Random political thoughts.
Apr. 10th, 2004 12:16 am![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
weaktwosLately I've been more fascinated than normal with politics. Hopefully more people have, too, because there seems to be an amazing amount of bullshit parading across the airwaves.
Especially articles like this. What kind of lessons are we learning in history? We entered an area that is rife with problem, and full of a contentious, violent history. He seems to act like this fundamentalist hatred just grew on a tree one day. But no, it is not. These folks are a product of their history. A history, oddly enough, involves us, or Britain gettng involved and trying to take control of this region in the last 100 years.
Let's start out with this line:
Despite the horrific barbarism in Fallujah and the gun-toting and killing by the Shiites, the United States is ever so steadily establishing a consensual government of sorts under impossible conditions in Iraq.
First of all, this guy missed today's news where counsel members are threatening to pull out due to the violence in Iraq perpetrated by "coalition forces" and Iraqis. Second, our troops are under "impossible conditions". Now, whose fault is that? Ours.
Appeasement. This fellow, Mr. Hanson, gripes about democratic appeasement as being the large part of our problem. The Arabs and Jews have rarely appeased each other, as a whole, and look how non-appeasement has worked for them! Frankly, the only time I've seen contentious countries come together is if they are united by a common cause...usually a common cause with economic benefits or a religious one. Right now, the Shiites and the Sunnis are sharing a common cause: being pissed off at us.
Some folks, namely war hawkish conservatives, seem to think that invading a country is good marketing for democracy. Years of oppression and intense religious history can immediately cause a people to surrender their past and welcome, with open arms, an army who has attacked them and beat them in the past.
While the Mr. Hanson realistically admits this is impossible, he doesn't think it's so impossible that we cannot overcome this. Karen Kwietkowski would recommend that Mr. Hanson review the lessons learned from the Hundred Years War on this issue.
Mr. Hanson asserts: Appeasement of fundamentalists is not appreciated as magnanimity, but ridiculed as weakness — and, in fact, encourages further killing. But wait! the practice of combative confrontation seems to encourage killing most directly, as well. After all, Israel isn't appeasing the Palestinians, and people are still killing each other. They are being innovative, I might add, with suicide bombers.
Now yes, we are at War, and we must support our troops. We do support our troops. We want our troops to be treated better than they currently are.
Mr. Hanson says, we did not ask for this war, but it came. Well, we as in the American people...given opinion at the commencement of our fight, yes, most of us did ask for this. We, on average bought into the convincing, yet largely bogus intelligence that our Presidential leadership was peddling to us. Mr. Hansen seems to ignore all the information about faulty intelligence data. He forgets that what we have in our past is more than appeasement, but playing the Iraqis and Iranians against each other. Of Iran-Contra arms deals, of supporting conservative zionist policies. This road to hell was not paved with appeasement.
But in a way, I agree. Appeasement is not the best policy. But some sort of compromise is in order. McCain was right, we need to come up with a way to reach the young, disgruntled arab that is easily lured into terrorism. However, it will not be done by killing their kinsmen and kinswomen! And how do we provide liberty via oppression?
Is it me, or when conservatives engage in foreign policy, the seem to engage in ill-conceived alliances with deadbeats that eventually bite us in the ass? Saddam, is one of them. Noriega, another. Saudi Arabia. The Chalabi fellow.
Condoleeza Rice said that a lesson learned was that we must act on threats preemptive before they can pull an attack on us like the WTC.
So let me understand this. We will now ignore obvious threats via fairly solid intelligence, and act on manipulated, unreliable intelligence preemptively? I foresee new friends in our future.
Who profits while we lob little missiles of liberty in Iraq? Defense companies. Yes. Our soldiers? No. Our treasury? No.
It strikes me that throughout history, we spend more time giving war a chance, and less time giving peace a chance.
This article here suggests that we are creating new terrorist threats by virtue of our war in Iraq. Furthermore, while conservative journalists are claiming Afghanistan is currently a success story, they are still suffering and can slip back at any time.
