War And Peace
There is a persistent buzzing sound eminating from the mouth of one John F. (for Flip-flop) Kerry regarding the current difficulties in Iraq. Depending on what day of the week it is, Kerry will tell you:
1. We're losing.
2. He could do it all better than Bush.
3. Iraq is on the brink of civil war.
4. Iraq is a "distraction" taking us from our real target, Usama Bin Laden.
How, pray, will Mr. Kerry change all of this if by some unfortunate accident of fate (or perhaps massive vote fraud) he should find himself occupying the White House on January 20th? According to John, the way to do this is to get our "allies" (as if Britain, Poland, Australia, South Korea, Italy and a host of others were merely "acquaintances") to help us out. Specifically, France and Germany. The method by which Mr. Kerry is supposed to persuade such friends that it is in their interests to help the United States and Iraqis, when Mr.Bush could not, is left mysteriously undefined. If one had to take an educated guess, one would assume that Mr. Kerry feels that he is "more likable" (I rather like the concept of international relations devolving into a populatarity contest, don't you?). On the other hand, there is always outright bribery: forget that business about the FrankenReich forgiving debts and take contracts for reconstruction from Haliburton to give to Seimens or ELF. Of course, the sacred United Nations is supposed also to suddenly become competent and shoulder some of the load. If we planned on opening brothels in Iraq, I'd say get the U.N. on board RIGHT NOW.
Considering that the U.N., France and Germany were offered the opportunity to do the right thing prior to our invasion of Iraq, and declined, I don't think we should be rewarding them for being recalcitrant. I mean, it's not as if they don't owe us anything, right? I guess shouldering the burden of European defense for 60 years and lending legitimacy (and vast sums of money) to the U.N. were simpy our responsibilities, and it would be crass to ask for something in return.
And of course, the case for even doing the things I have just speculated on runs up against one major problem: Mr. Kerry has defined Iraq as "the wrong war, in the wrong place at the wrong time" or something similar. If a prospective President screams that the war is wrong, why would any self-respecting country (let alone the French) decide to get involved anyway? Are Germans and Frenchmen supposed to throw away their own few soldiers in a hopeless cause? Of course, this also runs up against the illogical position taken by Mr. Kerry that he once supported war full-throttle and now wants to take his vote back (for votes, no less). Would you follow a hypocrite into a war?
As for America losing this battle in Iraq, I beg to differ. Yes, Americans are being killed and there are certain places in Iraq that resemble Tombstone more than they do Singapore, but what did anyone expect? Was it realistic to believe that once Americans had overrun the country that a) everyone would be happy about it and b) once Saddam was in the pokey that his former enemies and cronies would just sit still? A major rule of thumb that has been with us from time immemorial with regards to war: when you eliminate the current regime, it usually gets messy when the former enemies of that regime jockey for power.
No one ever said that pacifying Iraq and turning it into a functioning first-class democracy was going to be a quick, easy and antisceptic job. Anyone who has taken even a cursory glance at history would know that.
In 1945, the United States emerged triumphant in the Second World War. We occupied Germany and Japan, removing the Nazi regime of Germany and the militarist regime in Japan. The occupations were made even more difficult by the fact that not much of an economy remained in either country because we happened to bomb them flat. It took DECADES for either country to recover and to begin functioning again. In the case of Germany, re-establishing democratic traditions was quite easy since Germans had been a unified country with a democratic tradition going back at least a century. Japan was a little more difficult for cultural reasons, however, Japan had been adapting Western industrial and political forms since 1856.
In 1953, the United States, at the head of a United Nations force, stopped North Korean and Chinese aggression against South Korea. Again, South Korea took decades to rebuild itself and to straighten out it's policital systems. And this was a country that had very few democratic traditions to lean on at all: Korea was a monarchy that had at various times, been absorbed by Chinese, Japanese and Russian armies, and hadn't known anything like self-government for nearly 200 years. Still, Koreans learned and they emerged from the wreckage of war as a stable democracy.
In the Middle East, Iraq in particular, we cannot even pretend that there was ever anything resembling a democratic tradition or a modern economy. Iraq had one industry and that was oil, and it was built by westerners until nationalized by successive repressive, felonious regimes. Iraqis have never (to my knowledge) had anything like an election, unless of course, it was a sham. We are dealing with a population that has suffered deprivation for a decade and half, repression for three decades and which has never had a clear stake in the direction of their own country. There are various ethnic and religious differences between it's citizens that cannot help be come to boil at some point. We have outside regional powers (Iran) attempting to manipulate events within Iraq for it's own purposes.
Establishing a functioning democratic entity under these conditions was almost certain to result in the distressing situation we see now.
Are we losing? No, because it's way too early to tell. Could Mr. Kerry do a better job? Since he claims he would do everyting Mr. Bush has already done, I don't see how his sparkling wit and bubbly personality helps the situation all that much. Is Iraq on the brink of civil war? Show me a country that has been occupied that hasn't been on the brink of civil war.
As for whether or not Iraq is a "distraction", Mr. Kerry and his fellow-travelers are afflicted with a nasty case of short-sightedness. Iraq was a sponsor of terrorism. It was widely believed that Saddam Hussein was working on the capability to turn Mr. Kerry's Nantucket lodgings into a radioactive pile of dust. And finally, the problem of terrorism is not a law-enforcement issue, nor is it a political issue: it is a CULTURAL issue. We could arrest and detain all the terrorists we want to in Gitmo, but it doesn't change the mindset. Democracy, a job and a stable society DOES change the mindset. That's what the war Iraq is all about now. To admit so, though, doesn't win Mr. Kerry any votes since societies rarely change quickly. The more misrable things are, the better it is for Kerry.
As for Usama bin Laden, he lays moldering in the bottom of some collpased cave near Tora Bora (I believe) and he was just a mascot anyway. The real issue is not the war, the casualties or the expense. The real issue is whether or not America can change Iraq and Iraqis for the better and make them an example for other nations of the Middle East. I'm betting we can, but Rome wasn't built in a day, was it?
Saturday, September 25, 2004
Tuesday, September 21, 2004
A Few Questions,If I may?
For John Kerry, John McCain and Chuck Hagel: Assuming that you did not EVER agree for the reasons for going to war with Iraq, and bearing in mind your communal assertions that we're handling all of this incorrectly, what would you, in your infinite, perfect wisdom do now to change any of it? If you said exactly what you all think, do you still honestly believe anyone would vote for you as dog-catcher in East Stumblebutt, Idaho afterwards?
Do you believe that America, given the benefit of the doubt for best intentions, having destroyed what passed for a government and infrastructure, law-enforcement, sanitation, public health systems, and an economy, now has absolutely NO moral obligation to help clean up a mess we, at the very least, exacerbated, in Iraq and Afghanistan? Do you believe that it's quite fine to invade a country, for whatever reason, and then cut and run before we set things right?
If I recall, Senator Kerry's war experience amounts to making home movies and shooting himself for purple hearts. Sentaor McCain's revolves around getting shot down and captured. I'm not sure about Hagel. But, do you distinguished gentlemen believe that your collective experience of...ahem...successful military operations gives you a greater insight into how future military operations should be conducted?
I wonder why it is that Mr. Kerry believes that he's entitled to a little bit more civility and consideration while his wife runs around castigating poltical opponents as "scumbags", and asking reporters (respectfully, I'm sure) to "shove it"? Additionally, I surmise that it must be difficult to bash "compassionate conservatism" while one's wife rants about how hurricane victims in third-world nations should have their children "run around naked" because all the donated clothing takes up valuable cargo space that could be better used to send condiments?
Does Mr. Kerry actually believe that skiing at the best resorts, windsurfing in Martha's Vineyard and riding around on $3,000 bicycles gives him insight on what it is the average American thinks, feels and wants?
Will Mr. Kerry eventually talk to a reporter?
When will the media point out that John Kerry is the scion of a old, liberal, Massachusetts politcal family with connections, who was born with a silver spoon in his mouth, with the same intensity and attention to detail that they display when making similar points about Mr. Bush?
Is John Edwards the democrat's answer to Dan Quayle?
Will it be Al Gore or Howard Dean that is eventually chosen as poster child for Prozac?
When will Mr. Kerry reveal his "secret" plans for his foreign policy? His economic plan? His education plan? His blueprint for the future of the country? His vision of a better and more robust America? Or do we have to listen to "I was in Vietnam for four months out of my 60 years of life" some more?
Will Mr. Kerry ever sign the SF180 form that will release all of his personal military records?
Will Dan Rather be able to get a job selling hotdogs at Yankee Stadium in December after this document fiasco? Or, like the woman in Alabama, will Mr.Kerry offer him a job that will no longer exist in November also?
For John Kerry, John McCain and Chuck Hagel: Assuming that you did not EVER agree for the reasons for going to war with Iraq, and bearing in mind your communal assertions that we're handling all of this incorrectly, what would you, in your infinite, perfect wisdom do now to change any of it? If you said exactly what you all think, do you still honestly believe anyone would vote for you as dog-catcher in East Stumblebutt, Idaho afterwards?
Do you believe that America, given the benefit of the doubt for best intentions, having destroyed what passed for a government and infrastructure, law-enforcement, sanitation, public health systems, and an economy, now has absolutely NO moral obligation to help clean up a mess we, at the very least, exacerbated, in Iraq and Afghanistan? Do you believe that it's quite fine to invade a country, for whatever reason, and then cut and run before we set things right?
If I recall, Senator Kerry's war experience amounts to making home movies and shooting himself for purple hearts. Sentaor McCain's revolves around getting shot down and captured. I'm not sure about Hagel. But, do you distinguished gentlemen believe that your collective experience of...ahem...successful military operations gives you a greater insight into how future military operations should be conducted?
I wonder why it is that Mr. Kerry believes that he's entitled to a little bit more civility and consideration while his wife runs around castigating poltical opponents as "scumbags", and asking reporters (respectfully, I'm sure) to "shove it"? Additionally, I surmise that it must be difficult to bash "compassionate conservatism" while one's wife rants about how hurricane victims in third-world nations should have their children "run around naked" because all the donated clothing takes up valuable cargo space that could be better used to send condiments?
Does Mr. Kerry actually believe that skiing at the best resorts, windsurfing in Martha's Vineyard and riding around on $3,000 bicycles gives him insight on what it is the average American thinks, feels and wants?
Will Mr. Kerry eventually talk to a reporter?
When will the media point out that John Kerry is the scion of a old, liberal, Massachusetts politcal family with connections, who was born with a silver spoon in his mouth, with the same intensity and attention to detail that they display when making similar points about Mr. Bush?
Is John Edwards the democrat's answer to Dan Quayle?
Will it be Al Gore or Howard Dean that is eventually chosen as poster child for Prozac?
When will Mr. Kerry reveal his "secret" plans for his foreign policy? His economic plan? His education plan? His blueprint for the future of the country? His vision of a better and more robust America? Or do we have to listen to "I was in Vietnam for four months out of my 60 years of life" some more?
Will Mr. Kerry ever sign the SF180 form that will release all of his personal military records?
Will Dan Rather be able to get a job selling hotdogs at Yankee Stadium in December after this document fiasco? Or, like the woman in Alabama, will Mr.Kerry offer him a job that will no longer exist in November also?
Thursday, September 16, 2004
Off with her head!
If things couldn't already get worse for John Kerry, he can always depend on someone to make them that way. Especially his wife.
Now, Ter-AHH-Zuh Heinz-Kerry is just the kind of woman you would expect a lilly-livered-Francophile-metrosexual-New England-liberal (who incidentally served in Vietnam) to marry: she's a shrew. A rich shrew. And not to insult all shrews, but she has better PR than most.
Exhibiting that haughty, European attitude that gets most females of democratic bent all lathered up with wet dreams of having the opportunity to vicariously direct Presidential power via sexual organs and the power of the purse, Ter-AHH-Zuh is this season's Hilary. Think of her as one would the latest line of the same-old-been-there-done-that-retro clothing from Chanel or De La Renta. She's the new plunging neckline for this political season.
