Dr. No said:
Let me say more accurately: “Most muslims put most of the blame on others”.
Seems a matter of priorities. As long as the world remains divided into separate bodies politic, there is much validity in the reviled theory that alleviating the external influences contributing to internal divisions allows a better foundation for addressing internal divisions. Historically, however, and especially in the last century, the situation has not been regarded so subtly. However, there is still a question we will visit shortly.
Some of them are. But international politics is much more complicated than withdrawing negotiations with every tyrant on the planet. China had been ruled by tyrants too and that fact doesn’t stop the international community from making deals and treaties with China.
Yes, and? Have you ever heard the phrase, "The World's Sweatshop"?
In the United States, we bargain with people whose political values we consider bad because we get better prices. That's why American companies liked to pay children pennies to make clothing in Nepal, where there is now a savage Maoist insurrection against an atrocious government. That's why we like goods made in China, the world's sweatshop.
In many cases, it's not a matter of withdrawing from every tyrant; I'm rather furious at the American unwillingness to deal directly with Iran or North Korea--it seems unwise and irresponsible to operate on the basis of some archaic standard of pride.
However, there is a legitimate issue to be made about material support for tyrants, as well as propping them up outright.
Ooops? The shah had been disposed of long ago
Fair 'nuff. However, I
would like to note that the period under the Shah devastated the Iranian people; they've never recovered. With the world turning their backs, the Iranians bet on the best horse they had, a man named Ruollah Khomeni.
Think about how frustrated Americans get at choices like Bush vs. Gore or Bush vs. Kerry. Think about how people acknowledge the lack of a snowball's chance for the third-party candidates; it's just an excuse for not wanting to take a chance for what someone thinks is right. And so we pick between the lesser of two evils, "more of the same" or a promise of change.
Sadly, Khomeni was the only alternative Iranians felt they had. Compared to the Shah, why not take a chance? The effects of the overthrow of Mossadegh still play out in Iran, and also in the United States today.
If I ever go to a Palestinian refugee camp I would tell a child living there that the Jews are not the only people to blame for their predicament. The surrounding Arab nations had used them as pawns and thus they share in the blame.
Be subtle. Be delicate. In other words, be the things you aren't at Sciforums. And good luck.
Wrong choice of words on my part. I mean is that he hasn’t committed any atrocities yet, or at least the outside world was still unaware of such atrocities.
After a bloodless coup, Hussein, as deputy chair of the Revolutionary Command Council, purges the party and government in a Stalinist fashion.
A known Stalinist in the 1960s, he later pledged to turn Iraq into a Stalinist state. Seven months after the purge, he accuses political opponents of being Israeli spies and has them publicly hanged.
In 1971, the Baath government he serves initiated a chemical-weapons program.
And it
is true that Hussein did strive to modernize Iraq according to socialist principles, but whereas the US, during the Cold War, had been willing to focus on those successes, there is no doubt about the menacing nature of the regime.
In July, 1979, as Hussein rose to the presidency of Iraq, he moves to avoid facing a vote. On July 22, with the entire Revolutionary Command Council assembled, Hussein announces a coup plot against him, and reads the names of sixty-six plotters in the party, publicly executing 22 of them. There is, somewhere, some video footage from that day, it's rather chilling to watch.
In 1980, Hussein initiates the war with Iraq. In 1981, the U.S. moves to normalize relations with Iraq amid reports of summary executions of Iranian POW's and Kurdish civilians. (And here we can consider anew a link I provided yesterday: "
The Saddam in Rumsfeld's Closet".)
In 1982 the United States removes Iraq from its list of alleged terrorism sponsors. Additionally, the first reports of Iraqi chemical warfare begin to surface. In September of that year the United States extends credit to Iraq for agricultural products, including equipment for the Iraq Atomic Energy Commission and biological materials including anthrax.
Controversially, the US government drafted a National Security Decision Directive (#114) in November, 1983 that is apparently still classified, but is said to contain the heart of the policy that the US should do whatever is necessary and legal on behalf of Iraq in order to ensure Iraqi victory over Iran. This directive is issued
after State Department officials have advised Secretary of State Shultz that Iraq has used chemical weapons against Iran. In December, 1983, Donald Rumsfeld announces that the United States is ready to resume full diplomatic relations with Iraq.
In early March, 1984 the US State Department acknowledges that Iraq has used chemical weapons against Iran. Later in the month, the UN releases a report declaring evidence of mustard gas and tabun. It has since been reported that the United States was assisting Iraq with battle planing at that time
In 1985, the British government got into the game, supporting a chemical weapons plant, and the United States.
In 1986, the United Nations formally accuses Iraq of chemical warfare.
In 1987, the Iraqi government gassed the Kurds. An estimated 4,000 Kurdish villages and towns are destroyed, as well as hundreds of thousands of Kurds. It is said that this period through 1989 marks the souring of US-Iraqi relations, though this is only a matter of tone and not policy.
