Getting Tired of This

TomFetter said:
With the greatest of respect ...

I hate to say it, but I wonder about whether our "product" has had much "truth in advertising." If our values are so great, why've we supported a series of thugs like the Shah of Iran, or (initially) Saddam, or any number of others we could name? Our national and economic interests trumped a real expression of our values ... or perhaps the real expression of our values trumped the marketing hype about them that we've told ourselves.

If we'd truly acted in the international realm over the decades according to our decent, freedom-espousing, life-affirming values ... like we like to tell ourselves that we did ... then the current story would be different.

As it is, we've sown the wind, and are reaping the whirlwind. I don't know the way out now, and I in no way want to excuse the actions of the terrorists. Their tactics are horrible, offensive to everything I believe. The hatred for the West is palpable, obvious, and will be long lived.

And we simply can't fire off nukes and turn the place to glass ... so we'll have to keep dying, partly because of our own history coming back to bite us.
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And I, with all due respect, tire of the cadre of folks within our society who always seek to make us the bad guys.

I know that you attempted to leave room for wiggle, but the bottom line is, you blame us for our current problems with Islamic fundamentalism.

The Golden Days of Islamic indulgence of other cultures and religions passed when that society found itself on the underside of the historical juggernaut. Once they slipped from the top of the heap, they lost patience with the minorities within their realm.

We are now where they were then. When extolling their virtues, don't forget that they were also an intensely political bunch, and flinched from little or nothing to advance their own agendas.

There is more than a little Machiovelli in every would-be leader, then as now.

Certainly the US has done some things in the past in that region which we now know was wrong. But our hindsight is 20/20 and we have the benefit of seeing consequences. It does little good to judge those leaders based on what we know now.

No one is ever so blessed with foresight when dealing with such complicated issues.

Andy
 
Yup. Wherever you go, there you are. Survival is not negotiable. We just need to be smart about stopping these folks from reaching their goals.
 
I saw a news report where Osama Bin- Laden said "We love death, the Americans love life. That is the great difference between us."

I think he put it better than any of us can. As long as they are trying to kill us, we will need to fight them. Burying our heads in the sand will do no good. No one likes war, but sometimes you just have to fight it out.

Extremists have historically been implacable, Hitler, Mao, etc., fortunatly I believe extremists to be in the minority of most cultures.
 
TomFetter said:
all very true - thanks for the reminder.

I've heard some date the Islamist extremist movements to the middle of the 20th century, though I've not got good backup on this.
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The Russians moving into Afghanistan to "assist" the puppet Afghani goverment, which many of the Afghani people clearly didnt see as "assistance." I am sure helped consilidate arm,train & give a cause to the many previously fractured elements perhaps? Including Bin Laden & of course the Taliban.

Allthough I am sure the founding of the state of Israel & the insueing history of wars with thier varios neighbours, was a major intial insperation to the fundementalists as well.

Spiral
 
munk said:
Well, the sworn mission is to destroy the West. What exactly should we stop doing and do different?


munk
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Special Ops and Surgical air strikes only. Quit fretting over some civillian loss eventually we will prevail. Butt the people in power know this. I agree with Ken Cox on this one, It is for politacal occupation reasons. I think we will be there for a very long time even after the next democratic president.

Leon Pugh
 
leon.pugh said:
Special Ops and Surgical air strikes only. Quit fretting over some civillian loss eventually we will prevail.
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That's how some bearded dudes in caves also think.

When you look at Afghanistan today, you have to ask - what happened to all those nice people, like we saw in Rambo III?
 
Bill Marsh said:
Terrorists are losing conventional battles, so they are stepping up bombers?
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I believe this is a misconception. Terrorists were never fighting conventional battles. That is not their goal, and that is not how they fight. They fight a guerilla war, except that they also fight that war in foreign countries, and target civilians.

No army has ever won a guerilla war, and no war "against terrorists" will ever be won. Ain't possible. Because they never agreed to fight 'conventional battles' with conventional rules (if there even are rules in war).

Therein lies the dilema (I think).

Added: Then again, these days it might be possible to win a war against terrorists - because it seems that the enemy is always a terrorist.

Keno
 
Andrew Colglazier said:
And I, with all due respect, tire of the cadre of folks within our society who always seek to make us the bad guys.

I know that you attempted to leave room for wiggle, but the bottom line is, you blame us for our current problems with Islamic fundamentalism....
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We're not just bad guys ... but we're also not just good guys. Pretending that we're unequivocally either is not seeing the truth.