In fact, most people would, I think, agree, that if Ter-AHH-Zuh had slightly bigger balls, most of us would consider her a man and take her into an alley to settle things in the time-honored tradition. But I digress.
You can see that this is a woman used to getting her way, and she doesn't care how she does it. And following in the hallowed footsteps of the Hildebeest, Ter-AHH-Zuh just HAD to have a forum during her husband/cabana-boy's Presidential Campaign. Probably had something to do with that mysterious mortgage on the family compound in Georgetown or something. But anyway, what John-boy should have realized is that if you gave that sort of woman an open microphone, she would eventually speak her mind --- in place of what you wanted her to say. And force you to fervently pray every time she did so.
The woman leaves the reservation everytime she opens her mouth. Remember when Ter-AHH-Zuh railed about the coarseness of American politics and then told a reporter who asked a pointed question to "stuff it"? Well, in the great tradition of casting pearls before swine, Mrs. Heinz-Kerry (and notice how she kept her first husband's name?) emitted yet another gem today. In regards to the victims of the repeated hurricanes in the Carribean and the need to deliver aid to those in need, Ter-AHH-Zuh managed this pointed, observation:
(Full text lifted from YahooNews.com):
Teresa Heinz Kerry, encouraging volunteers as they busily packed supplies Wednesday for hurricane relief efforts in the Caribbean, said she was concerned the effort was too focused on sending clothes instead of essentials like water and electric generators.
"Clothing is wonderful, but let them go naked for a while, at least the kids," said Heinz Kerry, the wife of Democratic presidential candidate John Kerry.
Ah yes, that haughty old Marie-Antionette thing.
And since John is so enamored of the French, I'll bet he's looking for a guillotine right now.
Open mouth, insert foot, Mrs. Heinz-Kerry. Or, at least have a servant lift your royal leg before inserting the regal tootsie in the imperial gob. Hmmm, children running around naked in places that are a) flooded and b) tropical. Sounds good to me. After we dry the little bastards out (the ones that don't die from exposure, mosquitos, leeches, etc., that is), we can make sure their tender skin burns in the Carribean sun for lack of a shirt or a hat. God forbid we send sunscreen or perhaps medicine to them before power is restored. Yes, let's make sure all the little tykes have PC's, a government-sponsored health insurance plan and a college education before we do something as mundane, and ultimately useless, as clothe them.
Would Ter-AHH-Zuh go naked? I doubt it, and I might kill myself if she did. Would any of her children go naked? Get serious. A Kerry care-package would probably consist of two bottles of Chateaux du Rothchilds, a wheel of Brie, table-water crackers and perhaps a small tub of beluga. Need a blanket? Forget it. Need clothing? Forget it. Priority dictates that we make sure you have cell phones, television and tanning beds before you have clothing.
John Kerry should sit down with his wife and takes his testicles back. Then he should lock the old battleaxe away to keep her away from the microphones. The man is already dying, he doesn't need anymore help.
If things couldn't already get worse for John Kerry, he can always depend on someone to make them that way. Especially his wife.
Now, Ter-AHH-Zuh Heinz-Kerry is just the kind of woman you would expect a lilly-livered-Francophile-metrosexual-New England-liberal (who incidentally served in Vietnam) to marry: she's a shrew. A rich shrew. And not to insult all shrews, but she has better PR than most.
Exhibiting that haughty, European attitude that gets most females of democratic bent all lathered up with wet dreams of having the opportunity to vicariously direct Presidential power via sexual organs and the power of the purse, Ter-AHH-Zuh is this season's Hilary. Think of her as one would the latest line of the same-old-been-there-done-that-retro clothing from Chanel or De La Renta. She's the new plunging neckline for this political season.
In fact, most people would, I think, agree, that if Ter-AHH-Zuh had slightly bigger balls, most of us would consider her a man and take her into an alley to settle things in the time-honored tradition. But I digress.
You can see that this is a woman used to getting her way, and she doesn't care how she does it. And following in the hallowed footsteps of the Hildebeest, Ter-AHH-Zuh just HAD to have a forum during her husband/cabana-boy's Presidential Campaign. Probably had something to do with that mysterious mortgage on the family compound in Georgetown or something. But anyway, what John-boy should have realized is that if you gave that sort of woman an open microphone, she would eventually speak her mind --- in place of what you wanted her to say. And force you to fervently pray every time she did so.
The woman leaves the reservation everytime she opens her mouth. Remember when Ter-AHH-Zuh railed about the coarseness of American politics and then told a reporter who asked a pointed question to "stuff it"? Well, in the great tradition of casting pearls before swine, Mrs. Heinz-Kerry (and notice how she kept her first husband's name?) emitted yet another gem today. In regards to the victims of the repeated hurricanes in the Carribean and the need to deliver aid to those in need, Ter-AHH-Zuh managed this pointed, observation:
(Full text lifted from YahooNews.com):
Teresa Heinz Kerry, encouraging volunteers as they busily packed supplies Wednesday for hurricane relief efforts in the Caribbean, said she was concerned the effort was too focused on sending clothes instead of essentials like water and electric generators.
"Clothing is wonderful, but let them go naked for a while, at least the kids," said Heinz Kerry, the wife of Democratic presidential candidate John Kerry.
Ah yes, that haughty old Marie-Antionette thing.
And since John is so enamored of the French, I'll bet he's looking for a guillotine right now.
Open mouth, insert foot, Mrs. Heinz-Kerry. Or, at least have a servant lift your royal leg before inserting the regal tootsie in the imperial gob. Hmmm, children running around naked in places that are a) flooded and b) tropical. Sounds good to me. After we dry the little bastards out (the ones that don't die from exposure, mosquitos, leeches, etc., that is), we can make sure their tender skin burns in the Carribean sun for lack of a shirt or a hat. God forbid we send sunscreen or perhaps medicine to them before power is restored. Yes, let's make sure all the little tykes have PC's, a government-sponsored health insurance plan and a college education before we do something as mundane, and ultimately useless, as clothe them.
Would Ter-AHH-Zuh go naked? I doubt it, and I might kill myself if she did. Would any of her children go naked? Get serious. A Kerry care-package would probably consist of two bottles of Chateaux du Rothchilds, a wheel of Brie, table-water crackers and perhaps a small tub of beluga. Need a blanket? Forget it. Need clothing? Forget it. Priority dictates that we make sure you have cell phones, television and tanning beds before you have clothing.
John Kerry should sit down with his wife and takes his testicles back. Then he should lock the old battleaxe away to keep her away from the microphones. The man is already dying, he doesn't need anymore help.
Short Reading List...
Got a few more www's for y'all to check out.
Townhall.com - An incredible range of columnists from the whole galaxy of opinion. You will definitely find something you like at Townhall!
NYPost.com - The GOOD paper in New York. I still stop in to see what's happening on my home turf.
ElectricVenom.com - Ben a fan of Kate's for a very long time. She's sassy, she's smart, and she's an awesome read!
Got a few more www's for y'all to check out.
Townhall.com - An incredible range of columnists from the whole galaxy of opinion. You will definitely find something you like at Townhall!
NYPost.com - The GOOD paper in New York. I still stop in to see what's happening on my home turf.
ElectricVenom.com - Ben a fan of Kate's for a very long time. She's sassy, she's smart, and she's an awesome read!
Monday, September 13, 2004
Dan Rather's Oops...
By now only a hermit hasn't heard of the sturm und drang caused by a recent episode of 60 Minutes II in which documents were presented which implied that:
1) G.W. Bush did not fufill his obligations as a member fo the Texas Air National Guard, and
2) G.W. Bush managed to finagle Guard duty (and subsequent preferential treatment) because of his political connections.
It took all of about 45 minutes for the documents to be debunked by what one pundit has called "a guy sitting at home in his pajamas", i.e., the blogosphere. The documents, it appears, are a forgery, and very bad one at that.
Why would CBS do such a thing? Was this a deliberate attempt to smear GWB (wink, wink, nudge, nudge)? Was this sloppy reporting at it's worst? What the hell went on here?
I'm not going to analyze the chain of events vis-a-vis on how the story got aired. It's obvious that CBS (and particularly Dan Rather) has an axe to grind with the Bushes and, let's face it, a major corporation that DIDN'T have a political agenda would be as rare as a rooster that laid crocodile eggs. CBS has been carrying water for John Kerry (or most democrats, for that matter) for decades, so let's not even go there. It's a given that CBS, or at least the people that run it or have power within it, lean democratic in their politics. Their actions and their slant proves it everytime you turn the evening news on.
What gets me about this entire thing is the arrogance. Not the arrogance that comes from brazenly defending a story you know isn't any good -- you'd only expect CBS to do that unless it was threatened by a lawsuit it couldn't win. No, the arrogance I'm talking about is the belief that no one would check up on them.
If I had to guess, CBS knew what it had, and knew that it was bad juju before they aired it. They were prepared to defend a rotten story to the bitter end because of where they expected the attack to come from --- Bush and Republicans. That defense would have been easy, with CBS simply saying that the other side was, of course, partisan, and they would be expected to have their panties in a bunch. The next logical step would have been to have Bush release all of his military records (something John Kerry won't do at all), and even if the original story was proven wrong by that, there might be something else in those records to make hay out of.
However, the attack did not come from Team Bush. It came from the Blogosphere. This is a segment of the population that most major news organizations routinely dismiss as a lunatic fringe. As far as the media is concerned, if you never went to J- school you're not a journalist, and so, not worth listening to. However, people DO listen to the blogosphere. The same people who no longer watch CBS. Or ABC. Or CNN, for that matter. They no longer watch because they know, instinctively, that the major media outlets never report "news", just their version of what constitutes news, complete with the reporter's biases and prejudices.
That the forgeries were revealed so quickly and so thoroughly threw CBS into a tizzy. They never expected to be checked up on, nor did they expect that within minutes, and before the next "news cycle" started, that they would be a laughing stock.
So now CBS is doing what Bill Clinton used to do when he got caught red-handed: brazen it out.
However, there are thousands of people, right now, pecking away at the story, one little piece at a time, and at the rate things are going CBS will be lucky if people still tune in to watch The Price is Right.
The new press (the blogosphere) has many advantages over the established media. Unlike a newspaper, items can be updated on the fly, minute by minute. Retractions in the event of mistakes do not have to wait for the next day's editions to hit the stands --- they are instantaneous. Unlike TV news, people are not presented with merely one side of a story: the side the news team decides to show. Every side of an issue can be immediately aired out, in real time. Information travels in the blogosphere, literally, at the speed of light.
CBS, if they had any decency or shame, would apologize to the public, and GWB, for making such a critical error. If CBS had any courage, they would come out and stop the pretense that they are an objective news outlet. If CBS weren't such a powerful organization, with a gazillion lawyers in it, they would have been dragged into court the day after the report aired.
But CBS doesn't have any shame or decency or courage. They definitely don't have journalists, either. Real journalists would have been damn sure of their facts and sources before they presented such a lousy story. Don't they teach that in Journalism 101 at Columbia J-school?
By now only a hermit hasn't heard of the sturm und drang caused by a recent episode of 60 Minutes II in which documents were presented which implied that:
1) G.W. Bush did not fufill his obligations as a member fo the Texas Air National Guard, and
2) G.W. Bush managed to finagle Guard duty (and subsequent preferential treatment) because of his political connections.
It took all of about 45 minutes for the documents to be debunked by what one pundit has called "a guy sitting at home in his pajamas", i.e., the blogosphere. The documents, it appears, are a forgery, and very bad one at that.
Why would CBS do such a thing? Was this a deliberate attempt to smear GWB (wink, wink, nudge, nudge)? Was this sloppy reporting at it's worst? What the hell went on here?
