2.16.2003
GOOD! GOOD!- I thought by the short pause in posts that everyone got tired and left, but it was everyone just drawing a breath. I really enjoyed Chad's post. I agree with much of what you wrote. I have said many of the same things myself (we don't know anything outside of CNN, maybe pull out of outside countries, media twists the facts, etc).
I agree also, that the war on terror is a misnomer. There is no way to win, but I think that there are many actions we should take, and are taking some of them. I don't really know what would be a better term... War On The People Who Attacked Us or War On The Hopelessly Misled or something like that, maybe, but that doesn't fit well in a sound bite. I think that we have sat on the sidelines for many many years while other countries have suffered under terrorist attacks, but it took a large scale attack on us to wake us up, much like the wake-up out of Isolationism right before WWII. There are many similarities to WWII (ie surprise attack, not wanting to be involved in the affairs outside our country, long term and deadly (for all sides) response, attempts at appeasement of the enemy, etc). The long term, post-action problems also remain as before. Reconstruction, the terrorist equivalent of denazification, nation building, to list a few.
So, that brings us to correct action. Or correct inaction, perhaps.
I somewhat disagree with the idea that any US action inherently breeds terrorism. I think that the power vacuum left behind a military action breeds terrorism. We made long term friends, and became allies with many of our old enemies. The British (War of 1812), Japanese (WWII), Germany (WWII) are just few... The latter two are particularly surprising because of the violence, intensity and duration of the conflict (we NUKED Japan and they still became our friends). I think that the reason we became friends with our old enemies is because we are the first civilization in history to actually rebuild our enemies after defeating them. I think that is an important lesson to remember, and I think that it has been remembered for Afghanistan, and plans are in the works for a post-Saddam Iraq, should the situation arise (I am having a hard time seeing how it wont). I can see no reason why we can't become friends with a democratic Iraq, like we are with Turkey.
The conflict of interest point is an interesting one to bring up, in light of international response to the US. I was watching some fill-in-the-blank news program (which, as we all know, is of questionable truth) and they were addressing the topic of France's rejection of the US's ideas. France has a politically sizeable Arab (or Islamic-the terms are somewhat interchangeable) population-one of the largest in Europe, and the power structure in France knows very little about it. They are somewhat afraid of it, I was told. France also has larger economic ties with Iraq than any other nation in the world. Most of the business Iraq has done in the last 25 years has been with France. The projection of the talking heads was that France would kick and scream about any change in the region, but would jump on the bandwagon at the politically expedient last minute to join the coalition in the (fairly likely) event of military action, to protect its financial interests. It will be a good indicator of the quality of the talking heads to see if this happens or not.
Germany is also an interesting one... Gerhard Schroeder was elected (by an exceedingly slim majority) on the premise that he would keep German troops out of a war. During his campaign he snubbed the US and continued to do so after his election. From what I understand, there is a growing German resentment to him and his ideas. His party lost in a very big way in their equivalent of midterm elections, even (or especially) in his home state of Hesse, which had helped propel him to office. The general German polulation still thinks of the US as Germany's best international friend (I believe the numbers were something like 75%-78% or something like that). I think that Germany will most likely still resist a US-led war, but I think that Gerhard Schroeder will probably be sidelined after his term. It will be something to watch, definitely.
As for action, that is a hazier issue. I was talking about it with some friends from my department here and it kind of boiled down to a couple of things...
Iraq certainly has chemical and biological weapons. This much we know. They may or may not have nuclear weapons, but I am leaning toward them having them. I have no direct facts outside of government action. I highly doubt that we would put all this effort into a troop buildup if we (or, more correctly, the powers that be) did not have a very good idea of what was there. There are many people who are calling on the US to disclose more of its intelligence, but the US is holding back, understandably. The US wants to discredit the inspectors. They want to prove that Saddam has been leading the UN around by a leash for the last 12-15 years. Which I believe he has.
So the existence of these weapons put us in a situation of "kill us now or kill us later". We will lose citizens in a war on Iraq. Just like we would lose citizens in a terrorist attack. The Cold War idea of containment and Mutual Assured Destruction does not work here, because the nuclear/chemical/biological cat is already out of the bag and each particular terrorists destruction is not assured, because we have nowhere to directly point our guns. And this is very much an us-or-them war, because it has been declared that way by them (Saddam, Osama). So we can take our losses now or take them later. I guess I would prefer to take them now, while we can in some way control and prevent them, instead of just waiting and wondering when it will come.
So we sit and wait. I think that education on the issue is impossible, because there are no real facts. Who do you believe? Corporate Media? The politically motivated web sites that tout "news" with no sources? Politicians? Me? Things are not looking good here...:)
The only real disagreement I had with what you wrote was fairly minor. You wrote "I warn you now... the next enemy is free-thinkers". I disagree. I think that the next enemy is Christians. But I have personal reasons for thinking that, I suppose. It is fairly natural to think of whatever group you associate yourself with as the underdog. It seems that Christians have become the last safe group to hate. We are looked at as being narrow-minded and politcally incorrect for the things we think, and I think that is only going to intensify in the future. But it will be something, like all of these others, to watch and think about.
The only other thing I disagreed with was the general perception of Muslims. I have several Muslim friends here at school (One from Bangladesh and my teacher, who believe it or not is from Iraq) and a Hindu friend (also from Bangladesh), and I asked them if they had noticed anything or had any trouble since 9/11 and they said that from the general public, nothing had changed. They were just as accepted as before, but they knew the government was watching very closely. They thought that their phones had been monitored (I don't know how you would know, but this is what they said) and they had been interviewed a couple of times. They said the INS rules were changing, as well, which put them in some difficult positions. I think that Americans can see the difference between Islam, Arabs and terrorism, even though they sometimes share the same face.