After the Iran-Iraq war ends in 1988 with over a million estimated dead, Iraq begins producing biological weapons, stepping up the pace in 1989.
In July, 1990, with the world's fourth-largest military, Saddam Hussein sets after Kuwait.
If the world, or the United States government, didn't know what Saddam Hussein was about, then they weren't paying attention.
Is it because there are poor Chinese, Mexicans & Indians outside America who out of poverty must do the same amount of work for a lot less money?
It's that our standard of living requires that kind of poverty
somewhere. Money is a fine organizational system, but we make it too important in the wrong ways. Without crappy wages in other nations, without repugnant working conditions, the average American would be living according to a lower standard.
It's a hard thing to work around, but Americans by and large refuse to try.
Allying with the afghans was a necessity for both parties (the Americans & the Afghans) for them to succeed in their wars. And so by adopting & supporting the afghan fighters America became partially responsible for their future. America’s biggest mistake in the afghan affair was when they left them in a political vacuum after the Russians evacuated. That I believe is the American share of the blame in the birth of Alquaida.
The American share of the blame in Al Qaeda is that we funded the promulgation of an ideology that makes warfare a holy duty of Islam. It was reckless exploitation and we're missing nearly 3,000 innocent people and a couple of fine buildings, which should serve well enough as a testament to the effects of that exploitation.
What I actually said is “most muslims would rather blame everybody else than make fatwas against islamist terrorists”.
What fatwa would you like whom to issue?
Unless you show me fatwas against bin lade & co. I don’t think you have any basis in alleging that it is a lie.
Now that's just horseshit, pure and simple.
Perhaps you don't remember copping an attitude about history:
Dr. No said:
But for you I suggest you read the entire history of muslims, the teachings of their prophet and the deeds of their prophets. How they used excessive use of force on an entire populace for the sins of the very few. You do that and then you come to me.
Perhaps you're unaware of that particularly and troublesomely large portion of Islamic history in which Muslims spend time, money, and lives at one another's throats.
Don't know, you say you know the histories. You choose to have an attitude problem about it. And then you go and ignore history in order to make a thin assertion like, "
Unless you show me fatwas against bin lade & co. I don’t think you have any basis in alleging that it is a lie"?
What fatwas would you like whom to issue? "Against" bin Laden? What exactly does that mean, then?
Miserable. And the rot that started with him can still be felt today. But we mostly blamed Marcos and our own cultural failures, not the Americans. We rebelled against marcos, not the Americans. I am absolutely positive that no non-muslim Filipino would terrorize America for supporting the Marcos regime.
Especially since time has passed. But I wanted to point out something specific:
Dr. No: I am not an American but I have never once thought it is your obligation to help my ailing country of origin . . . .
Tiassa: How was life under Marcos?
Dr. No: Miserable. And the rot that started with him can still be felt today . . . .
All I wanted to remind you was that life under Marcos is what it looks like when the United States "helps" a people. There's a great bit in Hunter S. Thompson's
Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas that accidentally makes an apt allegory of U.S. foreign policy:
My attorney finally agreed that Lucy would have to go.* The possibility of a Mann Act conviction, resulting in disbarment proceedings and total loss of his livelihood, was a key factor in his decision. A nasty federal rap.* Especially for a monster Samoan facing a typical white middle-class jury in Southern California.
"They might even call it kidnapping," I said.* "Straight to the gas chamber, like Chessman.* And even if you manage to beat that, they'll send you back to Nevada for Rape and Consensual Sodomy."
"No!" he shouted.* "I felt sorry for the girl, I wanted to help her!"
I smiled.* "That's what Fatty Arbuckle said, and you know what they did to him."
"Who?"
"Never mind," I said.* "Just picture yourself telling a jury that you tried to help this poor girl by giving her LSD and then taking her out to Vegas for one of your special stark-naked back rubs."
He shook his head sadly.* "You're right.* They'd probably burn me at the goddamn stake ... set me on fire right there in the dock.* Shit, it doesn't pay to try to help somebody these days ..."
(
Thompson)
Or, as P.J. O'Rourke wrote of his time in the Philippines during the election:
Before the Congressional observer team went home, Lugar read a thin-soup statement, crinkum-crankum so packed with "Pash Commit of Flips to Dem" that a Hong Kong TV correspondent was moved to ask, "For those of us who are not native English speakers, could you please tell us what you're saying?" These guys may have talked tough stateside, but they had their mouths in the Delphic mush bowl when it counted.
