Letters to the Editor
Scientician
Published Letters: 525 Editor's Choice: 1
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Glenn:
[Read the article: John King with Mike McConnell: Rare journalistic honesty]
[Read more letters about this article: Here]August by rushing to Congress and, in the shrillest and most hysterical tones possible, insisting that there would be an imminent attack and that the blood would be on the hands of the Congress if they failed to pass the PAA, with all the details demanded by the President, within a matter of days.
The article you linked to in that paragraph didn't mention this, but wasn't it even that McConnell insinuated that the attack would be on Congress itself? That there was some kind of specific threat to the Capitol buildings?
I think I remember the threat was more specific as part of the rank and unbelievable fear-mongering the Administration was doing in August.
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Remined of
[Read the article: Majority of Israelis want to negotiate with Hamas]
[Read more letters about this article: Here]That Onion headline "Majority of Americans now Anti-American"
Can we now make the joke "Majority of Israelis Anti-Semetic"?
But none of this is actually surprising. During the peak of the troubles in Northern Ireland, the most extreme views were often found (in greater preponderence) among Irish Americans in the US rather than the Irish themselves in either the north or the south.
This phenomenon is what prompted Bono's famous mid-song rant during a performance of Sunday bloody Sunday:
I'm sick of Irish Americans, who haven't been home in twenty or thirty years, come up to me and tell me about the glory of the revolution. The glory of dying for the revolution. Fuck the revolution. Where's the glory in dragging a man from his bed and gunning him down in front of his wife and children? Where's the glory in that? Where's the glory in bombing old age pensioners as part of a remembrance day parade, their medals polished up for the day? Where's the glory in that?
It was funding from such people in North America that largely funded the IRA and probably the protestant terror groups too.
Growing up in the 1990s in a community that had a large number of Croatians (in Canada) I saw a lot of the same, with many kids of Croatian descent (most born in Canada no less) taking very extremely hateful stances towards "serbs" and so forth.
I think when you're a world away you can easily dehumanize the situation and turn it into a bad-guys versus good guys situation. Those living the day-to-day reality in Belfast or the Jerusalem tend to have a much better understanding of what is going on, what solutions will work and which won't.
It ties in nicely with how most of the worst arm-chair "we could have won in Vietnam if it weren't for the hippies" types are precisely those that weren't there, or weren't in the field if they were. Chickenhawks for every conflict.
How many wars would end if all the jeering spectators weren't egging on the participants?
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Sol Invictus re: irrational opponents
[Read the article: Majority of Israelis want to negotiate with Hamas]
[Read more letters about this article: Here]This situation is not the same as that between the U.S. and the Soviet Union. No matter what you thought of the Soviets or of communism, you knew you were at least dealing with a rational actor. That's why the policy of Mutually Assured Destruction worked.
There were plenty of right wing paranoids on both sides of MAD that believed their side had to strike first because the other would eventually attack. And really, how "rational" was Stalin? The man was a fucking schizophrenic who liquified most of his officer corps as well as directing mass slaughters.
Reagan, despite the more recent canonization of him by the right was loathed for his efforts to reduce nuclear stockpiles. I have a copy of a NATO magazine called "THREAT" which included an editorial cartoon depicting a Communist vixen cooing over all the conventional arms the Soviets would be able to build with the money they saved not maintaining the nuclear arsenal. Reagan was constantly accused of being a dupe to Gorbachev.
(How rational was Reagan, suffering from Alzeheimers I leave as an excercise to the reader)
To Hamas, it is a religious duty to destroy Israel. Same is true for Hezbollah and Iran. MAD would not work in this instance, since they considered it glorious martyrdom to die fighting for their religion. They may "negotiate" to buy time or space, but in the end it will still come down to a fight to the finish.
In short, it's naive to negotiate with the likes of Hamas. It wasn't naive to negotiate with the Soviets.
This won't do. And it never works anyway. You're dehumanizing them in vastly greater numbers than is justified. Take away the substantive grievances and the supply of madmen dries up. Keep trying to kill them all and they multiply.
There are very few raving lunatics in positions of authority anywhere who are so beyond reason as to be unable to comprehend their best interests. Even Kim Jung Il and his father, despite evident meglomania have not breached the 1953 cease fire and invaded south korea or fired missiles on Japan.
The people strapping bombs to their chest aren't the ones in control. They're useful tools to those running the show, and make peace with them, and the tools get put away.