Let us note here that we have 150,000 troops fighting for liberty in Iraq, and on an Easter Egg/WMD hunt in Iraq when the real perpetrator of the crime against us is still prancing around, presumably in Afghanistan, with only 13, 500 troops of ours hunting him down. What message does this give to terrorists? Well, it says we will half-heartedly pursue you while engaging in a pyrrhic conquest of another country not directly related to the terrorism attack that started it all. It also means we will continue to destroy Islamic nations to further justify, from their perspective, that we're a bunch of evil sons of bitches.
From this article:
Afghanistan has massively resumed harvesting opium and now accounts for 77 percent of global opium production according to the last annual report of the U.N. Office on Drugs and Crime. Twenty-eight out of 32 provinces in Afghanistan now produce the drug crop, up from 18 provinces in 1999. Drug revenues, estimated at $2.3 billion annually (obviously more than U.S. aid commitments), now finance local warlords and terrorists, including some al-Qaida affiliates and the resurgent Taliban.
Now, if only terrorists would become addicted to opium. That way, they could spend their time passed out in an opium high.
Hmmm...religion is the opiate of the masses. So if you want to get religion, go to Afghanistan.
I must sleep, now. More on this later, of course.
Especially articles like this. What kind of lessons are we learning in history? We entered an area that is rife with problem, and full of a contentious, violent history. He seems to act like this fundamentalist hatred just grew on a tree one day. But no, it is not. These folks are a product of their history. A history, oddly enough, involves us, or Britain gettng involved and trying to take control of this region in the last 100 years.
Let's start out with this line:
Despite the horrific barbarism in Fallujah and the gun-toting and killing by the Shiites, the United States is ever so steadily establishing a consensual government of sorts under impossible conditions in Iraq.
First of all, this guy missed today's news where counsel members are threatening to pull out due to the violence in Iraq perpetrated by "coalition forces" and Iraqis. Second, our troops are under "impossible conditions". Now, whose fault is that? Ours.
Appeasement. This fellow, Mr. Hanson, gripes about democratic appeasement as being the large part of our problem. The Arabs and Jews have rarely appeased each other, as a whole, and look how non-appeasement has worked for them! Frankly, the only time I've seen contentious countries come together is if they are united by a common cause...usually a common cause with economic benefits or a religious one. Right now, the Shiites and the Sunnis are sharing a common cause: being pissed off at us.
Some folks, namely war hawkish conservatives, seem to think that invading a country is good marketing for democracy. Years of oppression and intense religious history can immediately cause a people to surrender their past and welcome, with open arms, an army who has attacked them and beat them in the past.
While the Mr. Hanson realistically admits this is impossible, he doesn't think it's so impossible that we cannot overcome this. Karen Kwietkowski would recommend that Mr. Hanson review the lessons learned from the Hundred Years War on this issue.
Mr. Hanson asserts: Appeasement of fundamentalists is not appreciated as magnanimity, but ridiculed as weakness — and, in fact, encourages further killing. But wait! the practice of combative confrontation seems to encourage killing most directly, as well. After all, Israel isn't appeasing the Palestinians, and people are still killing each other. They are being innovative, I might add, with suicide bombers.
Now yes, we are at War, and we must support our troops. We do support our troops. We want our troops to be treated better than they currently are.
Mr. Hanson says, we did not ask for this war, but it came. Well, we as in the American people...given opinion at the commencement of our fight, yes, most of us did ask for this. We, on average bought into the convincing, yet largely bogus intelligence that our Presidential leadership was peddling to us. Mr. Hansen seems to ignore all the information about faulty intelligence data. He forgets that what we have in our past is more than appeasement, but playing the Iraqis and Iranians against each other. Of Iran-Contra arms deals, of supporting conservative zionist policies. This road to hell was not paved with appeasement.
But in a way, I agree. Appeasement is not the best policy. But some sort of compromise is in order. McCain was right, we need to come up with a way to reach the young, disgruntled arab that is easily lured into terrorism. However, it will not be done by killing their kinsmen and kinswomen! And how do we provide liberty via oppression?
Is it me, or when conservatives engage in foreign policy, the seem to engage in ill-conceived alliances with deadbeats that eventually bite us in the ass? Saddam, is one of them. Noriega, another. Saudi Arabia. The Chalabi fellow.
Condoleeza Rice said that a lesson learned was that we must act on threats preemptive before they can pull an attack on us like the WTC.