I'm not going to analyze the chain of events vis-a-vis on how the story got aired. It's obvious that CBS (and particularly Dan Rather) has an axe to grind with the Bushes and, let's face it, a major corporation that DIDN'T have a political agenda would be as rare as a rooster that laid crocodile eggs. CBS has been carrying water for John Kerry (or most democrats, for that matter) for decades, so let's not even go there. It's a given that CBS, or at least the people that run it or have power within it, lean democratic in their politics. Their actions and their slant proves it everytime you turn the evening news on.
What gets me about this entire thing is the arrogance. Not the arrogance that comes from brazenly defending a story you know isn't any good -- you'd only expect CBS to do that unless it was threatened by a lawsuit it couldn't win. No, the arrogance I'm talking about is the belief that no one would check up on them.
If I had to guess, CBS knew what it had, and knew that it was bad juju before they aired it. They were prepared to defend a rotten story to the bitter end because of where they expected the attack to come from --- Bush and Republicans. That defense would have been easy, with CBS simply saying that the other side was, of course, partisan, and they would be expected to have their panties in a bunch. The next logical step would have been to have Bush release all of his military records (something John Kerry won't do at all), and even if the original story was proven wrong by that, there might be something else in those records to make hay out of.
However, the attack did not come from Team Bush. It came from the Blogosphere. This is a segment of the population that most major news organizations routinely dismiss as a lunatic fringe. As far as the media is concerned, if you never went to J- school you're not a journalist, and so, not worth listening to. However, people DO listen to the blogosphere. The same people who no longer watch CBS. Or ABC. Or CNN, for that matter. They no longer watch because they know, instinctively, that the major media outlets never report "news", just their version of what constitutes news, complete with the reporter's biases and prejudices.
That the forgeries were revealed so quickly and so thoroughly threw CBS into a tizzy. They never expected to be checked up on, nor did they expect that within minutes, and before the next "news cycle" started, that they would be a laughing stock.
So now CBS is doing what Bill Clinton used to do when he got caught red-handed: brazen it out.
However, there are thousands of people, right now, pecking away at the story, one little piece at a time, and at the rate things are going CBS will be lucky if people still tune in to watch The Price is Right.
The new press (the blogosphere) has many advantages over the established media. Unlike a newspaper, items can be updated on the fly, minute by minute. Retractions in the event of mistakes do not have to wait for the next day's editions to hit the stands --- they are instantaneous. Unlike TV news, people are not presented with merely one side of a story: the side the news team decides to show. Every side of an issue can be immediately aired out, in real time. Information travels in the blogosphere, literally, at the speed of light.
CBS, if they had any decency or shame, would apologize to the public, and GWB, for making such a critical error. If CBS had any courage, they would come out and stop the pretense that they are an objective news outlet. If CBS weren't such a powerful organization, with a gazillion lawyers in it, they would have been dragged into court the day after the report aired.
But CBS doesn't have any shame or decency or courage. They definitely don't have journalists, either. Real journalists would have been damn sure of their facts and sources before they presented such a lousy story. Don't they teach that in Journalism 101 at Columbia J-school?
Sunday, September 12, 2004
To The Fallen...
For nearly 3,000 of my fellow New Yorkers who died on this day, I raise my glass and drink a toast to your memories.
To the FDNY -- you showed us what courage is all about.
To the NYPD -- you showed us what strength is all about.
To The EMT'S -- you showed us what bravery really is.
To the Port Authority Police -- you showed us what sacrifice is all about.
To the National Guard -- you showed us all what America stands for.
To the Rescue Workers -- you showed us how to care again.
To the Volunteers from All Over America -- you made us proud of our country.
To the men and women who never put on a uniform, but who did their part to make NYC such a great place -- your passing reminds us all of what we have lost.
To the Passengers of Flight 93 --- you showed us the meaning of resolve.
To your memories. Requiesat in pacem....
For nearly 3,000 of my fellow New Yorkers who died on this day, I raise my glass and drink a toast to your memories.
To the FDNY -- you showed us what courage is all about.
To the NYPD -- you showed us what strength is all about.
To The EMT'S -- you showed us what bravery really is.
To the Port Authority Police -- you showed us what sacrifice is all about.
To the National Guard -- you showed us all what America stands for.
To the Rescue Workers -- you showed us how to care again.
To the Volunteers from All Over America -- you made us proud of our country.
To the men and women who never put on a uniform, but who did their part to make NYC such a great place -- your passing reminds us all of what we have lost.
To the Passengers of Flight 93 --- you showed us the meaning of resolve.
To your memories. Requiesat in pacem....
Three Years Later --- Part III
The rest of the planet hates us with a passion! There’s a worldwide movement afoot to kill very American on the planet because we haven’t catered to other people’s feelings. Americans don’t understand the rest of the world, and therefore, they hate us for it. Repent! The end is neigh!
Gibberish, and depending on where you hear stuff like that, its often hysterical gibberish, too.
People who fling stuff like this around ought to be a) locked up for the good of society and b) forcibly sterilized with a farm implement before they breed. Anyone that tells you that a monumental problem such as the disparity in civilization here and what passes for it in Afghanistan can be brushed away, magically eliminated, if we all just made an effort to educate ourselves and be sensitive, is usually the same person that wants you to pay taxes so that Medicare will cover breast enlargements for senior citizens. These people are so caught up in their mantra that education=understanding=peace that they’ve lost their grip on reality. Education and understanding have rarely led to peace in the history of the world. If you don’t think so, just remember that Robert Oppenheimer was an educated,peaceful man who understood the principles of physics and created the most destructive weapon ever fielded. These folks also have a martyr complex, believing that it is America that should make the concessions: Americans have to educate themselves, Americans have to be culturally sensitive, and Americans should pay for it all.
I have a novel idea, one that would literally turn such a person as mentioned above into an even bigger mass of over-emotional, quivering jelly than they are now. Get ready for it, because once the cork is out of the bottle, the head of the person sitting next to you might just explode.
I believe that it isn’t Americans that should make the sacrifice of understanding another culture, but other cultures that should put their effort into understanding us.
America literally confuses and confounds the rest of the world. They do not understand our politics, markets, educational system, business style, sports, culture (what passes for it, anyway), lifestyles, attitudes or idealism. Most of this difficulty in understanding what is, for all intents and purposes, a really simple societal model, is usually a cultural shortsightedness – not ours, but theirs.
Questions about America abound – we’ve been in Afghanistan for three years and Iraq for over a year – why haven’t we begun pillaging the country and raping the women? Well, because that’s not what we’re there for. Other cultures would do those things (like Europeans and anything that crawled out of the U.N.), but we don’t. We said we were going to these countries to eliminate dangerous, murderous regimes and plant the seeds of democracy, and we are. And when we’re done, we’ll leave. The rest of the planet sees conquest as a means of helping themselves to the riches and property of others, while Americans don’t. Conquest to us is a reaction to pissing us off, like when you bomb Pearl Harbor or attack the Pentagon with an airliner. Some societies and cultures see conquest as a way of spreading your religion (since anyone with half a brain wouldn’t normally CHOOSE your religion unless he had a sword at his neck), culture or political system. Americans don’t travel the planet pointing guns at folks who won’t vote Republican, for example. Russians, Iraqis and Chinese do. The fact that we don’t confuses them.
The fact that we live in a dynamic society, where authority is regularly questioned and held to account, baffles the imagination of your average denizen of Someotherplace. You mean you actually question your political leaders without being imprisoned? You can actually dispute the Church’s interpretation of a Biblical passage? You can write nasty things about people in a newspaper, especially when they’re true, without being shot? Science has a purpose other than propping up the illegitimate state? Well, yes, yes, yes and yes. In fact, it is because we do these things, everyday and in the open, that we are such a dynamic society. Challenging authority in a culture based upon family and clan loyalties, the rule of the strong over the weak, or disputing the established order, is often like signing your own death warrant in Someotherplace. The desire for self-preservation, even in a miserable existence, is too strong for many people to buck the system. As a consequence, they can’t see how we not only get away with it, but manage to prosper.
You don’t treat your women like a slab of meat, a baby machine or cattle? You must be crazy! No, we don’t do those things, although if you listen to the women, you wouldn’t know it. I can’t remember the last time I went to the slave market to buy my next wife, and I can’t recall ever getting a dowry for the last seven of them. Here in America, women are expected to be productive, especially since most of them have proved that they can be, and we don’t see a daughter as a useless appendage that needs to be fed to the detriment of our sons, or have her feet bound because shoes for a female is considered a wasteful proposition. I can’t recall the last time I heard of a neighbor leaving his newborn daughter on a hillside to die in order to avoid feeding and clothing her. We believe that every individual has intrinsic worth, and thus, can eventually be a useful member of society.
Anyone can be a success in America? You don’t need weapons and vast amounts of money to bribe the right people in order to get connected? Nope, not at all. Yes, in some ways, it’s best to be connected, but that’s not usually based on bribery, and we don’t take what we want by force. In my lifetime, I’ve never had an AK-47 jammed under my nose by the government. I’ve never been stopped on the street and hauled in for questioning without reason. Here, if you decide to put your nose to the grindstone, you can be anything you want to be, provided you have the talent, rather than the connections, for it. Imagine that --that your life is not being played out as some pre-ordained ordeal of caste, or that your success depends not on who you know, but what you do. Doesn’t that blow your mind? To an American, no. We don’t even think about things like that, we just do them. On the rest of this diseased rock, that concept is utterly alien. It ranks right up there with the female visitors from Venus that come here asking "Kiss? What is Kiss?" in every 1950‘s sci-fi flick ever made. Just consider this: Bill Clinton got elected twice and Arnold Swartzenegger was elected governor of California, Blacks become doctors, lawyers and corporate executives every day, despite being members of a formerly-enslaved race. Women routinely succeed in business and politics, and even become astronauts. The deaf become scientists, the crippled become academics, and the lazy even get paid for being lazy. Anyone can find success in America, it all depends on where you set your sights.
People of various races, religions and politics can live in the same city, maybe even ride the same bus, without killing each other? Most certainly can, and usually do. Technically, Americans don’t see race, religion, sex or place of origin. The government and the advocates of the Nanny state do, but real Americans don’t. We live by a simple creed – All men are created Equal. It is the foundation of our institutions, the cornerstone of our attitudes and the bedrock of our daily lives. We don’t continue to feud over the watering rights to an oasis in the desert, or automatically think of outsiders as barbarians. Religion is not the basis of our politics or our society -- it’s a personal matter. And while we may not always agree with each other on various subjects, we don’t resort to car bombs, torture and forced migrations to get our point across or impose our view. We debate, we engage in give-and-take, and then we go on with life.
These concepts literally scare the hell out of other people because they don’t understand them. Fear of the unknown, of the other, is a basis of their societies. Chinese folks fear a reversion to internal chaos and thus, for thousands of years, have practiced a Confucian system wherein all people have a place in society and automatically owe their allegiance to the top dog, in order to maintain the peace. Arabs cannot abide the questioning of authority because in their eyes, the authority came from God, and how can one dare to question or challenge God or his trusted servants? In sub-Saharan Africa, the ties of family, clan and tribe very often represent the slim difference between life and death, and so the society revolves around keeping those ties strong and not rocking the boat. Japanese folks often subvert their own well being for the good of the company they work for or as a show of national support.
Consequently, that’s why they are stagnant, backwards, bumbling and ultimately, violent societies. Any change in the status quo brings about the potential for disaster and is to be resisted violently. The fate of the tribe/clan/nation/people of God, is too great to allow exploration, to encourage the individual, to set free the mind and the being. Western ways, technology, thinking, and methods ultimately come with these societal poisons inherent in them. The poisons of television, radio, movies, newspapers, automobiles, wire hangers, steam engines, steel girders, trains, tongue depressors, inoculations, cancer research, factories, chemicals, explosives, medicine, printing presses, nylon, genetically-engineered crops, hormone-enhanced beef, airliners, computers, the internet, free markets, democracy. All, at some level, buck tradition, they mess with the natural order of things. They challenge the mighty and maybe even cause Man to believe that he can discern the will of God, and those are the things that scare people the most. If these things cannot be controlled, then they must be eliminated, because no society could survive them, in the view of a citizen of Someotherplace. The fact that ours does astounds people, some of them to the point of believing that we must have made a pact with the Devil in order to survive.