And yes, I think that our (that is, the West's) history going back about 300 years or more has had a big effect on defining other countries' attitudes towards us. It's not the sole reason by any stretch. But the ways that Western economic interests played out in Africa, in the Middle East and in Latin America starting with the great Colonial powers and continuing today have left a very bad taste in the mouths of those whose property has been taken by us, whose labour has been used by us at shockingly low wages, whose freedom has been curtailed by goverments supported by us.

If a group of other folks with more military power than I take my stuff, train and support local thugs and despots who control my actions and instill fear in my wife and kids, sure I'm responsible when I launch out in a murderous campaign against them. I should definitely take the high road instead, and see the benefits they're also offering with the other hand. But if I don't, then while I'm responsible for the violent actions I might take ... they've also brought it on themselves.
 
Nordic Viking said:
That's how some bearded dudes in caves also think.

When you look at Afghanistan today, you have to ask - what happened to all those nice people, like we saw in Rambo III?
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You're right, NV. I have the Rambo box set, and I can't even watch the third movie all the way through. Partly because it's a weak movie but mostly because our cinimatic hero, the very embodiment of ultimate American toughness, is helping the people that would one day help bring about the worst attack in our country's history.
On a very unrelated note, Rambo 4 is slated for release next year. I always thought that a fitting end would be for Rambo to go back and get his little jade necklace from the kid he gave it to in part three because he grew up to be a terrorist. Instead, Rambo is to lead a rag-tag team in order to save some Christian missionaries from pirates:confused: Hey, it beats the original draft where Neo-Nazis kidnap his half NDN daughter, and he has to go in and get her back ...**cough>Commando<cough**>1985<**cough**

Jake
 
Tom;
300 years ago Britain and France were colonizing parts of the world in their own names. Was the US the 'West' then?
Remember the Ottoman empire, and others? There is no connection here.
No cohesion, no shared vision.

The world has changed a lot. Some parts of it more than others. I can agree to some extent that the "West" has not communicated it's message well, the last 40 years, but cannot make us responsible for terrorists blowing up civilians.

Does anyone think all this would just go away if there was no Israel, and the 'West' were out of Afganistan and Iraq?

munk
 
Munk,

You're absolutely right that the former colonial powers did their stuff in their own names ... and that the US (or my place) wasn't either a player, or even identified as such.

We're in the same philosophic tradition though. Our ideals of rule of law, of constitutional democracy, of human rights .. they come from European roots. Which is why Al Qaeda hasn't only targeted the World Trade Centre, but also Madrid, and London, and nightclubs full of Australian tourists in Bali. And if some Canadian reports were accurate, Toronto.

The only reason that the US is facing more of the hatred currently, is that the US is the Western tradition's dominant global actor right now. The same happened to Britain, to France, to Belgium, to the various colonial powers. And in those cases too, the flowering of the society in the home country produced huge advances, huge good things - in philosophy, culture, wealth, technology, trade etc.

But a reading of colonial histories will quickly show that much of this was done through not treating people in "the colonies" with the same ethics as were dispensed at home. The atrocities in the Belgian Congo were unreal, sickening. The Brits usually did better, but were quite brutal in their trade policies e.g. with India ... and didn't flinch from using gunboat diplomacy when necessary. And yeah, their pattern of exploitation did bring about extremist uprisings throughout the colonies. As did the French - with extremism in Algeria, in VietNam, etc.

People eventually get really angry when they find themselves on the short end of the stick, and find a way to define themselves against it.

The US is in the unfortunate position of being at the end of a long string of historical exploitation, much of which happened not at US hands, but at the hands of the US's forerunners in the Western traditions. You're getting hit with hatred that goes back generations, because the values you're trying to espouse are based on the same values that the Brits or French or Dutch also tried to espouse.

For hundreds of years, the Afghans, the Persians, and various others got burned by people who talked up those values, while at the same feathered their own nests. And for those same hundreds of years, some in those regions have rejected the values, as a part of rejecting domination.

It occurs to me that it's not so different, for example, from the reaction of some African Americans developing things like the Black Panthers.
 
Tom, the history of the world is the history of greater technology, resources, and man power exploiting regions of less. The rate of exploitation, and how that 'exploitation' occured changed more rapidly the last 200 years than the last 2000, as technology made advances. Some areas are further behind than others today.

