-opener is McMaster's Dereliction of Duty which excoriates the process whereby the Army's top generals virtually abandoned their responsibility to properly and authoritatively advise the President. Remarkably, McMasters was an up-and-coming lieutenant colonel when he wrote his book and it's generally known that the Army's highest officers were very pleased with the work. It's certainly OOP now but well worth finding online.
"Only two things are infinite, the universe and human stupidity, and I'm not sure about the former."
Albert Einstein
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