This is why we confuse the world so much – we routinely destroy established orders and remake them to suit our purposes. We manipulate Nature to ensure we’re fed, clothed and housed. We give people the time to do something other than hunt gazelles and gather grubs, and thus, they’re free to do things like think. Thinking is not a luxury the rest of the world can afford, but in this day and age, with people acting compulsively and out of ignorance, and killing while they do it, maybe the rest of the world should make time to think. And possibly, learn.
The rest of the planet hates us with a passion! There’s a worldwide movement afoot to kill very American on the planet because we haven’t catered to other people’s feelings. Americans don’t understand the rest of the world, and therefore, they hate us for it. Repent! The end is neigh!
Gibberish, and depending on where you hear stuff like that, its often hysterical gibberish, too.
People who fling stuff like this around ought to be a) locked up for the good of society and b) forcibly sterilized with a farm implement before they breed. Anyone that tells you that a monumental problem such as the disparity in civilization here and what passes for it in Afghanistan can be brushed away, magically eliminated, if we all just made an effort to educate ourselves and be sensitive, is usually the same person that wants you to pay taxes so that Medicare will cover breast enlargements for senior citizens. These people are so caught up in their mantra that education=understanding=peace that they’ve lost their grip on reality. Education and understanding have rarely led to peace in the history of the world. If you don’t think so, just remember that Robert Oppenheimer was an educated,peaceful man who understood the principles of physics and created the most destructive weapon ever fielded. These folks also have a martyr complex, believing that it is America that should make the concessions: Americans have to educate themselves, Americans have to be culturally sensitive, and Americans should pay for it all.
I have a novel idea, one that would literally turn such a person as mentioned above into an even bigger mass of over-emotional, quivering jelly than they are now. Get ready for it, because once the cork is out of the bottle, the head of the person sitting next to you might just explode.
I believe that it isn’t Americans that should make the sacrifice of understanding another culture, but other cultures that should put their effort into understanding us.
America literally confuses and confounds the rest of the world. They do not understand our politics, markets, educational system, business style, sports, culture (what passes for it, anyway), lifestyles, attitudes or idealism. Most of this difficulty in understanding what is, for all intents and purposes, a really simple societal model, is usually a cultural shortsightedness – not ours, but theirs.
Questions about America abound – we’ve been in Afghanistan for three years and Iraq for over a year – why haven’t we begun pillaging the country and raping the women? Well, because that’s not what we’re there for. Other cultures would do those things (like Europeans and anything that crawled out of the U.N.), but we don’t. We said we were going to these countries to eliminate dangerous, murderous regimes and plant the seeds of democracy, and we are. And when we’re done, we’ll leave. The rest of the planet sees conquest as a means of helping themselves to the riches and property of others, while Americans don’t. Conquest to us is a reaction to pissing us off, like when you bomb Pearl Harbor or attack the Pentagon with an airliner. Some societies and cultures see conquest as a way of spreading your religion (since anyone with half a brain wouldn’t normally CHOOSE your religion unless he had a sword at his neck), culture or political system. Americans don’t travel the planet pointing guns at folks who won’t vote Republican, for example. Russians, Iraqis and Chinese do. The fact that we don’t confuses them.
The fact that we live in a dynamic society, where authority is regularly questioned and held to account, baffles the imagination of your average denizen of Someotherplace. You mean you actually question your political leaders without being imprisoned? You can actually dispute the Church’s interpretation of a Biblical passage? You can write nasty things about people in a newspaper, especially when they’re true, without being shot? Science has a purpose other than propping up the illegitimate state? Well, yes, yes, yes and yes. In fact, it is because we do these things, everyday and in the open, that we are such a dynamic society. Challenging authority in a culture based upon family and clan loyalties, the rule of the strong over the weak, or disputing the established order, is often like signing your own death warrant in Someotherplace. The desire for self-preservation, even in a miserable existence, is too strong for many people to buck the system. As a consequence, they can’t see how we not only get away with it, but manage to prosper.
You don’t treat your women like a slab of meat, a baby machine or cattle? You must be crazy! No, we don’t do those things, although if you listen to the women, you wouldn’t know it. I can’t remember the last time I went to the slave market to buy my next wife, and I can’t recall ever getting a dowry for the last seven of them. Here in America, women are expected to be productive, especially since most of them have proved that they can be, and we don’t see a daughter as a useless appendage that needs to be fed to the detriment of our sons, or have her feet bound because shoes for a female is considered a wasteful proposition. I can’t recall the last time I heard of a neighbor leaving his newborn daughter on a hillside to die in order to avoid feeding and clothing her. We believe that every individual has intrinsic worth, and thus, can eventually be a useful member of society.
Anyone can be a success in America? You don’t need weapons and vast amounts of money to bribe the right people in order to get connected? Nope, not at all. Yes, in some ways, it’s best to be connected, but that’s not usually based on bribery, and we don’t take what we want by force. In my lifetime, I’ve never had an AK-47 jammed under my nose by the government. I’ve never been stopped on the street and hauled in for questioning without reason. Here, if you decide to put your nose to the grindstone, you can be anything you want to be, provided you have the talent, rather than the connections, for it. Imagine that --that your life is not being played out as some pre-ordained ordeal of caste, or that your success depends not on who you know, but what you do. Doesn’t that blow your mind? To an American, no. We don’t even think about things like that, we just do them. On the rest of this diseased rock, that concept is utterly alien. It ranks right up there with the female visitors from Venus that come here asking "Kiss? What is Kiss?" in every 1950‘s sci-fi flick ever made. Just consider this: Bill Clinton got elected twice and Arnold Swartzenegger was elected governor of California, Blacks become doctors, lawyers and corporate executives every day, despite being members of a formerly-enslaved race. Women routinely succeed in business and politics, and even become astronauts. The deaf become scientists, the crippled become academics, and the lazy even get paid for being lazy. Anyone can find success in America, it all depends on where you set your sights.
People of various races, religions and politics can live in the same city, maybe even ride the same bus, without killing each other? Most certainly can, and usually do. Technically, Americans don’t see race, religion, sex or place of origin. The government and the advocates of the Nanny state do, but real Americans don’t. We live by a simple creed – All men are created Equal. It is the foundation of our institutions, the cornerstone of our attitudes and the bedrock of our daily lives. We don’t continue to feud over the watering rights to an oasis in the desert, or automatically think of outsiders as barbarians. Religion is not the basis of our politics or our society -- it’s a personal matter. And while we may not always agree with each other on various subjects, we don’t resort to car bombs, torture and forced migrations to get our point across or impose our view. We debate, we engage in give-and-take, and then we go on with life.
These concepts literally scare the hell out of other people because they don’t understand them. Fear of the unknown, of the other, is a basis of their societies. Chinese folks fear a reversion to internal chaos and thus, for thousands of years, have practiced a Confucian system wherein all people have a place in society and automatically owe their allegiance to the top dog, in order to maintain the peace. Arabs cannot abide the questioning of authority because in their eyes, the authority came from God, and how can one dare to question or challenge God or his trusted servants? In sub-Saharan Africa, the ties of family, clan and tribe very often represent the slim difference between life and death, and so the society revolves around keeping those ties strong and not rocking the boat. Japanese folks often subvert their own well being for the good of the company they work for or as a show of national support.
Consequently, that’s why they are stagnant, backwards, bumbling and ultimately, violent societies. Any change in the status quo brings about the potential for disaster and is to be resisted violently. The fate of the tribe/clan/nation/people of God, is too great to allow exploration, to encourage the individual, to set free the mind and the being. Western ways, technology, thinking, and methods ultimately come with these societal poisons inherent in them. The poisons of television, radio, movies, newspapers, automobiles, wire hangers, steam engines, steel girders, trains, tongue depressors, inoculations, cancer research, factories, chemicals, explosives, medicine, printing presses, nylon, genetically-engineered crops, hormone-enhanced beef, airliners, computers, the internet, free markets, democracy. All, at some level, buck tradition, they mess with the natural order of things. They challenge the mighty and maybe even cause Man to believe that he can discern the will of God, and those are the things that scare people the most. If these things cannot be controlled, then they must be eliminated, because no society could survive them, in the view of a citizen of Someotherplace. The fact that ours does astounds people, some of them to the point of believing that we must have made a pact with the Devil in order to survive.
This is why we confuse the world so much – we routinely destroy established orders and remake them to suit our purposes. We manipulate Nature to ensure we’re fed, clothed and housed. We give people the time to do something other than hunt gazelles and gather grubs, and thus, they’re free to do things like think. Thinking is not a luxury the rest of the world can afford, but in this day and age, with people acting compulsively and out of ignorance, and killing while they do it, maybe the rest of the world should make time to think. And possibly, learn.
Thursday, September 09, 2004
Is the past THAT relevant?
The new tempest in a tea cup is that "new information" has surfaced that G.W. Bush may have skipped duty in the Texas Air National Guard in the mid-1970's. The New York Times, 60 Minutes, and most of the morning talk shows have been all abuzz over this revelation, and quite frankly, they would be. After all, they have a candidate to get elected.
So far this morning, I have seen at least 8 (count 'em!) refutations of the "new information". They run the gamut from provable forgeries to pointing out that the reporters who brought them to us have taken things out of context, to other documents not mentioned that contradict what these "new documents" presume to tell us.
All of it bullshit.
The past is an issue solely because John Kerry made it so. He did this because he had nothing else to offer Americans except four months in the Mekong Delta out of his 60 or so years. Four months of RELUCTANT service do not make a resume. It has been documented that Kerry, far from his claims of having "volunteered", sought five draft deferments before he finally bowed to the inevitable. While he put his life at risk for four months, G.W. did so for FIVE YEARS, flying fighter jets that were notoriously dangerous, unstable and little more than flying gas cans.
His attempt to bring relevancy to the past was intended to deflect criticism and serve as an interesting backdrop to an otherwise very uninteresting man. Hence, his inablility to drop the subject.
What Mr. Kerry, and those who surround him, fail to grasp is this: Americans don't necessarily care who wore the uniform (after all, Bill Clinton got elected twice) when it comes to selecting their leaders. Americans dwell in the here-and-now and in the future. It's one of the hallmarks of Amerian society that while we regard the past as a useful tool to examine the present, we very often have our eyes fixed on the tomorrow. The past becomes a useful too then too --- it's called experience.
Mr. Bush may not have been anywhere near Vietnam, but that is not the point -- there were many people in the military in that era that never got close to Vietnam (in Japan, Germany, the Philipines, Thailand, here in the United States and fifty other places), and we would not automatically consider them "unpatriotic" nor would we accuse them of "shirking their duty".
We should stop arguing about Vietnam and assigning varying levels of patriotism by subdividing all of the brave men and women who put on the uniform into "those that did" and "those that didn't". It's unfair, and in the end, it's ridiculous. There were many, I'm sure, spoiling for a chance to go to Vietnam and they never got there, and there were many who wouldn't touch Vietnam with a 10 foot pole and were happy to stay away from it. It doesn't mean they have no right to be President of the United States or have a greater or lesser claim to being patriotic Americans.
The point(s), simply is (are) this: who is stepping forward to lead NOW and who do we believe would be a better leader TOMORROW? Is it someone stuck in yesterday to the point where he cannot talk about anything else, or will it be someone who thinks like the rest of us do, and who looks forward?
If you doubt me, ask yourself this question: do you care about Purple Hearts or do you care about your home, family and sanity? Do you care about the events of 35 years ago or do you care about making your next mortgage payment? Do you pine for the days of a divided country and a free-falling society, or do you believe that Americans, despite their differences, can all be on the same page when they need to be? These are the important questions in this, or any, election. Perhas if Senator Kerry paid more attention to people (other than himself), he might realize this.