Radical Islam, as exemplified by Wahabism, 100 years ago was despised by the vast majority of Moslem people. The Wahabis hated everyone and blew up all other Moslems. IN the last 40 years or so, the ruling regimes in the Middle East have exploited their own people and fed them the explanation that it was the Great Satan, the US, doing all of this. This kept the status quo in power. The 'West' went along with this as long as a supply of oil was guarenteed. This is oversimplified, per my simple understanding. There is not accurate news reporting in the Middle East today. Israel still eats babies according to Middle Eastern news sources. That is not the fault of the 'West'. The issue is more complicated.

The 'West's efforts to resolve this mess could be better.
munk
 
I don't understand why we, the "West" should feel obligated to resolve the mess.

It irritates me to no end to hear the complainers on the one hand when we (the US) do something they don't like, but if we don't do anything, they complain because we didn't do anything.

They will complain no matter what, so I say they should take a flying leap.

Our own national interest should trump every time, otherwise, what is citizenship worth anyway?

Machiovelli was right; you can't be a nice guy or a nice country every time and survive. You will get "took" 'cause everybody likes a sucker.

Andy
 
Yes, more complicated. Yes, elites within the Arab (and other) states have been oppressing their own folks, for their own benefits, and blaming the US (and some others) as a smokescreen.

And yes, history is, in general, the history of one group's exploitation of and dominance over another. Nothing new under the sun.

I still think that the current mess is very strongly influenced by the historical stuff I've mentioned. And if our policies were drawn up with a full understanding of it, rather than what really looks like willed ignorance of it (also a time-honoured practice by the former Colonial powers), we'd likely see more effective interventions.

edited to add .... Andrew? National interest perhaps should trump, but should be taken with a long view. The national interest is served by keeping the oil flowing ... and is not served by having the WTC ripped down. The means taken to do the first had some impact (though certainly not a fully determining impact) on the second. It's in our (your country's and mine) national interests to help clean up the mess, so we can stop spending lives and resources on the other side of the world fighting angry insurgents.
 
The main question should be; how has the current "War on Terrorism" affected terrorism? Has it decreased, stayed the same or increased. I would say the latter.
 
Not to be argumentative :) but...

If Islam was so tolerant of other religions, why in the past did they force all other religions to leave the area of what is now Iraq....

Why is the goal of the modern extremists to form a new Caliph and force all to adopt Islam or die.......(this coming from interviews of captured insurgents...)


Now, I know.... the vast majority of Muslims are peaceable and kind, not to mention extremly generous. I know this because I have been living and working with them here in Iraq for the past year.

But they are not tolerant of other religions...

Also concerning how far back the radical muslim tradition goes, do a search for whahabi or hashshaseen on google and read what comes up. It goes back quite a bit further than most people know.

Just my 2 cents

Grimalkin
Camp Habbaniyah, Iraq
 
Nordic Viking said:
The main question should be; how has the current "War on Terrorism" affected terrorism? Has it decreased, stayed the same or increased. I would say the latter.
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What is happening is that all of the players are finally coming out of the shadows... and being taken care of.

According to the media we are "loosing".... don't take their word for it, do a little research and your eyes might be opened a little wider....

www.patdollard.com

Grimalkin
Camp Habbaniyah, Iraq
 
IIRC, the SECDEF (Gates) himself told a Senate hearing that the USA was not winning. The Iraq Study Group doesn't sound too optimistic either. Both sources I would say are not the "media"
 
True, but then again they are thinking in conventional terms when this war is anything but...

So who should the public listen to? The talking heads, or the men and women on the ground, as well as the citizens of the country they are in.....?

Also, politicians are most of the time worse than the media when it comes to trusting what they say... (no I am not jaded at all! :) )

According to everyday conversations with the Iraqis here, things are getting better for them, not worse. I have seen it get better in the time that I have been here, almost a year now.... (almost time to go home! :D )

I understand that we have a difference of opinion, and that is great! I am happy to be having this discusion and I appreciate your willingness to share.

:)

Grimalkin
Camp Habbaniyah, Iraq
 
Thomas Linton said:
As for technology and killing, I (sadly) give you Rwanda and pangas.
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I had heard once that at the height of the genocide, that the Hutu were killing at a faster rate than the infamous Nazi death camps of WWII.

Being a nation of unquestionable humanity, we stepped right in and... oh wait, nevermind.
 
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