Quote:
Originally posted by techweenie
rrpjr:
I see no real counter arguments in your statements, and there is one truly egregious mis-statment.
(edit for typos)
|
Tech:
Sorry I failed the standard for the counter--argument. I tried.
As for my "egregious mis-statement," if one more "fatwa" in a profusion of fatwas is supposed to mean something in particular to us or confer legitimacy on barbaric attacks, then I do not agree, and accept with resolute satisfaction my "extreme naivete." While it is always good to pay attention to the ravings of enemies, and I agree that we certainly failed our job of intelligence to decipher the enemy's intent leading up to 9/11, a fatwa does not a righteous cause make. It only makes a fatwa. Yes, perhaps the sky was not so clear and blue, but not because of the clouds of our own so-called incriminating involvement.
If what you say is true about OBL's characterization of the "oil for food" abomination, and I think it is (OBL may even be underestimating the human toll), the proper targets on 9/11 should instead have been the United Nations.
Overall I detect here the old moral equivalence argument -- all the western colonialist, imperialist sins heaped upon the middle-east etc. that are supposed to lend some explanation (or just explanation) to the attack on us. The Noam Chomsky and Gore Vidal line. Nevermind that this is morally cattywhompers, it never allows the slightest room for (and in fact studiously avoids) discussion of the far greater sins heaped upon the middle-east by other middle-easterners, and by our attempt to correct some of this, or of the astonishing amount of improvements to life resulting from US technology and presence in many parts of the middle east. For every alienated rich-kid who sends young minions out to martyr themselves for his own delusionary yearnings to be the new Caliph of a savage Messopatamian empire there are thousands of children who have benefited from vaccines supplied by the evil old United States.
Maybe our good intentions are incredibly naive and we'll be routed from Iraq in total disgrace and never be able to show our heads around the world again. But, as I said earlier, a point which was totally ignored, there may -- and I suspect there is -- an historically inexorable quality to this conflict, and that we may see an even far greater, more active US military role around the world under the Hilary Clinton presidency. My prediction.