The new tempest in a tea cup is that "new information" has surfaced that G.W. Bush may have skipped duty in the Texas Air National Guard in the mid-1970's. The New York Times, 60 Minutes, and most of the morning talk shows have been all abuzz over this revelation, and quite frankly, they would be. After all, they have a candidate to get elected.
So far this morning, I have seen at least 8 (count 'em!) refutations of the "new information". They run the gamut from provable forgeries to pointing out that the reporters who brought them to us have taken things out of context, to other documents not mentioned that contradict what these "new documents" presume to tell us.
All of it bullshit.
The past is an issue solely because John Kerry made it so. He did this because he had nothing else to offer Americans except four months in the Mekong Delta out of his 60 or so years. Four months of RELUCTANT service do not make a resume. It has been documented that Kerry, far from his claims of having "volunteered", sought five draft deferments before he finally bowed to the inevitable. While he put his life at risk for four months, G.W. did so for FIVE YEARS, flying fighter jets that were notoriously dangerous, unstable and little more than flying gas cans.
His attempt to bring relevancy to the past was intended to deflect criticism and serve as an interesting backdrop to an otherwise very uninteresting man. Hence, his inablility to drop the subject.
What Mr. Kerry, and those who surround him, fail to grasp is this: Americans don't necessarily care who wore the uniform (after all, Bill Clinton got elected twice) when it comes to selecting their leaders. Americans dwell in the here-and-now and in the future. It's one of the hallmarks of Amerian society that while we regard the past as a useful tool to examine the present, we very often have our eyes fixed on the tomorrow. The past becomes a useful too then too --- it's called experience.
Mr. Bush may not have been anywhere near Vietnam, but that is not the point -- there were many people in the military in that era that never got close to Vietnam (in Japan, Germany, the Philipines, Thailand, here in the United States and fifty other places), and we would not automatically consider them "unpatriotic" nor would we accuse them of "shirking their duty".
We should stop arguing about Vietnam and assigning varying levels of patriotism by subdividing all of the brave men and women who put on the uniform into "those that did" and "those that didn't". It's unfair, and in the end, it's ridiculous. There were many, I'm sure, spoiling for a chance to go to Vietnam and they never got there, and there were many who wouldn't touch Vietnam with a 10 foot pole and were happy to stay away from it. It doesn't mean they have no right to be President of the United States or have a greater or lesser claim to being patriotic Americans.
The point(s), simply is (are) this: who is stepping forward to lead NOW and who do we believe would be a better leader TOMORROW? Is it someone stuck in yesterday to the point where he cannot talk about anything else, or will it be someone who thinks like the rest of us do, and who looks forward?
If you doubt me, ask yourself this question: do you care about Purple Hearts or do you care about your home, family and sanity? Do you care about the events of 35 years ago or do you care about making your next mortgage payment? Do you pine for the days of a divided country and a free-falling society, or do you believe that Americans, despite their differences, can all be on the same page when they need to be? These are the important questions in this, or any, election. Perhas if Senator Kerry paid more attention to people (other than himself), he might realize this.
Three Years Later --- Part II...
In the last three years, the United States has been attacked on various fronts. We are attacked diplomatically by "allied" nations who "feel our pain", but who despise us nonetheless. We are attacked morally and spiritually by holier-than-thou renegades who believe that someone who watches a J-Lo on TV cannot compare, in terms of pious righteousness, with someone willing to blow up an Israeli day care center. We are attacked physically by craven cowards, who revel in their "warrior tradition" and who could never beat us in a straight-up fight, and thus, resort to the tactics of the common street mugger – lurk in the shadows, attack from behind and then run like hell. Often, when events like this occur, there is a battalion of special people who come out of the woodwork to explain the "why" to us. Usually, these are other Americans who secretly hate their own country and who often bathe in a self-created aura of guilt and pretense which causes them to actually be embarrassed to be Americans.
This battalion, which I refer to as the "Flapping Rectums", will be perfectly willing to give you a free symposium on why the rest of the world hates us. These people will always give one (and usually more) of the following excuses for mass murder, surmising that Americans are: greedy, mean, thoughtless, ignorant, arrogant, dismissive, disinterested, intrusive, imperialistic, spoiled, impious, impetuous, bumbling, crude, violent, indifferent, stubborn, selfish, lazy, wealthy, gluttonous, unchaste, uncivilized, unkempt, self-absorbed, obnoxious, disagreeable, Sneezy, Doc and Dopey. The gist of their argument is always a variation on the same theme, that Americans do not understand the rest of the world, and that if we made an effort to do so, all would be champagne and roses.
This, of course, is plain, unadulterated psychobabble-driven, horse manure. However, since most of the Flapping Rectums wouldn’t have the sense to pour piss out of a boot (with instructions on the heel) this is unsurprising. The Flapping Rectums don’t live in the same world that normal folks do, or at least, they don’t believe they do.
A Flapping Rectum will go to great lengths, and shed tears while doing it, explaining to you how the United States is still the most racist country on the planet. They forget 160 years of American history, Civil War, Civil Rights Acts, Voting Acts, affirmative action and quota systems. They forget that Jim Crow died the ghastly death it deserved in the 1960’s. They overlook the fact that blacks are not being strung up from trees and churches systematically firebombed anymore. They fail to see that when the Klan does manage to get permission to hold some sort of demonstration that the counter-demonstration is usually larger, more diverse, and generally more violent than those in the sheets. They ignore the numbers of blacks in business, academia, science and law. They believe that racism cannot be assumed to be eliminated unless it is blacks that own everything and whites that pick cotton by hand in the Southern sun. A Flapping Rectum is disconnected with reality in such a way that makes them impervious to facts or provable demonstration. They believe that a terrorist attack is just deserts for a racist past.
This same person will tell you, from the other side of their mouth, that this country is hung up on sex and gender roles, and since we aren’t as "progressive" as the rest of the world incinerated office buildings are the whirlwind we reap. I haven’t seen any women around here treated like chattel slaves, wrapped up head-to-toe in a burlap sack, beaten and denied an education. Have you? I don’t see homosexuals being stoned in the streets in any numbers, have you? I’ll bet you’ve noticed the absolutely massive piles of female clitorises laying in all the streets of American cities, the result of the astronomical numbers of female circumcisions practiced here daily. You haven’t? Well, I’ll be damned, because as the Flapping Rectums tell it, this country was built on mutilated vaginas.
The fact that a Flapping Rectum sees what isn’t there is a sign of psychosis, but of course, they’re in denial. Time for some Zoloft.
Flapping Rectums come from all over the planet, incidentally. A European, for example, will tell you that Americans are simpletons, uncultured and barbaric, but neglect the fact that 20,000 people died in Europe last summer due to lack of air conditioning. Well, if being in an air-conditioned home, office or hospital on a hot day makes me a simpleton, fine, I’m happy to be one. If the elderly of this country don’t die in massive numbers due to heat stroke because we have air conditioning that works, fine, I’m happy to be barbaric. This is a continent that exterminated six million people on a production line basis. Point this out to a Flapping Rectum, and one of two things will happen: he will either make a gesture or noise implying that your argument is nonsensical or he will change the subject, and tell you that despite air conditioning, you still live in a (pick one) racist, sexist, homophobic, anti-Semetic, etc, etc, etc, society. It’s always the same argument and the same response. A Flapping Rectum from the Middle East will tell you that you live in a decadent society, detached from the love of God, but fail to notice the astounding number of churches, synagogues, mosques, religious libraries, nunneries, monasteries and cathedrals that exist, usually within spitting distance. This, of course, is the same Flapping Rectum who is so sure of his own pious, Godly society, that he can find a religious rationalization for blowing up an office building or school bus, as long as it’s full of Jews (or their infidel puppets).
The point is this; the rest of the world does not really hate America and those that make the argument that they do, are clearly in some sort of time warp. The rest of the planet loves America, to the extent that millions of them try to emigrate here every year, legally and no. If you believe that Cubans get onto rickety rafts and brave the Atlantic to get to America because they hate us, you’re wrong. If you think that millions of Mexicans cross the border risking life and limb in waterless deserts because they hate us, you’re wrong. If you think, even for a fraction of a second, that Europeans, so busy emulating us that they have to force smaller countries to join for what is, in all intents and purposes, a "United States of Europe" (even if it is dominated by socialists), then you have another thing coming. These people have a deep and abiding affection for America, or at least, what they believe American ideals to be.
The reason why we bear the brunt of such outrageous behavior from the rest of the planet is simple: They’re jealous.
We live in a society that tolerates all religions, while others do not. I wonder how many Catholics there are in Baghdad? We live in a society where people are free to be anything they wish to be, and we give them the tools to do it with; an education and a job, unlike, say, an Iraqi Kurd or a Muslim immigrant to France. We live in a world where political power is, theoretically, derived from the people, not from the barrel of a gun, like in China, or based on the fabulous, unshared wealth generated in something unlike a free market, vis-Ã -vis Saudi Arabia. The United States welcomes everyone that wishes to just enjoy a better life and is willing to work for it, unlike, say, Italy. It’s the bunch of morons scattered about the face of the planet that pontificate about human rights and the brotherhood of man, and when called upon, fail to reach into their pockets, or their hearts, that cast these stones at our country.
And when Arabs and Chinese, North Koreans and Indonesians, Mexican Mestizos and Canadians all wail about the United States and it’s ham-handed and hard-hearted policies and it’s seeming disregard for the plight of others less fortunate, they’re really talking about themselves. They haven’t the wealth, the power or the opportunities to do what this country does, and THEY hate us for it. They’ve just projected their hatred onto the rest of the world to make themselves feel better about it.
Sort of like when you expel gas from your Flapping Rectum.
In the last three years, the United States has been attacked on various fronts. We are attacked diplomatically by "allied" nations who "feel our pain", but who despise us nonetheless. We are attacked morally and spiritually by holier-than-thou renegades who believe that someone who watches a J-Lo on TV cannot compare, in terms of pious righteousness, with someone willing to blow up an Israeli day care center. We are attacked physically by craven cowards, who revel in their "warrior tradition" and who could never beat us in a straight-up fight, and thus, resort to the tactics of the common street mugger – lurk in the shadows, attack from behind and then run like hell. Often, when events like this occur, there is a battalion of special people who come out of the woodwork to explain the "why" to us. Usually, these are other Americans who secretly hate their own country and who often bathe in a self-created aura of guilt and pretense which causes them to actually be embarrassed to be Americans.
This battalion, which I refer to as the "Flapping Rectums", will be perfectly willing to give you a free symposium on why the rest of the world hates us. These people will always give one (and usually more) of the following excuses for mass murder, surmising that Americans are: greedy, mean, thoughtless, ignorant, arrogant, dismissive, disinterested, intrusive, imperialistic, spoiled, impious, impetuous, bumbling, crude, violent, indifferent, stubborn, selfish, lazy, wealthy, gluttonous, unchaste, uncivilized, unkempt, self-absorbed, obnoxious, disagreeable, Sneezy, Doc and Dopey. The gist of their argument is always a variation on the same theme, that Americans do not understand the rest of the world, and that if we made an effort to do so, all would be champagne and roses.
This, of course, is plain, unadulterated psychobabble-driven, horse manure. However, since most of the Flapping Rectums wouldn’t have the sense to pour piss out of a boot (with instructions on the heel) this is unsurprising. The Flapping Rectums don’t live in the same world that normal folks do, or at least, they don’t believe they do.
