At 1:57 PM +0200 9/22/01, Hendrik Jan Veenstra wrote:
>Thoughts from the mind of Kool Musick, 9/20/01:
>
>>100 aircraft are now flying
>>out Saturday to Kuwait, and her son is amongst them. She is sincerely
>>terrified that she will never see him again. What do I say to her?
>
>... and what do you say to the tens of thousands of innocent
>Afghanistan citizens, most of them dead-poor, who are fleeing their
>country because Bush thinks cowboy language like "smoke them out of
>their holes" and "wanted: dead or alive" is an appropriate response
>to the current events?
>Whatever happened to "unguilty until proven guilty"? Isn't that the
>basis for our judicial system? As far as I know, no guilty persons
>have yet been found, and evidence still is inconclusive.
Protecting the innocent is always a priority. In the west and
anywhere else where there is a homicidal maniac at large who has
killed and promises to kill again the #1 priority is to apprehend him
to and the purpose of that is to protect the innocent. In this
instance whether that means dead or alive is mainly up to Bin Laden
and the Taliban . Bin Laden has been video taping himself making
threats that came true and calling on his followers to kill Americans
where ever and when ever possible for about ten years now. It is
idiocy of the first order to call this man innocent.
Dead or alive is just common sense.
> Still the
>US president (of all people) calls for murder...
>
Complete sophist bullshit. Get a grip.
> and thereby already
>makes completely innocent victims...
Where is the tense in this sentence are we talking future or present
because AFAIK the US has yet to have fired a shot. Lots of people in
the US have been fired upon though.
>My heart bleeds for all those killed, or all who've lost relatives...
>But despite the enormity of this tragedy, it would prove a positive
>point about our so-called western democratic, humanitarian ideals if
>we could all keep seeing things in persepctive.
Alright lets put things in perspective. 6 thousand people have just
been killed very likely by the followers of a single man who is a
fugitive from justice in his own country. The Saudis feelings about
Bin Laden are about the same as the US citizens feel about Timothy
McVeigh for about the same reasons. Bin Laden who is definitely
insane but has never been called stupid has chosen what is probably
one of the most brutal backwards countries on the planet to hide out
in for lots of good reasons, number one among them probably being
that the Afghan's psyches have been twisted by so many years of
poverty, war and brutality from their leaders that instead of seeing
Bin Laden as the sick fuck the folks where he comes from know him to
be Bin Laden probably just seems like another pretty normal guy to
them.
I agree that it is sad that innocent Afghani people are probably
going to suffer and I truly hope that there is some way of avoiding
that. I have yet to see anything that vaguely resembles a real
solution being proposed by anyone. Sticking your head in the sand is
not going help.
It is the Taliban that said they were willing to shed every last drop
of Afghan blood to protect Bin Laden. It is utterly understandable
and reasonable that the proposed donors are taking their plasma
elsewhere. I wish them luck.
The Taliban could avoid all kinds of trouble and in fact gain
international praise by simply kicking Bin Laden out of their
country. After all what do they owe him? Is it that he helped them
overthrow the Marxists in the 70-80s war? The US did too why are
they not grateful to the US? The only US involvement in Afghanistan
that I know of is that we gave some small amount of support to anti
Marxist factions among whom where the Taliban to overthrow the
Marxists. Other than that the only area I know of is that the US has
tried to get the Taliban to stop Afghanis from growing and selling
Heroin for export. So why do the Afghan leadership suffer this mad
fucking foreigner Bin Laden to live on their soil? They should not
put him up or put up with him and if they had a modicum of
responsibility they would not. But then I can't think of anyone
anywhere who claim that the Taliban are a responsible leadership.
What do you think HJ?
If you want to object to someone's behavior why don't you object to
the Taliban or Bin Ladin.
But after all it is easy to understand why Western Europeans might
have a different take on all this than US citizens. After all they
don't have the gun pointed at them. OTOH some day some African
victim of the diamond cartel sponsored wars might decide that Bin
Laden's tactics look pretty smart and that they have nothing to loose
anyway so "why not just start dropping some airliners on Belgium?"
It will be interesting to hear the European take on terrorism then.
>The sadness never stops...
I cannot blame the Afghani people too much for having a rather
twisted view of the US. After all they are poor, brutalized, have
limited access to information and the main sources they have are
people for whom anything or anyone not Islamic is by definition the
enemy. For Europeans on the other hand the sophist sniping that has
been going on around this incident is inexcusable.
No one has been able to specify the Taliban's grievance against the
US that is large enough for them to allow some one like Bin Laden to
operate freely within their borders. Their main objection to the US
is the extremely hypocritical inaccurate and unfair assertion that
the US is anti-Islamic. It's just not true but that does not seem to
stop a lot of Muslim populations from promptly forgetting any
incident where US policy was on their side in a dispute. That the
"Leadership" of Afghanistan a country where any religion but Islam is
outlawed should make that accusation against a country where there
is a large Muslim population living alongside a Christian one and
both are protected by law is hypocrisy of a rather astounding
magnitude and it is rather telling that our western European critics
never see fit to mention it. (It is also sad to note that this
incident has made protecting the rights of the Muslim minority
within the US more difficult than ever)
Our western European critics bitch and whine about Bush's behavior in
this crisis but are very low on specifics regarding what he should be
doing different. Go slow? He has been. Investigate? Being done.
Do not act unilaterally but work with other countries to build
consensus and coordinate effort? Being done. Use all diplomatic
channels. Being done.
