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| 5/23 |
| 2001/9/16 [Politics/Domestic/911, Politics/Foreign/Asia/India] UID:22478 Activity:insanely high |
9/16 This is the most sober article reporting on the events:
http://www.guardian.co.uk/comment/story/0,3604,551036,00.html
-ali.
\_ Yeah, i've been using the guardian as a source since the
US papers have resorted to yellow journalism. This is
a good article.
\_ Fuck you you TRAITOROUS piece of shit. The author
is probably Neville Chamberlains grandson.
\_ The USA, like most countries in a position of hegemony, whether
it wants to or not, has done some pretty questionable things.
Likewise, some of our policies, while not "bad" per se, were
at least poorly thought through, and have had bad results.
To discount those is not a wise idea if you want to at least
be able to understand (not justify, mind you) the terrible
actions you see from terrorists. It's unfortunate, though, that
it's so difficult for a lot of people to distinguish bad acts
from evil ones, and that any questioning of these acts is
immediately interpreted as a condemnation of the US... -John
\_ It's one thing to question Billy Bob's
bombing of Serbia, its a whole other matter
to slam America and the values for which she
stands.
\_ What does that make you? McCarthy's protoge?
\_ Do yourself and this country a favor and pick
up a history book.
\_ "Beware of being drawn off from the truth, either by
the worldly prudence of half-hearted professors, or by
pretences to merit in the self-righteous Pharisee."
\_ "Do not judge, or you too will be judged. For in the
same way you judge others, you will be judged, and with
the measure you use, it will be measured to you.
- the lord
\_ let me get this straight. you're calling me a traitor
because i'm espousing an article that is trying to
motivate americans to become better acquainted with
their country's foreign policy?
listen, dimwit, i'm telling you should find out what
your country is doing. and you're calling me a traitor.
go look up traitor, and then go look up the words dimwit
and nimrod. then decide which of these adjectives apply
to which of the two of us. -ali
\_ In his fervor to rationalize, almost justify,
the attacks, Milne betrays his socialist,
Anti-American (and West) pro-militant Islamism
dogma.
That you would applaud such an article
suggests either that yes, like Milne, you are a
seditionist, or that you're understanding of
history is painfully naive or critically
misinformed.
\_ --wait... ali said dimwit AND nimrod. Could someone
please change the file permissions of the motd?! quick!
\_ yes, clearly ali is inciting a riot.
\_ call it what you want, but putting armed guards at airports
and all of the other Draconian measures that are going to get
and all of the other Draconian measures that are going to
crammed down our throats in the next fews months will only
be dealing with the symptoms, and not the real problem. and
no, I don't necessarily disagree with more stringent security
at airports, but we could very easily get a lot of our
constitutional rights trampled on for no good reason.
is probably Neville's Chamerlains grandson.
is probably Neville's Chamberlains grandson.
- thelord |
| 5/23 |
|
| www.guardian.co.uk/comment/story/0,3604,551036,00.html From the president to passersby on the streets, the message seems to be the same: this is an inexplicable assault on freedom and democracy, which must be answered with overwhelming force - just as soon as someone can construct a credible account of who was actually responsible. But any glimmer of recognition of why people might have been driven to carry out such atrocities, sacrificing their own lives in the process - or why the United States is hated with such bitterness, not only in Arab and Muslim countries, but across the developing world - seems almost entirely absent. Perhaps it is too much to hope that, as rescue workers struggle to pull firefighters from the rubble, any but a small minority might make the connection between what has been visited upon them and what their government has visited upon large parts of the world. But make that connection they must, if such tragedies are not to be repeated, potentially with even more devastating consequences. US political leaders are doing their people no favours by reinforcing popular ignorance with self-referential rhetoric. And the echoing chorus of Tony Blair, whose determination to bind Britain ever closer to US foreign policy ratchets up the threat to our own cities, will only fuel anti-western sentiment. So will calls for the defence of "civilisation", with its overtones of Samuel Huntington's poisonous theories of post-cold war confrontation between the west and Islam, heightening perceptions of racism and hypocrisy. As Mahatma Gandhi famously remarked when asked his opinion of western civilisation, it would be a good idea. Since George Bush's father inaugurated his new world order a decade ago, the US, supported by its British ally, bestrides the world like a colossus. Unconstrained by any superpower rival or system of global governance, the US giant has rewritten the global financial and trading system in its own interest; If, as yesterday's Wall Street Journal insisted, the east coast carnage was the fruit of the Clinton administration's Munich-like appeasement of the Palestinians, the mind boggles as to what US Republicans imagine to be a Churchillian response. It is this record of unabashed national egotism and arrogance that drives anti-Americanism among swaths of the world's population, for whom there is little democracy in the current distribution of global wealth and power. If it turns out that Tuesday's attacks were the work of Osama bin Laden's supporters, the sense that the Americans are once again reaping a dragons' teeth harvest they themselves sowed will be overwhelming. It was the Americans, after all, who poured resources into the 1980s war against the Soviet-backed regime in Kabul, at a time when girls could go to school and women to work. Bin Laden and his mojahedin were armed and trained by the CIA and MI6, as Afghanistan was turned into a wasteland and its communist leader Najibullah left hanging from a Kabul lamp post with his genitals stuffed in his mouth. But by then Bin Laden had turned against his American sponsors, while US-sponsored Pakistani intelligence had spawned the grotesque Taliban now protecting him. To punish its wayward Afghan offspring, the US subsequently forced through a sanctions regime which has helped push 4m to the brink of starvation, according to the latest UN figures, while Afghan refugees fan out across the world. All this must doubtless seem remote to Americans desperately searching the debris of what is expected to be the largest-ever massacre on US soil - as must the killings of yet more Palestinians in the West Bank yesterday, or even the 2m estimated to have died in Congo's wars since the overthrow of the US-backed Mobutu regime. Already, the Bush administration is assembling an international coalition for an Israeli-style war against terrorism, as if such counter-productive acts of outrage had an existence separate from the social conditions out of which they arise. But for every "terror network" that is rooted out, another will emerge - until the injustices and inequalities that produce them are addressed. |