A Flapping Rectum will go to great lengths, and shed tears while doing it, explaining to you how the United States is still the most racist country on the planet. They forget 160 years of American history, Civil War, Civil Rights Acts, Voting Acts, affirmative action and quota systems. They forget that Jim Crow died the ghastly death it deserved in the 1960’s. They overlook the fact that blacks are not being strung up from trees and churches systematically firebombed anymore. They fail to see that when the Klan does manage to get permission to hold some sort of demonstration that the counter-demonstration is usually larger, more diverse, and generally more violent than those in the sheets. They ignore the numbers of blacks in business, academia, science and law. They believe that racism cannot be assumed to be eliminated unless it is blacks that own everything and whites that pick cotton by hand in the Southern sun. A Flapping Rectum is disconnected with reality in such a way that makes them impervious to facts or provable demonstration. They believe that a terrorist attack is just deserts for a racist past.
This same person will tell you, from the other side of their mouth, that this country is hung up on sex and gender roles, and since we aren’t as "progressive" as the rest of the world incinerated office buildings are the whirlwind we reap. I haven’t seen any women around here treated like chattel slaves, wrapped up head-to-toe in a burlap sack, beaten and denied an education. Have you? I don’t see homosexuals being stoned in the streets in any numbers, have you? I’ll bet you’ve noticed the absolutely massive piles of female clitorises laying in all the streets of American cities, the result of the astronomical numbers of female circumcisions practiced here daily. You haven’t? Well, I’ll be damned, because as the Flapping Rectums tell it, this country was built on mutilated vaginas.
The fact that a Flapping Rectum sees what isn’t there is a sign of psychosis, but of course, they’re in denial. Time for some Zoloft.
Flapping Rectums come from all over the planet, incidentally. A European, for example, will tell you that Americans are simpletons, uncultured and barbaric, but neglect the fact that 20,000 people died in Europe last summer due to lack of air conditioning. Well, if being in an air-conditioned home, office or hospital on a hot day makes me a simpleton, fine, I’m happy to be one. If the elderly of this country don’t die in massive numbers due to heat stroke because we have air conditioning that works, fine, I’m happy to be barbaric. This is a continent that exterminated six million people on a production line basis. Point this out to a Flapping Rectum, and one of two things will happen: he will either make a gesture or noise implying that your argument is nonsensical or he will change the subject, and tell you that despite air conditioning, you still live in a (pick one) racist, sexist, homophobic, anti-Semetic, etc, etc, etc, society. It’s always the same argument and the same response. A Flapping Rectum from the Middle East will tell you that you live in a decadent society, detached from the love of God, but fail to notice the astounding number of churches, synagogues, mosques, religious libraries, nunneries, monasteries and cathedrals that exist, usually within spitting distance. This, of course, is the same Flapping Rectum who is so sure of his own pious, Godly society, that he can find a religious rationalization for blowing up an office building or school bus, as long as it’s full of Jews (or their infidel puppets).
The point is this; the rest of the world does not really hate America and those that make the argument that they do, are clearly in some sort of time warp. The rest of the planet loves America, to the extent that millions of them try to emigrate here every year, legally and no. If you believe that Cubans get onto rickety rafts and brave the Atlantic to get to America because they hate us, you’re wrong. If you think that millions of Mexicans cross the border risking life and limb in waterless deserts because they hate us, you’re wrong. If you think, even for a fraction of a second, that Europeans, so busy emulating us that they have to force smaller countries to join for what is, in all intents and purposes, a "United States of Europe" (even if it is dominated by socialists), then you have another thing coming. These people have a deep and abiding affection for America, or at least, what they believe American ideals to be.
The reason why we bear the brunt of such outrageous behavior from the rest of the planet is simple: They’re jealous.
We live in a society that tolerates all religions, while others do not. I wonder how many Catholics there are in Baghdad? We live in a society where people are free to be anything they wish to be, and we give them the tools to do it with; an education and a job, unlike, say, an Iraqi Kurd or a Muslim immigrant to France. We live in a world where political power is, theoretically, derived from the people, not from the barrel of a gun, like in China, or based on the fabulous, unshared wealth generated in something unlike a free market, vis-Ã -vis Saudi Arabia. The United States welcomes everyone that wishes to just enjoy a better life and is willing to work for it, unlike, say, Italy. It’s the bunch of morons scattered about the face of the planet that pontificate about human rights and the brotherhood of man, and when called upon, fail to reach into their pockets, or their hearts, that cast these stones at our country.
And when Arabs and Chinese, North Koreans and Indonesians, Mexican Mestizos and Canadians all wail about the United States and it’s ham-handed and hard-hearted policies and it’s seeming disregard for the plight of others less fortunate, they’re really talking about themselves. They haven’t the wealth, the power or the opportunities to do what this country does, and THEY hate us for it. They’ve just projected their hatred onto the rest of the world to make themselves feel better about it.
Sort of like when you expel gas from your Flapping Rectum.
Three Years Later -- Part I...
Three days from now we will be observing the third anniversary of the 9/11 terrorist attacks. And we still have many things to be thankful for, and just for this fact alone instead of mourning, I will at least put the best face I can on the three years that have passed.
To begin with, I’m alive. By some trick of fate, some cosmic conspiracy of luck, or maybe I just ate my Wheaties that day, but I’m here. I missed being within the WTC by about 90 seconds or so, when it was struck by the first aircraft, though said airliner did in fact pass directly above my head. That’s something to celebrate. Though I wasn’t physically injured, the attacks and their aftermath did scar me in several ways. I suffer from PTSD (Post-traumatic stress syndrome) and the occasional panic attack, both provoked by the events of 9/11. I can control one with medication and the other requires a great deal of therapy, but I console myself with the realization that I was not burnt to a cinder, crushed by falling steel or masonry, or buried alive, to die a slow, suffocating death. I’m absolutely ecstatic that I did not have to make a choice that some of the poor victims did, deciding whether it was better to burn, get crushed or jump from 100 stories. I don’t know what I would have done in that situation, and I’m happy that I didn’t have to make that choice.
If that makes me selfish, then so be it. I will not apologize for being in the wrong place at the wrong time, so to speak, and escaping with life and limb intact. When one considers the horror, devastation and grief caused by 19 Saudis, needlessly inflicted upon thousands, if not millions, for the simple crimes of being Americans and (mostly) non-Muslims, I feel strongly that those of us who managed not to get it that day have something to be thankful for.
Life is always something to celebrate.
The most fortunate part of this tragedy, if something good could be found in it, is that I have come to realize that I have what everyone always seems to be seeking – a second chance. Once one finally realizes that death is that close to us all, and can come violently and unexpectedly, one decides that maybe some of the frenzied activity that we call "life" is really irrelevant. Why go to a job that you hate and which makes you miserable? You have a second chance – go and do what you want with life now. Chasing a paycheck and the bonuses attached to work on Wall Street no longer seemed attractive to me anymore. At the end of the day, when lunatics, who are willing to die in a bastardized cause, can kill you, what does money mean? It’s irrelevant. When you go to a workplace that makes you unhappy, engaged in a profession that you never foresaw for yourself, and it makes you agitated, nasty, depressed and the only reason you still do it is just because you have bills to pay, why do it? Life, my friends, is too short to slave away in a cubicle, producing something of value only to someone who sees you as a tool to shore up his bottom line.
The second chance revolves around doing what I want to do, a chance to make myself happy. Not monetarily rich, but spiritually and emotionally enriched, satisfied that what I do might make a difference to someone along the way, reconnecting with people and resuming my place in humanity. At the moment, I’m trading in systems programming for either culinary school, or failing that, getting my history degree so that I can teach and maybe write. Bringing joy to others, bringing knowledge to others, helping others to achieve and to do it in a way that makes me happy, and motivated, is my new goal. I don’t intend to waste my second chance. The world may revolve around Wall Street and computers these days, but neither is any longer the center of my personal universe.
Reflecting on what has occurred in the last two years, I have much to say and even more to think about. Where to begin is difficult, as there are multiple threads in this tangled web, but I’ll do my best. In no particular order, here are some issues that have been bouncing around my skull recently.
1. The War on Terrorism – President Bush, true to his word, has made Afghanistan (and vicariously, us) safer by making sure that the Taliban and their supporters are either gone, or so deep in hiding as to be fearful of revealing themselves in the sunlight. It’s no longer Terrorist University, and Osama is decomposing under a pile of rubble somewhere. Fighting still continues in that tortured country, however, the fighting there is serving a purpose, and is similar to the endgame being played in Iraq at the moment. A new, freer nation is emerging from nearly 40 years of war and strife. Elections are being held, hospitals and schools are being built, life is begining to resemble something tolerable in Afghanistan.
Iraq is emerging as a free nation, slowly, but once the momentum has been gained, there will be no stopping the process. Iraqis, seriously threatened, beaten, tortured, starved, gassed, conscripted to die in huge numbers in desert and swamp, can now breathe a little easier. Certainly, aspects of life in Iraq are unalterably changed; there are no longer roving bands of secret policemen and uniformed militia listening in on conversations and reporting/detaining those who have a beef with the regime. There is no longer the threat that Saddam’s boys might come and take your daughter or wife because they tickled their fancy. The thuggery of a total police state has been eliminated by the American invasion and the continuing presence of American troops. Sure, not everything is quiet and, certainly, some things that once were will never be again. However, on balance, this is a good thing if Iraqis can manage to pull their country back together, get on with the business of business in a free-market setting and establish something resembling democratic (or at least Republican) institutions, then the lives and treasure spent will have been worth it. At the very least, we have arrested one of the world’s worst dictators, murderers and the biggest waste of sperm. The effects this will have on terrorists is obvious – one less supporter, one less friendly government to hide and fund them, one less madman willing to use them as a proxy in his monomaniacal fight against the United States.
The naysayers, always willing to throw the brickbat of "quagmire" around when it’s a member of the opposition party in the White House, will claim (they still do) that the War was unnecessary, that thousands of innocent Iraqis died for no reason, and that we are losing the peace because the country wasn’t turned into a first-world economic power within 10 days of the invasion. Usually, these are the same people who apparently didn’t know the word quagmire when their icon, JFK a was stuck in the morass of Vietnam (Which would go on for the better part of two decades), leaving a mess to be cleaned up by others. Their beef then was getting drafted and deprived of all them drugs and free sex.
These are the people who will point to the casualties suffered by the U.S. after hostilities were formally announced as over, and will say, "See? They’re still fighting, how could we have won?" The answer to this is very simple, and that’s why it never occurred to any of them. Post-invasion administration of a (for lack of better term) conquered country is always difficult. To begin with, there is always the struggle for succession to power – various factions, with numerous axes to grind, delusions of grandeur, ideological slants, religious pretexts, etc., will always attempt to impose their will in a post-war scenario because a) there is a vacuum in the political and power structure that can often be manipulated for their own gain and b) once the old Top Dog’s foot is off the throat of his former political adversaries, they get confident and cocky that they can take over and do what they have been waiting to do with little or no opposition.
In both Afghanistan and Iraq, this is the situation. Some warlord, cleric, former army officer or government official decides that he is the person to run the country. This is difficult to do when an invader, who has overwhelming military force at his disposal, occupies your country and even more so when you have rivals who have also managed to survive. So, the continued attacks on U.S. troops are designed to not only kill as many as possible, but to weaken our standing in the eyes of a grateful nation, who will switch support to the side that inflicted the casualties, theoretically. The United States, and not other Iraqis, are the real threat to the would-be successors of Saddam. They know the U.S. will hunt them down, kill them or at least imprison them, before turning them over to their Iraqi rivals for elimination.
The second part of this strategy revolves around the maxim that a weaker force cannot confront a stronger one without either losing, or gaining a victory that’s so costly as to be next to useless. The only way around this kind of scenario is guerilla war, avoiding the exposure of your assets to destruction while attempting to inflict as much damage as possible against the enemy. It has a drawback, however, in that the factions must occasionally come out to fight, and when they do, the U.S. stomps on them. This reduces their numbers, their standing in the eyes of the community, and might even cause another rival to get too big for his britches. This kind of situation is good for the U.S. terrorism fighters – akin to drawing flies onto flypaper. The terrorists do all the work for us, gathering in Iraq and Afghanistan from all over the Middle East shitholes that they come from, and gathering in one place for easier destruction. The few who are lucky enough to survive will go into hiding, probably never daring to take up arms again. Experience in Vietnam, the Philippines, and Central America, proves that the U.S. knows how to fight a counter-insurgency conflict, when politics doesn’t get in the way.