So let me understand this. We will now ignore obvious threats via fairly solid intelligence, and act on manipulated, unreliable intelligence preemptively? I foresee new friends in our future.
Who profits while we lob little missiles of liberty in Iraq? Defense companies. Yes. Our soldiers? No. Our treasury? No.
It strikes me that throughout history, we spend more time giving war a chance, and less time giving peace a chance.
This article here suggests that we are creating new terrorist threats by virtue of our war in Iraq. Furthermore, while conservative journalists are claiming Afghanistan is currently a success story, they are still suffering and can slip back at any time.
Let us note here that we have 150,000 troops fighting for liberty in Iraq, and on an Easter Egg/WMD hunt in Iraq when the real perpetrator of the crime against us is still prancing around, presumably in Afghanistan, with only 13, 500 troops of ours hunting him down. What message does this give to terrorists? Well, it says we will half-heartedly pursue you while engaging in a pyrrhic conquest of another country not directly related to the terrorism attack that started it all. It also means we will continue to destroy Islamic nations to further justify, from their perspective, that we're a bunch of evil sons of bitches.
From this article:
Afghanistan has massively resumed harvesting opium and now accounts for 77 percent of global opium production according to the last annual report of the U.N. Office on Drugs and Crime. Twenty-eight out of 32 provinces in Afghanistan now produce the drug crop, up from 18 provinces in 1999. Drug revenues, estimated at $2.3 billion annually (obviously more than U.S. aid commitments), now finance local warlords and terrorists, including some al-Qaida affiliates and the resurgent Taliban.
Now, if only terrorists would become addicted to opium. That way, they could spend their time passed out in an opium high.
Hmmm...religion is the opiate of the masses. So if you want to get religion, go to Afghanistan.
I must sleep, now. More on this later, of course.
![[identity profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/openid.png){kind=small}
no subject
Date: 2004-04-10 06:46 am (UTC)I don't think these attacks are going to cease regardless of us being fighting for freedom or not.
I just think terrorists are becoming more clever and we need to be more careful without trying to infringe on our rights as US citizens. I am just not sure exactly what that means though. It's a very sticky situation.
I would be more prone to let someone in the airport look through my purse than forego safety. But that's my humble opinion.
no subject
Date: 2004-04-10 09:51 am (UTC)But there's other issues with the Patriot Act that are more frightening.
no subject
Date: 2004-04-10 12:45 pm (UTC)I fully expect both of them to fail in under five years (as every single previous attempt of ours at this endevor has). If we're lucky, that will prove to the neo-cons that this wet-dream of theirs is just a fantasy and they'll pursue new courses of action.
If, contra my assumptions, they DO work, and do so quite clearly, then... Well, I'll start be eating crow. Then... shit, I suppose the best cause scenario is that democracy will spread naturally on it own (unlikely; it hasn't spread naturally from Isreal or Turkey.) More likely scenario, this will prompt even more invasions. And honestly, I don't know how to feel about that. Bringing democracy to these people is certainly a good thing. But the murder and bloodshead that it takes... I just don't know.
no subject
Date: 2004-04-10 01:35 pm (UTC)So, if they do succeed, I will too be eating crow. But I'm so confident that I will not be looking up recipes as yet.
One of the reasons I do not think it will work is because the "neocon" agenda is not really the freedom of these people. They want their freedom only if the Afghanistan and Iraqi concept of freedom coincides with our ideas of freedom. And even then, I don't think that was the first priority of our government when they launched this attack.
I think the first goal was a strategic endeavor. Clearly, its not a love of islamic people that drives our goals, for we're killing citizens that come between us and "islamic fundamentalists".
Furthermore, the ideology that inspires democracy does not appear to be running rampant among the various ethnic groups in Iraq. As far as we can tell, we are suppressing the freedom of the press there, we are using force to achieve our objectives, instead of creating an environment that allows for the free exchange of ideas.
I think democracy is a luxury item. One that requires a good economy with more plentiful resources and career opportunities available than say, drugs (like Afghanistan). There are too many people who tend towards a natural state of greed and competition. So in an environment with scare resources, things get a little nasty and brutish, and short.