Anyhow, good discussion!
Keep it up. Does anybody disagree with what I said? Agree? Did I make any logical or informational blunders? What do you think?
I agree also, that the war on terror is a misnomer. There is no way to win, but I think that there are many actions we should take, and are taking some of them. I don't really know what would be a better term... War On The People Who Attacked Us or War On The Hopelessly Misled or something like that, maybe, but that doesn't fit well in a sound bite. I think that we have sat on the sidelines for many many years while other countries have suffered under terrorist attacks, but it took a large scale attack on us to wake us up, much like the wake-up out of Isolationism right before WWII. There are many similarities to WWII (ie surprise attack, not wanting to be involved in the affairs outside our country, long term and deadly (for all sides) response, attempts at appeasement of the enemy, etc). The long term, post-action problems also remain as before. Reconstruction, the terrorist equivalent of denazification, nation building, to list a few.
So, that brings us to correct action. Or correct inaction, perhaps.
I somewhat disagree with the idea that any US action inherently breeds terrorism. I think that the power vacuum left behind a military action breeds terrorism. We made long term friends, and became allies with many of our old enemies. The British (War of 1812), Japanese (WWII), Germany (WWII) are just few... The latter two are particularly surprising because of the violence, intensity and duration of the conflict (we NUKED Japan and they still became our friends). I think that the reason we became friends with our old enemies is because we are the first civilization in history to actually rebuild our enemies after defeating them. I think that is an important lesson to remember, and I think that it has been remembered for Afghanistan, and plans are in the works for a post-Saddam Iraq, should the situation arise (I am having a hard time seeing how it wont). I can see no reason why we can't become friends with a democratic Iraq, like we are with Turkey.
The conflict of interest point is an interesting one to bring up, in light of international response to the US. I was watching some fill-in-the-blank news program (which, as we all know, is of questionable truth) and they were addressing the topic of France's rejection of the US's ideas. France has a politically sizeable Arab (or Islamic-the terms are somewhat interchangeable) population-one of the largest in Europe, and the power structure in France knows very little about it. They are somewhat afraid of it, I was told. France also has larger economic ties with Iraq than any other nation in the world. Most of the business Iraq has done in the last 25 years has been with France. The projection of the talking heads was that France would kick and scream about any change in the region, but would jump on the bandwagon at the politically expedient last minute to join the coalition in the (fairly likely) event of military action, to protect its financial interests. It will be a good indicator of the quality of the talking heads to see if this happens or not.
Germany is also an interesting one... Gerhard Schroeder was elected (by an exceedingly slim majority) on the premise that he would keep German troops out of a war. During his campaign he snubbed the US and continued to do so after his election. From what I understand, there is a growing German resentment to him and his ideas. His party lost in a very big way in their equivalent of midterm elections, even (or especially) in his home state of Hesse, which had helped propel him to office. The general German polulation still thinks of the US as Germany's best international friend (I believe the numbers were something like 75%-78% or something like that). I think that Germany will most likely still resist a US-led war, but I think that Gerhard Schroeder will probably be sidelined after his term. It will be something to watch, definitely.
As for action, that is a hazier issue. I was talking about it with some friends from my department here and it kind of boiled down to a couple of things...
Iraq certainly has chemical and biological weapons. This much we know. They may or may not have nuclear weapons, but I am leaning toward them having them. I have no direct facts outside of government action. I highly doubt that we would put all this effort into a troop buildup if we (or, more correctly, the powers that be) did not have a very good idea of what was there. There are many people who are calling on the US to disclose more of its intelligence, but the US is holding back, understandably. The US wants to discredit the inspectors. They want to prove that Saddam has been leading the UN around by a leash for the last 12-15 years. Which I believe he has.
So the existence of these weapons put us in a situation of "kill us now or kill us later". We will lose citizens in a war on Iraq. Just like we would lose citizens in a terrorist attack. The Cold War idea of containment and Mutual Assured Destruction does not work here, because the nuclear/chemical/biological cat is already out of the bag and each particular terrorists destruction is not assured, because we have nowhere to directly point our guns. And this is very much an us-or-them war, because it has been declared that way by them (Saddam, Osama). So we can take our losses now or take them later. I guess I would prefer to take them now, while we can in some way control and prevent them, instead of just waiting and wondering when it will come.
So we sit and wait. I think that education on the issue is impossible, because there are no real facts. Who do you believe? Corporate Media? The politically motivated web sites that tout "news" with no sources? Politicians? Me? Things are not looking good here...:)
The only real disagreement I had with what you wrote was fairly minor. You wrote "I warn you now... the next enemy is free-thinkers". I disagree. I think that the next enemy is Christians. But I have personal reasons for thinking that, I suppose. It is fairly natural to think of whatever group you associate yourself with as the underdog. It seems that Christians have become the last safe group to hate. We are looked at as being narrow-minded and politcally incorrect for the things we think, and I think that is only going to intensify in the future. But it will be something, like all of these others, to watch and think about.
The only other thing I disagreed with was the general perception of Muslims. I have several Muslim friends here at school (One from Bangladesh and my teacher, who believe it or not is from Iraq) and a Hindu friend (also from Bangladesh), and I asked them if they had noticed anything or had any trouble since 9/11 and they said that from the general public, nothing had changed. They were just as accepted as before, but they knew the government was watching very closely. They thought that their phones had been monitored (I don't know how you would know, but this is what they said) and they had been interviewed a couple of times. They said the INS rules were changing, as well, which put them in some difficult positions. I think that Americans can see the difference between Islam, Arabs and terrorism, even though they sometimes share the same face.
Anyhow, good discussion!
Keep it up. Does anybody disagree with what I said? Agree? Did I make any logical or informational blunders? What do you think?
< 18:12 >< /j >