The aftermath of both the Iraq and Afghanistan invasions are not unique events, unforeseen nor uncontrollable. Similar things happened in Germany, Japan and France after the Second World War, and when the Soviet Union disintegrated. Time is the great equalizer here – it’s on our side, and while we wait it might be painful, but in the end, good things will come of it. The naysayers have got it all wrong, which doesn’t surprise me when you realize just who they are.
2. Rebuilding the World Trade Center – This is a tough issue to discuss without sounding callous and mean spirited. I understand that there are those who died in the disaster that were never recovered. I understand the horrific grief that accompanies the loss of a loved one, especially in such a heinous way. I totally respect the view that something needs to be done to ensure that a memorial, monument, etc., is incorporated into the design of whatever eventually gets built on the site in the future. There are those, however, who wish no construction to take place, and I feel they are letting their grief get in the way of their good sense, and maybe being just too selfish for the rest of us.
The sad fact is that while 3,000 of our fellow New Yorkers were incinerated in the ruins, there are nine-plus million of us that didn’t get killed. This nine million or so needs things, like jobs, the City needs revenue if it’s not to become a ghost town, and business needs a place to settle down, close to the financial center of the planet. The people who live in Battery Park or the surrounding neighborhood should not have to suffer the depressing thought of 3,000 murdered people every time they look out their windows at a 16-acre hole in the ground. Something must be built on the site and, unfortunately, I believe that in this case, too much say is being given to those with no rationality, only grief, to offer on this subject.
When the City of New York is several- billion plus in the hole, when businesses are leaving because of high taxes and steep commercial real estate rates, does it make sense to leave 16 acres of the world’s premier real estate empty? The people who say no to reconstruction are, understandably, thinking of themselves and the ones they lost. They are not thinking about the rest of us or about the future. For them, time has stopped on 9/11.
New York will not survive unless it can restore the commercial space and transportation hubs that served Lower Manhattan and which constituted a pretty penny in revenue for both the city and the state. Whatever the city and state lost in revenue with the destruction of the towers, it will make up on the backs of the rest of us. When enough people and businesses have fled for greener, friendlier pastures, there won’t be any backs left. This cannot be allowed to happen, and because there is so much money at stake, I can almost predict that it won’t. However, the obstructionists, who have a valid claim and an understandable reason, will either kill any new construction or delay it for so long that if and when anything is ever built on the site, it will not matter. If you believe a new set of towers on the site is an insult to your loved ones, think about what your idea of a massive memorial will do: turn a tragedy into a tourist attraction. Is that what you want – a Disneyland of death and destruction? I would find that even more insulting and insensitive if I was in your position. It’s bad enough the city has an open sore in the heart of its business district, do we have to continue to pick at it? I understand that for all of you who oppose new construction that the hurt will never diminish, the scars will never heal. However, engaging in a continual orgy of grief, in effect using your "Oprah moment" to deny the living a chance for a better life, is wrong. In it’s own way, this kind of behavior is actually disgusting.
As for the proposals for what might actually be built on the site (someday), someone should walk into every architectural school on the planet and see what drugs are being passed out. Sky Gardens? Skeleton-like buildings? Monstrosities of geometry and glass? What is needed is simple, attractive, office and commercial space without the added geegaws that most have presented, which either serve no functional purpose, or which will only entail greater expense when it’s finally built. New Yorkers don’t need an "inspirational" replacement, they need good, solid commercial real-estate that’s aesthetically pleasing. Half the designs I’ve seen so far look like a Dali painting that’s been stretched and folded numerous times. Some call it artistic license, I call it a vacuous display of personal ego on the part of most of the designers. In the end, nothing like what has been envisioned thus far will be built because the final considerations will not be artistic, but financial.
3. The Truth About Islam – Finally we have seen just what a destructive, nihilistic force this is. Under the pretext of a religious belief, it has been used as a shield to protect murderous, racist thugs, to excuse the indiscriminate murder of women and children, and to hide the fact that the folks who believe in it are stuck in a cesspool of their own making. Islam has always been a violent religion, and will get more so as technology advances and better ways of killing people emerge in the future.
One thing we must always remember about the 9/11 attacks is this: this was not the result of American foreign policy (15 of the 19 killers were from an "allied nation" that we had saved in the previous decade), it was not a result of poverty (most of the hijackers were middle-class and college-educated), nor was it reciprocity for U.S. "aggression" and "oppression" of Muslims. When one considers that the United States in the last thirty years has helped Afghans beat a Soviet Army equipped with superior means of killing, intervened in the "ethnic cleansing" of Muslims in the Balkans, ,protecting them and killing our own (Serbs) on their behalf, spent a vast fortune on economic and humanitarian aid in places like Egypt, Turkey, Pakistan, Saudi Arabia, Indonesia, Somalia, and the "Palestinian lands", defended Saudi Arabia and liberated Kuwait from Saddam, I think it’s pretty clear the Islamists have never had a better friend than the United States. Heck, the Iranians even took U.S. citizens hostage, an act of war, and that country is still on the map. If the argument is that the United States has propped up illegitimate governments in Saudi Arabia, Kuwait, Egypt, etc., then it doesn’t hold water, in my opinion. We may have dealt with some shady characters in the name of realpolitik, but we didn’t put them in power. Europeans did that, but we don’t see Big Ben or the Eiffel Tower being rammed by jumbo jets, do we?
No, the attack was not made upon us for any reason of economics or politics, it was made because we are the ultimate representative of what Islam cannot offer it’s faithful – progress, hope, peace, medicine, education, employment, law and freedom to express yourself and to do as you wish. These are WESTERN concepts or inventions that Islam cannot provide for the people who are hungry for them because the religion is enmeshed in the very lives of the people who practice it, and chains them in place.
"Do not live amongst the Infidel or practice his ways", states the Koran (I’m paraphrasing here). However, when your children go hungry because the use of certain farming implements and techniques comes with the taint of modernity and Westernism, how do you feel? When your parents are dying from a curable disease that can’t be treated because the technology that could help them is "infected" by the infidels who invented it, how would you feel? When you cannot get a job or go to school because the system that maintains what passes for the country you live in has no concept of free-markets or freedom, and has an education system that is thoroughly steeped in tradition and theology, what would you do?
Never doubt for a moment that the vast majority of the people who live in the Middle East would dearly love to have what we take for granted, or at the least, would accept as much of it as they could stand. The problem is that the very fabric of their society would disintegrate if they did. How does one reconcile the need for modernity at the expense of destroying everything you know? The mullahs cannot accept anything that threatens their positions, which is based upon the word of God, and so they berate Westerners and western ideas as being the tools of the Devil. Well, if the Devil has found a way to give me a better life, and I don’t have to sin for it, how could that be bad? Why can’t I have it? This society is on the edge – it’s psychopathic, it has multiple personalities. It’s confused and feels helpless. God (and thus the Mullahs) cannot be responsible for the state of the Islamic world, therefore, it must be those nasty infidels who have kept the secret of a better life from God’s own people. That is why 19 idiots flew three jet aircraft into the World Trade Center and the Pentagon – it’s a temper tantrum turned deadly. This tantrum is spiced with radical politics, racism and a veneer of religious sanction, but in the end, it’s simply a way to maintain the status quo in a dead-end society. The Mullahs fear us and our concepts of freedom – if their own people ever got to enjoy the very least of rights that we take for granted, if they could have the choices we have with regards to food, education, media, they would bolt Islam like a panicked stallion.
That is why 3,000 Americans had to die on September 11, 2001. Three years later, and things are still the same, as far as the Muslims are concerned, but here in America, we are committed to making sure they change for the better. Not just for own sake but for the sake of the millions that are trapped in a stagnant society. We’re not out to destroy a religion or a culture, we’re out to destroy an idea – that God sanctions mass-murder based on a hodge-podge mix of perverted religion, racism and ignorance.
The lessons will be taught – in the end, will enough Muslims be left to learn them?
Three days from now we will be observing the third anniversary of the 9/11 terrorist attacks. And we still have many things to be thankful for, and just for this fact alone instead of mourning, I will at least put the best face I can on the three years that have passed.
To begin with, I’m alive. By some trick of fate, some cosmic conspiracy of luck, or maybe I just ate my Wheaties that day, but I’m here. I missed being within the WTC by about 90 seconds or so, when it was struck by the first aircraft, though said airliner did in fact pass directly above my head. That’s something to celebrate. Though I wasn’t physically injured, the attacks and their aftermath did scar me in several ways. I suffer from PTSD (Post-traumatic stress syndrome) and the occasional panic attack, both provoked by the events of 9/11. I can control one with medication and the other requires a great deal of therapy, but I console myself with the realization that I was not burnt to a cinder, crushed by falling steel or masonry, or buried alive, to die a slow, suffocating death. I’m absolutely ecstatic that I did not have to make a choice that some of the poor victims did, deciding whether it was better to burn, get crushed or jump from 100 stories. I don’t know what I would have done in that situation, and I’m happy that I didn’t have to make that choice.
If that makes me selfish, then so be it. I will not apologize for being in the wrong place at the wrong time, so to speak, and escaping with life and limb intact. When one considers the horror, devastation and grief caused by 19 Saudis, needlessly inflicted upon thousands, if not millions, for the simple crimes of being Americans and (mostly) non-Muslims, I feel strongly that those of us who managed not to get it that day have something to be thankful for.
Life is always something to celebrate.
The most fortunate part of this tragedy, if something good could be found in it, is that I have come to realize that I have what everyone always seems to be seeking – a second chance. Once one finally realizes that death is that close to us all, and can come violently and unexpectedly, one decides that maybe some of the frenzied activity that we call "life" is really irrelevant. Why go to a job that you hate and which makes you miserable? You have a second chance – go and do what you want with life now. Chasing a paycheck and the bonuses attached to work on Wall Street no longer seemed attractive to me anymore. At the end of the day, when lunatics, who are willing to die in a bastardized cause, can kill you, what does money mean? It’s irrelevant. When you go to a workplace that makes you unhappy, engaged in a profession that you never foresaw for yourself, and it makes you agitated, nasty, depressed and the only reason you still do it is just because you have bills to pay, why do it? Life, my friends, is too short to slave away in a cubicle, producing something of value only to someone who sees you as a tool to shore up his bottom line.
The second chance revolves around doing what I want to do, a chance to make myself happy. Not monetarily rich, but spiritually and emotionally enriched, satisfied that what I do might make a difference to someone along the way, reconnecting with people and resuming my place in humanity. At the moment, I’m trading in systems programming for either culinary school, or failing that, getting my history degree so that I can teach and maybe write. Bringing joy to others, bringing knowledge to others, helping others to achieve and to do it in a way that makes me happy, and motivated, is my new goal. I don’t intend to waste my second chance. The world may revolve around Wall Street and computers these days, but neither is any longer the center of my personal universe.
Reflecting on what has occurred in the last two years, I have much to say and even more to think about. Where to begin is difficult, as there are multiple threads in this tangled web, but I’ll do my best. In no particular order, here are some issues that have been bouncing around my skull recently.
1. The War on Terrorism – President Bush, true to his word, has made Afghanistan (and vicariously, us) safer by making sure that the Taliban and their supporters are either gone, or so deep in hiding as to be fearful of revealing themselves in the sunlight. It’s no longer Terrorist University, and Osama is decomposing under a pile of rubble somewhere. Fighting still continues in that tortured country, however, the fighting there is serving a purpose, and is similar to the endgame being played in Iraq at the moment. A new, freer nation is emerging from nearly 40 years of war and strife. Elections are being held, hospitals and schools are being built, life is begining to resemble something tolerable in Afghanistan.