Now they're giving each other bipartisan backslaps for their brilliant handling of a delicate foreign-policy crisis. But all the Filipinos saw was three weeks of President Reagan taking every position on the opinion compass about whether Marcos was a cool dude or what. The administration didn't get around to "throw the bum out" until Ferdinand and Imelda were practically unpacking their underwear in Guam. I don't think there's a way to exaggerate the true love we could have had in the Philippines if we'd gotten on the side of the angels and stayed there. But, I was quick to point out to my Philippine friends, it could have been worse. We could have lent B-52s to Marcos the way we did to Nguyen Van Thieu.
(O'Rourke, 84-85)
So to bring it all the way back to when you asked, "What condition?" I think you're being a little disingenuous with your, "Hey, I'm not an American," bit. That you're not American is irrelevant to the fact that your position asks Muslims to keep taking it:
Tiassa said:
Do we tell battered wives to just go home and be patient? Do we tell rape survivors to seek out their attackers and offer them another one? Do we tell Americans to bare their chests and wait for the terrorists to come and hit us again?
Why on earth would you ask such a condition of Muslims?
I think it very hateful to ask a people to tolerate the kind of violence and exploitation that nobody else in the world is expected to tolerate.
What we really need to know is what fatwas you would like whom to issue. Because without that, it just sounds like you're asking Muslims to accept injustice until they do what no society in human history has ever done.
I figure that there is no such thing as terrorism in the middle of a war, when soldiers & government is targeted. But I am not limiting terrorism to the Americans. What about the rest of the world? The Islamist bombings in Russia, the Madrid bombings, the bali bombings, the Libyan massacres, in India, in the Philippines, in Southern China, etc. Is everybody conspiring against the muslims or is there something wrong in their common point of view?
The modern institutions that affect the world, e.g. UN, World Bank/IMF, &c., grew out of an ideology that treated Arabs poorly.
In the wake of World War II, the United States and Britain considered Iran, Iraq, and Saudi Arabia in terms of, "You take one, I'll get the other, and we'll both work on the third." And we've been happy to contribute to the oppression of the people in exchange for good oil prices ever since.
Before that? Well, ever since the end of the empire, it's been rough going for much of the Arab world.
In the meantime, there's Nepal, DRC, the recent fracas in Liberia, a successful mission in the Solomon Islands to restore peace, drug-funded Marxists in South America, even recent arrests of white Americans for stockpiling weapons and plotting against the government.
The people of the United States are largely superficial insofar as the vastly dominant market ideology is one of, "Entertain me." Real information gets bad ratings; it needs to be jazzed up and stylized. Remember that there's a constant ratings war going on with the news media. The lives of most news organizations depend on playing the game.
We don't hear much about Nepal because Americans will have a particularly hard time understanding it. We haven't a whole lot of Nepalese-Americans, so Americans haven't a cultural kinship to relate to.
Additionally, Americans will only get pissed off at the Nepalese ingrates. After all, we gave their
children jobs! At the going rate, too! Why can't they be happy? Aren't they smart enough to figure out to be happy? Well, no. I would love for someone to explain to me in detail how one is supposed to be happy when the only jobs available pay so poorly that your children have to work dangerous, excruciating conditions for not nearly enough money?
Africa? Americans simply don't understand conditions in which warring fighters eat pygmies in order to magically-increase their accuracy with a rifle and their stealth in the jungle? Nor do they react to more mundane issues. Functional comprehension of the Liberian situation was beyond the capabilities of the majority of information consumers.
The folks who conspired in that were very few. It is unfair to use a rogue & isolated issue as an excuse to demonize the entire birth of a huge nation.
It is very difficult to run a city. I cant make any comment with what you have told me. There are lots of factors to consider. But I don’t see how the above is related to the assertion that Americans would hurt other people for money.
In addition to being a testament to the supreme importance of money, it reminds that the simple benefit of education is worth depriving people of for money. This
despite the
fact that an educated populace makes more money.
At the heart of it, Americans are generally superficial. Some of this is accidental, some of it inherent.
I live in Ontario I have never heard of anyone speak like that about you Americans.
