Letters to the Editor
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Bombing: The New National Past time?
Bombing sovereign countries has become our new national pasttime! No wonder here, in addition to getting the Bad Guys, it does so many wonderful things for us! Here are a couple examples of what I mean:
It can help us learn the geography we avoided learning during years of school, as we get out the old National Geographic maps from the attic and look up the location of our latest bombing campaign. We're such well-informed citizens!
It can teach us about new cultures as we tune into the news and learn the funny names of all sorts of brown people, anglicized pronunciations of place names, and their "different" (not inferior *wink wink*) cultures.
It can make us feel proud to be Americans, as we put aside our silly differences like partisan politics, road rage, class strife and racial tension, and join together to see the big shiny explosions on CNN. Those people in far off lands are lucky to be the recipients of so much American military largesse. We're helping to free them from tyranny! They too can someday hope to enjoy the Freedom all us Americans enjoy!
It even stimulates our economy! The Government pays money to corporations that build the bombs. That means more jobs for people like you and I. We're lucky to have em!
Yes sir, BOMBING sovereign nations makes me proud to be an American and PAY MY HARD EARNED TAXES. Good thing that money isn't getting wasted on foolish nonsense like mass transit funding, education, improved health care, or social security.
Who needs those things to compete in the new Global Economy when we have such awesome military technology to get the bad guys!?!
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Anonymous at 7:52
That's offensive, uncalled-for and completely unsubstantiated.
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cestmoi:
If you're dealing with fanatics who cannot be expected to act rationally (i.e. people willing to give up their lives for a "cause"), threatening to attack only gives them warning - it won't stop them, and it won't get them to back down.
I don't want to assume things that aren't in this message, so this reply isn't necessarily aimed at you, but just a comment on "fanatics" and other "irrational" actors:
This notion is overused egregiously by the right to justify a variety of beligerent and immoral actions. While I agree there are such things as implacable enemies who will stop at nothing to hurt their enemies and so forth, there are far fewer of them then we are often led to believe. Specifically, Iran is often portrayed in this way, with almost no substantive evidence of that claim. Ahmedinejad says intemperate things, and this is aggrandized into turning Iran into 1937 Nazi Germany or something.
On an individual level, the notion of the terrorists being so savy and inhumanly dedicated is used to justify torture and even silly ideas like keeping interrogation techniques secret, otherwise the terrorists will prepare for them.
I'm well aware that many militaries do try and train their members for capture and interrogation, there really is no realistic preparation for torture. If the US was just using psychology, trickery or trust games to get information (ie not torture), these techniques could be generally described with little aid to Al Qaeda's training methods. As for waterboarding, what the fuck could you possibly do to prepare yourself for that?
If you are so dedicated to your cause as to endure physical agony and the imminent instinctual fear of death, you will do so, with or without "training." Torture is in that sense a crucible, seperating those who really do want to die for their causes from those who would really prefer not to. The vast majority will unsurprisingly be the latter category.
So like others here I'm leery of describing any adversary in terms of absolute irrationality because I think such extremes of insanity are exceptionally rare, particularly among state actors. Even North Korea with its delusional leaders hasn't invaded South Korea or shot at the US in 60+ years. Even madmen fear reprisal. Bid Laden may be "crazy" in a manner of speaking, but his actions are also quite rational from the perspective of his goals.
I guess the key is to seperate an irrational dream or goal one may have ("grand caliphate", "US Hedgemony" etc) and the means one employs in pursuit of those aims, which tend to be far more rational and pragmatic. Stalin may have dreamed of the USSR dominating the world, but even a mass murdering schizophenic like him respected MAD.
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Some Take The Bible
For what It's worth, when it says that the meek shall inherit the earth. Well, I heard that some sheik just bought New Jersey last week, and you suckers ain't gettin' nothin'.
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MrEdCT:
I think that Anonymous thing about Jews was a (well intentioned if poorly executed) joke.
But what do I know. Perhaps it was one of Glenn's detractors trying to fill his comments with antisemitism for Glenn's critics to focus on.
It's tough living in the era where irony and reality compete for which can be more outrageous. If Stephen Colbert has trouble satirizing his guests, I feel no shame in having my own irony radar fail from time to time.
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"Is there anything we can do to help?"
And we've forgotten how to do the humility thing. We need to watch and wait on Pakistan, and then if the democracy seems to be going forward ask the Pakistanis, "Is there anything we can do to help?"
-- ondelette
This morning on Washington Journal there was a guest who is a Middle East credentialed person of some sort. Sorry, I don't recall her exact title, but she seemed to be well versed, and on the up and up. Susan Swain read a quote of Bush's saying, in essence, that it is up to the Pakistani people who they want to elect. The lady basically said, duh, to Susan Swain. She elaborated some by saying, in essence, is their any difference between how we, the United States, would like to be on control or our own elections and how Pakistan would, duh, want the same courtesy afforded to them?
Frankly, I don't know why Susan Swain bothered to read the idiot's quote to the lady. What a waste of time.