Iraq is emerging as a free nation, slowly, but once the momentum has been gained, there will be no stopping the process. Iraqis, seriously threatened, beaten, tortured, starved, gassed, conscripted to die in huge numbers in desert and swamp, can now breathe a little easier. Certainly, aspects of life in Iraq are unalterably changed; there are no longer roving bands of secret policemen and uniformed militia listening in on conversations and reporting/detaining those who have a beef with the regime. There is no longer the threat that Saddam’s boys might come and take your daughter or wife because they tickled their fancy. The thuggery of a total police state has been eliminated by the American invasion and the continuing presence of American troops. Sure, not everything is quiet and, certainly, some things that once were will never be again. However, on balance, this is a good thing if Iraqis can manage to pull their country back together, get on with the business of business in a free-market setting and establish something resembling democratic (or at least Republican) institutions, then the lives and treasure spent will have been worth it. At the very least, we have arrested one of the world’s worst dictators, murderers and the biggest waste of sperm. The effects this will have on terrorists is obvious – one less supporter, one less friendly government to hide and fund them, one less madman willing to use them as a proxy in his monomaniacal fight against the United States.
The naysayers, always willing to throw the brickbat of "quagmire" around when it’s a member of the opposition party in the White House, will claim (they still do) that the War was unnecessary, that thousands of innocent Iraqis died for no reason, and that we are losing the peace because the country wasn’t turned into a first-world economic power within 10 days of the invasion. Usually, these are the same people who apparently didn’t know the word quagmire when their icon, JFK a was stuck in the morass of Vietnam (Which would go on for the better part of two decades), leaving a mess to be cleaned up by others. Their beef then was getting drafted and deprived of all them drugs and free sex.
These are the people who will point to the casualties suffered by the U.S. after hostilities were formally announced as over, and will say, "See? They’re still fighting, how could we have won?" The answer to this is very simple, and that’s why it never occurred to any of them. Post-invasion administration of a (for lack of better term) conquered country is always difficult. To begin with, there is always the struggle for succession to power – various factions, with numerous axes to grind, delusions of grandeur, ideological slants, religious pretexts, etc., will always attempt to impose their will in a post-war scenario because a) there is a vacuum in the political and power structure that can often be manipulated for their own gain and b) once the old Top Dog’s foot is off the throat of his former political adversaries, they get confident and cocky that they can take over and do what they have been waiting to do with little or no opposition.
In both Afghanistan and Iraq, this is the situation. Some warlord, cleric, former army officer or government official decides that he is the person to run the country. This is difficult to do when an invader, who has overwhelming military force at his disposal, occupies your country and even more so when you have rivals who have also managed to survive. So, the continued attacks on U.S. troops are designed to not only kill as many as possible, but to weaken our standing in the eyes of a grateful nation, who will switch support to the side that inflicted the casualties, theoretically. The United States, and not other Iraqis, are the real threat to the would-be successors of Saddam. They know the U.S. will hunt them down, kill them or at least imprison them, before turning them over to their Iraqi rivals for elimination.
The second part of this strategy revolves around the maxim that a weaker force cannot confront a stronger one without either losing, or gaining a victory that’s so costly as to be next to useless. The only way around this kind of scenario is guerilla war, avoiding the exposure of your assets to destruction while attempting to inflict as much damage as possible against the enemy. It has a drawback, however, in that the factions must occasionally come out to fight, and when they do, the U.S. stomps on them. This reduces their numbers, their standing in the eyes of the community, and might even cause another rival to get too big for his britches. This kind of situation is good for the U.S. terrorism fighters – akin to drawing flies onto flypaper. The terrorists do all the work for us, gathering in Iraq and Afghanistan from all over the Middle East shitholes that they come from, and gathering in one place for easier destruction. The few who are lucky enough to survive will go into hiding, probably never daring to take up arms again. Experience in Vietnam, the Philippines, and Central America, proves that the U.S. knows how to fight a counter-insurgency conflict, when politics doesn’t get in the way.
The aftermath of both the Iraq and Afghanistan invasions are not unique events, unforeseen nor uncontrollable. Similar things happened in Germany, Japan and France after the Second World War, and when the Soviet Union disintegrated. Time is the great equalizer here – it’s on our side, and while we wait it might be painful, but in the end, good things will come of it. The naysayers have got it all wrong, which doesn’t surprise me when you realize just who they are.
2. Rebuilding the World Trade Center – This is a tough issue to discuss without sounding callous and mean spirited. I understand that there are those who died in the disaster that were never recovered. I understand the horrific grief that accompanies the loss of a loved one, especially in such a heinous way. I totally respect the view that something needs to be done to ensure that a memorial, monument, etc., is incorporated into the design of whatever eventually gets built on the site in the future. There are those, however, who wish no construction to take place, and I feel they are letting their grief get in the way of their good sense, and maybe being just too selfish for the rest of us.
The sad fact is that while 3,000 of our fellow New Yorkers were incinerated in the ruins, there are nine-plus million of us that didn’t get killed. This nine million or so needs things, like jobs, the City needs revenue if it’s not to become a ghost town, and business needs a place to settle down, close to the financial center of the planet. The people who live in Battery Park or the surrounding neighborhood should not have to suffer the depressing thought of 3,000 murdered people every time they look out their windows at a 16-acre hole in the ground. Something must be built on the site and, unfortunately, I believe that in this case, too much say is being given to those with no rationality, only grief, to offer on this subject.
When the City of New York is several- billion plus in the hole, when businesses are leaving because of high taxes and steep commercial real estate rates, does it make sense to leave 16 acres of the world’s premier real estate empty? The people who say no to reconstruction are, understandably, thinking of themselves and the ones they lost. They are not thinking about the rest of us or about the future. For them, time has stopped on 9/11.
New York will not survive unless it can restore the commercial space and transportation hubs that served Lower Manhattan and which constituted a pretty penny in revenue for both the city and the state. Whatever the city and state lost in revenue with the destruction of the towers, it will make up on the backs of the rest of us. When enough people and businesses have fled for greener, friendlier pastures, there won’t be any backs left. This cannot be allowed to happen, and because there is so much money at stake, I can almost predict that it won’t. However, the obstructionists, who have a valid claim and an understandable reason, will either kill any new construction or delay it for so long that if and when anything is ever built on the site, it will not matter. If you believe a new set of towers on the site is an insult to your loved ones, think about what your idea of a massive memorial will do: turn a tragedy into a tourist attraction. Is that what you want – a Disneyland of death and destruction? I would find that even more insulting and insensitive if I was in your position. It’s bad enough the city has an open sore in the heart of its business district, do we have to continue to pick at it? I understand that for all of you who oppose new construction that the hurt will never diminish, the scars will never heal. However, engaging in a continual orgy of grief, in effect using your "Oprah moment" to deny the living a chance for a better life, is wrong. In it’s own way, this kind of behavior is actually disgusting.
As for the proposals for what might actually be built on the site (someday), someone should walk into every architectural school on the planet and see what drugs are being passed out. Sky Gardens? Skeleton-like buildings? Monstrosities of geometry and glass? What is needed is simple, attractive, office and commercial space without the added geegaws that most have presented, which either serve no functional purpose, or which will only entail greater expense when it’s finally built. New Yorkers don’t need an "inspirational" replacement, they need good, solid commercial real-estate that’s aesthetically pleasing. Half the designs I’ve seen so far look like a Dali painting that’s been stretched and folded numerous times. Some call it artistic license, I call it a vacuous display of personal ego on the part of most of the designers. In the end, nothing like what has been envisioned thus far will be built because the final considerations will not be artistic, but financial.
3. The Truth About Islam – Finally we have seen just what a destructive, nihilistic force this is. Under the pretext of a religious belief, it has been used as a shield to protect murderous, racist thugs, to excuse the indiscriminate murder of women and children, and to hide the fact that the folks who believe in it are stuck in a cesspool of their own making. Islam has always been a violent religion, and will get more so as technology advances and better ways of killing people emerge in the future.
One thing we must always remember about the 9/11 attacks is this: this was not the result of American foreign policy (15 of the 19 killers were from an "allied nation" that we had saved in the previous decade), it was not a result of poverty (most of the hijackers were middle-class and college-educated), nor was it reciprocity for U.S. "aggression" and "oppression" of Muslims. When one considers that the United States in the last thirty years has helped Afghans beat a Soviet Army equipped with superior means of killing, intervened in the "ethnic cleansing" of Muslims in the Balkans, ,protecting them and killing our own (Serbs) on their behalf, spent a vast fortune on economic and humanitarian aid in places like Egypt, Turkey, Pakistan, Saudi Arabia, Indonesia, Somalia, and the "Palestinian lands", defended Saudi Arabia and liberated Kuwait from Saddam, I think it’s pretty clear the Islamists have never had a better friend than the United States. Heck, the Iranians even took U.S. citizens hostage, an act of war, and that country is still on the map. If the argument is that the United States has propped up illegitimate governments in Saudi Arabia, Kuwait, Egypt, etc., then it doesn’t hold water, in my opinion. We may have dealt with some shady characters in the name of realpolitik, but we didn’t put them in power. Europeans did that, but we don’t see Big Ben or the Eiffel Tower being rammed by jumbo jets, do we?
No, the attack was not made upon us for any reason of economics or politics, it was made because we are the ultimate representative of what Islam cannot offer it’s faithful – progress, hope, peace, medicine, education, employment, law and freedom to express yourself and to do as you wish. These are WESTERN concepts or inventions that Islam cannot provide for the people who are hungry for them because the religion is enmeshed in the very lives of the people who practice it, and chains them in place.
"Do not live amongst the Infidel or practice his ways", states the Koran (I’m paraphrasing here). However, when your children go hungry because the use of certain farming implements and techniques comes with the taint of modernity and Westernism, how do you feel? When your parents are dying from a curable disease that can’t be treated because the technology that could help them is "infected" by the infidels who invented it, how would you feel? When you cannot get a job or go to school because the system that maintains what passes for the country you live in has no concept of free-markets or freedom, and has an education system that is thoroughly steeped in tradition and theology, what would you do?
Never doubt for a moment that the vast majority of the people who live in the Middle East would dearly love to have what we take for granted, or at the least, would accept as much of it as they could stand. The problem is that the very fabric of their society would disintegrate if they did. How does one reconcile the need for modernity at the expense of destroying everything you know? The mullahs cannot accept anything that threatens their positions, which is based upon the word of God, and so they berate Westerners and western ideas as being the tools of the Devil. Well, if the Devil has found a way to give me a better life, and I don’t have to sin for it, how could that be bad? Why can’t I have it? This society is on the edge – it’s psychopathic, it has multiple personalities. It’s confused and feels helpless. God (and thus the Mullahs) cannot be responsible for the state of the Islamic world, therefore, it must be those nasty infidels who have kept the secret of a better life from God’s own people. That is why 19 idiots flew three jet aircraft into the World Trade Center and the Pentagon – it’s a temper tantrum turned deadly. This tantrum is spiced with radical politics, racism and a veneer of religious sanction, but in the end, it’s simply a way to maintain the status quo in a dead-end society. The Mullahs fear us and our concepts of freedom – if their own people ever got to enjoy the very least of rights that we take for granted, if they could have the choices we have with regards to food, education, media, they would bolt Islam like a panicked stallion.
That is why 3,000 Americans had to die on September 11, 2001. Three years later, and things are still the same, as far as the Muslims are concerned, but here in America, we are committed to making sure they change for the better. Not just for own sake but for the sake of the millions that are trapped in a stagnant society. We’re not out to destroy a religion or a culture, we’re out to destroy an idea – that God sanctions mass-murder based on a hodge-podge mix of perverted religion, racism and ignorance.
The lessons will be taught – in the end, will enough Muslims be left to learn them?
Subscribe to:
Posts (Atom)