Letters to the Editor
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I'm Pretty Sure Geo.W.Bush Had This Advice Before He Invaded
And he blew it off. He and his supporters continue to behave as if this sort of wisdom is pointy-headed Liberal stuff. We need to wait until they die, I guess. Can't find a way to convince them.
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words are words
why do i admire kamiya? When he is not obvious, which is rare, he is devoted.What i might suggest is that Gary read more Adorno.
Assuredly, according to contemporary bookmarks, this scene is pretty easily understood. But, we are not finally dealing with pseudo-manichaean difficulties. We are unfortunately facing ourselves. Fifty percent of the muslim world is illiterate. Humankind remains half feral. It will not change. Hope is amongst the imaginary. All I have to do so far is breathe.
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Leave them alone? But we're just starting to have fun!
When I was in high school, there was a guy, a big football player, who always tried to goad a couple of seventh graders to fight. He would push one into another, say that one said something about the other.
When they eventually started throwing punches, he sat back to watch the show, and when one got too close, he pushed him back into the center.
If you want to understand the Middle East situation, you have to understand that first.
There was another kid who was smaller than most others, not a dwarf, but just small. He had a stick in his locker, maybe two feet long. He showed it to me one time, not sure why. He had drilled out the center and filled it with lead.
If you want to understand the Middle East situation, you have to understand these things.
No, the U.S. will never leave the Middle East alone. There will never be peace there (unless muslims wake up and unite). And, for every George Bush in the world, there will always be many, many people who will follow.
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Another shameful polemic from Mr. Kamiya
"We have turned an entire region, and the adherents of one of the three largest religions in the world, against America and everything that it represents, including democracy. "
Note how it is okay for Kamiya to make sweeping generalizations about "an entire region" including apparently all? "adherents of one of the three largest religions" but if a critic of Islam makes a case for how Muslim think based on the doctrine and history of Islam, opinion pools, etc. they are shouted down as Islamophobes? Besides how patronizing towards Muslims is it to suggest as Kamiya explicitly does that they are so infantile as to be unable or unwilling to distinguish between the better and worse aspects of our civlization.
Basically Gary is one of the most unnuanced, ill-informed and unoriginal writers at Salon. Glenn Greenwald would go far in showing intellectual integrity if he took his own valid analysis of the Bush administrations good-vs.-evil mentality and then applied it to Gary Kamiya's artciles. Jews bad, Muslism good effectively sums up his oeuvre.
Even sader I heard these same diatribes about Israel, US foreign policy,etc. ten years ago in college and before that during high school at the time of teh first gulf war, and yet some of the Salonista crowd acts as if Kamiya was the first person to put forth these tired analyses of the Middle East.
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But what's the subtext?
I suppose a dhimmi, like a broken clock, can be right twice a day. Kamiya's usual submissive fawning over Muslim "rights" and "oppression" and "grievances" seems to have been replaced briefly by common sense. We shouldn't be there providing fodder for zealous jihadists to attack; we should let them enthusiastically murder each other, as was recently demonstrated in Gaza.
Unfortunately, though, Muslim "grievances" against us will not disappear with our withdrawal, disengagement, and retreat to "policing." Muslim "grievances" against us will disappear only when Israel does -- a hope fervently expressed by Hamas, Fatah, Al-Qaeda, endless splinter groups of the aforesaid, and probably the imam at your local mosque. Kamiya's delicate hint is that we abandon Israel to the delicate mercies of her neighbors.
Screw that.
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Kamiya is correct...almost
Much of what Kamiya states is pretty much the truth. Trouble is that he left out one element: the Muslim religion itself. Churchill laid it out well in 1899 when he wrote:
WINSTON CHURCHILL (ON ISLAM) - from a speech in 1899:
How dreadful are the curses which Mohammedanism lays on its votaries!
Besides the fanatical frenzy, which is as dangerous in a man as hydrophobia in a dog, there is this fearful fatalistic apathy. The effects are apparent in many countries. Improvident habits, slovenly systems of agriculture, sluggish methods of commerce, and insecurity of property exist wherever the followers of the Prophet rule or live.
A degraded sensualism deprives this life of its grace and refinement; the next of its dignity and sanctity. The fact that in Mohammedan law every woman must belong to some man as his absolute property either as a child, a wife, or a concubine, must delay the final extinction of slavery until the faith of Islam has ceased to be a great power among men.
Individual Moslems may show splendid qualities, but the influence of the religion paralyses the social development of those who follow it.
No stronger retrograde force exists in the world. Far from being moribund, Mohammedanism is a militant and proselytizing faith. It has already spread throughout Central Africa, raising fearless warriors at every step; and were it not that Christianity is sheltered in the strong arms of science, the science against which it had vainly struggled, the civilization of modern Europe might fall, as fell the civilization of ancient Rome."
Sir Winston Churchill (The River War, first edition,
Vol. II, pages
248-50) (London: Longmans, Green & Co., 1899).
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No Child Left Behind
<<Even sader I heard these same diatribes about Israel, US foreign policy,etc. ten years ago in college and before that during high school at the time of teh first gulf war, and yet some of the Salonista crowd acts as if Kamiya was the first person to put forth these tired analyses of the Middle East.>>
Yeah, yeah, I know . . . you think faster than you type, that's why you only seem illiterate, but really you are a very intelligent person, etc.
But, seriously . . . . diatribes?? Oh yeah, a 'diatribe' is an opinion that goes contrary to what you think. Criticize Israeli policy, eh viola!! Instant anti-semitism. Criticize U.S. Policy, eh voila!! Anti-Americanism. Criticize Bush, eh viola!! Irrational Bush-hater.
The "Salonista crowd"?? Sheesh, that's as stale as Bushevik. Next you'll be saying Kamiya and his 'ilk'. Blech.
Nope, it's not a 'tired analysis' -- it is a reminder. You know, people need to be reminded. Heck, the folks in the WH have to keep reminding us that Al Queda and Saddam attacked us on 9/11, and we're fighting a war on terror, and negotiation is defeat. Diplomacy is surrender. Compromise is suicide.
BTW -- the tide is turning . . .