One of the quiet scandals so far of our electoral system is the bribing of poor people for votes. In West Virginia, fifteen bucks
or a flask of whiskey is all it took. In Chicago, a hundred bucks to a man in need of medication:
We'll help you, but only if you give over part of your right as an American. Or a hundred-sixty to a woman in the hospital, whose vote would later be thrown out when it was discovered that she voted for the "wrong" candidate. Our drug war that builds our prison culture? It's part of Congress' power to regulate
commerce. Marijuana came under the hard hammer in 1937, to make way for nylon. Our cultural expressions generally aspire after vaunted values that are too expensive for most to care about when it comes right down to doing something about it. I mean, people vote in tax rebellions--e.g. voting against all revenue measures as a political statement--to the point of underfunding schools and, in the case of King County, Washington, canceling emergency medical services. (On the EMS issue, when people woke up the next day and realized what they'd done, they begged and pleaded until we had a special election and the measure was passed. This, of course, at the same time that the legislature was overriding the direct will of the people in order to build two stadia.) When our cultural expressions aspire to noble values, it presents a beautiful America. When our cultural expressions turn inward and look at what's there, it tends to be critical to the point of self-loathing. What separates Iraq from other nations? It's swimming in oil. Why is there so much controversy about Americans getting medicine in Canada? Money--it doesn't go to directly to American coffers, doesn't cycle through American middlemen. Even our most sacred things, too. Religion--televangelism is a multibillion-dollar industry. Baseball--praising the success of the Yankees is to praise the spending of money. News media is a
business, and must answer to the bottom line; legitimate news stories are killed for the benefit of advertising revenues. (In fact, the so-called "liberal media conspiracy" is not a liberal thing at all, but an acknowledgment of the financial necessities of being in the news media.) Music? Ever hear the word "payola"? It's technically illegal, but it still exists in a more complex form that keeps many good musicians from the benefits of radio exposure--when you listen to music on the radio, you're listening to paid advertisements. It got so bad that banks were charging people money in order to withdraw their money: every little thing had to show revenue.
You know, there are some legitimate budget figures that indicate our true financial obligations in the US in terms of debt push as high as fifty-trillion dollars. That's how we do it, by finding new ways to cook the books, and when we underfund our schools, it eventually becomes that most people are unable to follow the tricks of the trade. That's how you understate debts and budgets: hide money.
But we need to spend that money. Because it's what people want. And spending money is the way to make people happy.
In any given election, you'll find communities in America voting against their own children's schools, yet blaming the teachers who aren't paid enough to begin with and are often funding classroom activities out of their own pockets for not doing enough. And that sentiment of disappointment in the results of an underfunded school compels people to believe that they should not fund the schools any better until they produce unnatural returns.
Is there anyplace sacred to you in the world? Don't tell us where it is, or Starbucks and WalMart might build there.
Is that really the ideology in Canada? Do they say, "This place is important to people because of history and heritage. That means they like to come here. That makes it a perfect place for a new department store, video store, and fast-food restaurant."
Do they really say, "We're going to underfund this important project because we want to save money until it functions as if it has all the money it needs"?
One of the assuaging factors in justifying the Iraqi Bush Adventure was the widespread belief that Iraq's oil would pay for the war.
The United States has some odd cultural priorities, and they can be downright foul in some cases. Our addiction to money
is excessive.
Its how you try to see me. As is evident in the above, your radical interpretation of something I said.
According to your note regarding Bells, I'll just acknowledge what's already in the topic:
Bells said:
I suggest you read through all of your posts in this forum since you first joined and then you'd see where he and many others have gotten that idea.
Any questions?
Dr. No said:
You’ve got to be kidding me. Here maybe I need to clarify further: Only states or nations are in the position of declaring wars.
According to whom?
You?
Just explain how the Japanese civilians are victimized by the US. Or if that is too hard for you, try Mexico. Or China. Or Saudi Arabia.
•
Japan: I wasn't aware Japan had a problem with us of late. They've made out rather well since we nuked them.
•
Mexico: Well ... we could start with how we treat Mexicans in this country. And businesses don't go down to Mexico to pay the kind of wages you pay in the United States.
•
China: The American standard of living has every reason to honor and seek to perpetuate unsafe working conditions and poor wages in China.
•
Saudi Arabia: Given how folks are getting wary of the Saud, one might wonder why. These days American critics complain about Saudi Arabia's royal dictatorship, yet we've coddled it as much as possible--because of oil--for fifty years.
I am familiar with their histories but not with specific US policies on each of them states.
Well ... then I must reiterate my earlier suggestion to do some reading. For instance, Schwarzkopf to Schwarzkopf, from one to the next. One Schwarzkopf screws up Iran, the other fights Iraq. The irony is that the younger was attempting to mop up a problem the United States had gotten itself into as a result of the backlash against the results of the elder's actions. The sins of the father had come to bear on the son, so to speak.
• If he directly threatens my country and his overthrow is a promising solution to the conflict
• If he is causing great instability in a region
• If he causes the suffering of the people that he had pledged to serve.
And if none of those can be shown to be the case, should the overthrow at least secure power for a political leader who does do these things?
It's what the US government does, in order to help people.
____________________
• New York Times. "The World's Sweatshop". See http://www.nytimes.com/pages/world/worldspecial4/
• Scahill, Jeremy. "The Saddam in Rumsfeld's Closet". CommonDreams.org, August 2, 2004. See http://www.commondreams.org/views02/0802-01.htm
• More or Less. "Saddam Hussein al-Majid al Tikriti". See http://www.moreorless.au.com/killers/hussein.htm
• Thompson, Hunter S. Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas. New York: Vintage, 1989 (1971)
• O'Rourke, P.J. "Goons, Guns and Gold". Republican Party Reptile. New York: Atlantic Monthly Press, 1987.