They bitch because Bush is talking tough. Really. Get a grip. The
Taliban did not respond to the reasonable request of the Pakistani's
to hand over Bin Laden. Should people expect no tough talk from the
US president under these circumstances? Is that reasonable or would
it even be wise?
As a matter of fact I am reading that some of the Afghan clerics are
saying that Bin Laden should leave voluntarilly so the US tactics may
be working better than you make them out to be.
About all they are left with is his stupid demeanor and poor oration
skills. He does look and sound stupid but these are not capitol
offenses. I would rather have someone looking and sounding stupid
and displaying smart behavior than the other way around
>Apparently you didn't see the footage from Afghanistan on tv... Any
>idea how many completely innocent people are on the run right now?
>Tens of thousands, running through hostile mountains, leaving their
>belongings behind, only to reach a 1.5 *million* people refugee-camp
>in Pakistan...
This line of reasoning is typical of the knee jerk vilification we
Americans have to put up with. The US is eternally vilified by the
Taliban "leadership", the "leadership" provides haven for a man who
organises an attack on the US then when asked by the US through
Pakistani intermediaries (who in spite of the difficult situation the
incident has put them in see the sense of the request) to turn him
over, the "leadership" vows to be willing protect him with the "last
drop of Afghan blood" so in the western European mind it is Bush's
words that are to blame for the blood donors designated by the
aforementioned "leadership" deciding to abscond with their plasma to
parts unknown?
> >So please think twice before you dispense your anti-American comments.
>
>I do think twice.
May once or three times or some odd number would work better for you.
> And more than that. I just don't think my post
>was anti-American. There's a difference between the US as a people,
>and the US as a political entity.
Not this time. American views are nearer consensus on this than they
probably have been in a very long time.
>I mourn for the people (or at
>least those that have in whichever way been hurt by the attack).
>That doesn't mean I have to agree with all actions or utterings of
>the political body.
>There's plenty of sadness, in the US and elsewhere, and terrorism is
>a horrible presence on this planet. However, simple demagogic talk
>like "whoever is not with us, is with the terrorists" is just not
>acceptable to me. One of the things that's completely being ignored
>in such platitudes is the fact that it's not just America & co versus
>"the rest of the world". Some people love America, and with good
>reason. Some hate America, and with equally good reason.
I am tired of watching Americans get crucified by: European pseudo
intellectuals looking for prey, banana republic dictators looking for
a boogi man to blame for their own failures, third world aid
recipients angry because they want more aid than they are getting,
knee jerk college kids with high school conspiracy theories, Islamic
militants looking for someone they can say they are "protecting"
their population from, their own press, etc... etc...
Americans are easy targets. We are wealthy, largely uninformed about
the world outside our borders, under-versed in history and geography,
often loud and crass, etc.... but I just can't believe that
Americans are the evil perpetrators of some scheme for world
domination, we aren't that organized. We are however irrationally
portrayed that way day in and day out around the world and the result
is that some poor suckers actually end up buying into the whole Great
Satan theory after which anything becomes possible for them. And the
extended results are what we are witnessing.
Actually I sometimes wish there was some shadowy power pulling the
strings behind the curtain. If there was, one so intelligent would
certainly understand that the world would run a lot more smoothly
without all of this mindless destruction and would try to arrange
things to defend his interests.
> Does
>anyone really believe the Palestines will ever cooperate with the US?
#1 Palistine is not Afghanistan. The Afghanistan government supports
a terrorist who calls for our destruction and has been doing so for
the past ten years. He may or may not be the party responsible or
among the parties responsible in this particular incident but there
have been at least some where he was. The Afghans in power are
people that have directly benifitted from US aid and this is their
form of gratitude. The should not be putting this guy up or putting
up with him period. If they were responsible people they would not.
#2. The US cannot control the Israelis or the Palestinians. The US
has been trying to use what influence it has over Israel for years to
get them to lighten up on the Palestinians, because among other
things, Israeli belligerence causes the US problems as well, but
every time things start to move in a positive direction extremists on
one side or the other start killing people. It is ridiculous to
blame the US for that. But don't let that stop you. It never stops
anyone else.
#3. I will not deny that history has been unfair to them but the
Palestinians have at some time to take some responsibility for their
own actions. There are lots of examples of people who have overcome
worse situations by acting in a positive rational way. The
Vietnamese for example just blow me away with the way they have been
able to keep their society together through all they have been
through in the last century but another example might be the
Palestinian's adversaries the Jews who have historically had some
pretty tough times too but no matter how tough things get they always
appeared to keep institutions like schools (like the Vietnamese) and
research and art functioning kept looking for creative ways to deal
with their problems.
In the climate of political correctness prevailing in the West it is
not popular to believe that one Ideology may have more merit than
another but in fact its does seem that some ideologies do in fact
work better than others.
There is a saying that the best revenge is to live well. True I
suppose, but of course to do that first you have to continue living
at all and if people hate you simply because you are well off and
they aren't that form of revenge becomes a life and death struggle
too.
There is a Russian joke about a peasant named Alex who hates his
neighbor Sascha because he has a sheep and Alex has nothing. So one
night Alex is awakened from his sleep by an angel who says he wants
to help and can grant him a wish. Alex thinks for a minute and
smiles ecstatically makes his wish and says "thank you so much" to
the angel. So when Sascha wakes up in the morning he finds his sheep
is dead.
>Saying that anyone who doesn't like the US is therefore "with the
>terrorists" is, imo, a horrible and shortsighted thing to do.
True but so is playing apologist for the terrorists cause.
--
Dennis Gunn
Mightyjohn@...
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[L-OT] Re: OT Goodbye
2001-09-23 by Dennis Gunn