The horror of Sept. 11th, 2001

I'm with you there, I really don't know either. I try to catch all the current PBS programs available, one of the recent ones was really good, but it left me of the same opinion, it's a rock and a hard place.
Our seek and destroy tactics are apparently effective but extremely bad for relations with the Afghani people. Who can blame them, no one wants a foreign military police state.
I'd forgotten about the British experience. The taliban certainly hasn't forgotten their experience, my fear is that left intact they will only grow stronger from this latest.

I've heard a lot about that from time to time. If there's much truth at all in it, the whole thing was a failure of the first magnitude. Between that and the knee jerk reaction to Saddam's gum flapping ( which was nothing new) I am inclined to see a strong case for gross incompetence on the part of the Bush administration.

It looks like we've reached a concorde. I can't think of one positive thing that Bush jnr did, and I'm not just saying that. Re Afghanistan there's Taliban and Taliban, some, actually most, are open to discussion. Those Al Qaida sympathisers are not as prominent as some would have us believe.

Memories are long in Afghanistan, they still talk about Alexander.

You're right about the Taliban, I've been amazed at the film crews they've allowed in and how much they've allowed them to film. Maybe they'll decide Al Qaeda isn't in their best interest.

Only if they're leftists.

Selective quoting, Tico:


This is what I actually asked:

Unfortunately your typically shrill, hyperindignant response has nothing at all to do with my complaint. I don't question your right to be such a screeching harpie, I simply wish you would Take it somewhere else !

And you're calling other people shrill?

lulz

Huh? I cut out your questions directed toward GOB, and in doing so I did not alter context one iota.


My answer is the same. My "criticism" is not directed at foreigners at all. Just anti-American leftists, wherever they may live. I'd criticize anti-American right-wing-nuts too, I just haven't seen any of them around here.

seriously.

I obviously have no problem in calling someone an a$$hole, but I go by what their words are saying.

How can anyone tell if someone's voice would be shrill if they were speaking the words.

I can imagine olga finding offense in this, as I have when I've said something, writing in my mind in a calm voice, only to be called "hysterical" sounding.

That is such total bullshit. A person can't even defend themselves against something like that, because all you can say is "no I'm not", to which the name caller will reply "see, that proves it!"

sometimes, those characterizations apply to the choice of words in written language

please don't be mad at me, chai

what I can say wandel, is that I've never heard one man call another man "shrill" "a harpy" or "hysterical" here, nor have I heard one woman say it about another.

I have seen men say that to women.

I wonder if olga started an account as a man, and said those same words, if "he" would have been called shrill.

Well, I admit that sometimes my choice of words sound shrill.

I wasn't talking about you specifically, and yes I realize you were attempting humor.

But it has been true that if a woman stands up for herself, showing her displeasure in the same manner a man would, she gets called shrill, he's commanding and in charge.

One ruled by hormones and where the moon is in the sky speaking without thinking, the other in control of their emotions and all words well considered, if wrong.

Screw that (she said in a clear calm manner)

I was talking about the national debate, not personal conversations. If someone has a huge phobia about cats then I might not talk about them, but that doesn't mean talking about cats is inherently unkind, it means this person has an issue with cats.

I don't think anyone should be overbearing about making people hear something they don't want to hear, and I'm perfectly fine with not talking about a political issue with a particular person for whatever their reasons, but my point is that this is not a sacred day where America gets a free pass from criticism.

As part of the national debate, I find it absurd that some people try to make criticism off bounds on this day, just like I found it absurd that they tried to use the start of the war in Iraq to silence criticism ("Opposing the war is one thing, but now that the troops are there you must support them").

But yeah, it goes without saying that if a topic is upsetting someone it may be kind to let it go, but I'm not talking about manners between interlocutors I'm talking about politics on a national level. I'm talking about how this commemoration is a political circle jerk that seeks to exclude any other narrative.

I'm not talking about thread etiquette, I'm talking about the national political debate. I do not think that criticism of America needs a day off on this anniversary, I do think that being a considerate interlocutor is a generally good thing.

I don't want to be a pest, but you originally posted about my request for this thread. I thought that we were both talking about thread etiquette.

I strongly oppose isolationism. But that is not the only alternative to warmongering.



No it isn't a fabrication, the US has a very long history of supporting tyrants who are corrupt in that they we have them in our pockets. Sure, the motivation isn't to subjugate them, that is just a means to and end.



Perhaps the hundreds of thousands of people America has killed? America doesn't like it when people kill their people and other people feel remarkably similar about that kind of thing.



I'm not trying to anthropomorphize America into some evil villain. I think America is a great force for good in many ways, but also a great danger to the world with its militaristic foreign policy. When its policies are heartless this does not mean the country is, there is no evil genius pulling the strings, it's just the product of many different forces in the political system, including the insular worldview and the apathy of Americans (many of the people here on this forum supported the wars that America waged in response to 9/11, hundreds of thousands of people were killed by their misguided support).



This is just a very small facet of American foreign policy, in the last decade hundreds of thousands of people have been killed by America for different geopolitical concerns (less noble than preventing nuclear war).

Furthermore, I find it a bit naive to say that America's great responsibility is to prevent nuclear war. There is not a nation on earth that has done more to make nuclear war probable than America. Not at any time in history. Through each phase of the evolution of nuclear weapons the US was the most likely to start the nuclear war and the one that engaged in the most nuclear brinksmanship and nuclear sabre rattling.

Just to take two recent examples:

1) The North Koreans developed nukes only after America put nukes on the Korean Peninsula. Remember how America went apeshit over the cuban missile crisis? Same thing, and like that crisis too America was the first to put the nukes in someone else's back yard (too few Americans know this but the Russians put the missiles there as a reaction to nukes the US had placed near the USSR and the US quietly removed them as part of the agreement to remove the missiles in cuba).

2) During the bush administration the US escalated the nuclear arms race by withdrawing from treaties with Russia, and by calling for the development of tactical nukes (the so-called "bunker busters") in a very worrisome development (tactical nukes are much more "usable" and this is a development that inches towards more use of nukes, not less).

The US is not some noble knight keeping nuclear holocaust at bay, it's the entity with the most responsibility for creating that possibility and the one that took the most initiative and agression in the nuclear arms race from day one.



To you this has to be emotive, good vs evil. To me, this is like describing a dry piece of toast. I'm not trying to indict it as an entity, just saying it's dry.

There is no bigger picture that justifies the hundreds of thousands of people America kills in unjust wars. There is no bigger picture that makes invading Iraq make sense. That is just wishful thinking.



So? What does that have to do with America's penchant for killing people. How is that related to the hundreds of thousands of people America has killed in the last decade? This isn't at all about some noble guardianship of the nuclear club.



You can't be serious. This is like responding to being accused of murder with saying that violence will always be with us. I have not made the accusation that America invented violence and it's a deflection to argue as if I had as whether or not war is an American invention says nothing at all about the charge that America has a penchant for war.



I'm not the one making emotional caricatures of them. I think Bush is a great guy, nice fellow with tons of class. Happened to also believe it was a good idea to invade Iraq and kill hundreds of thousands of people. I'm criticizing the whole killing hundreds of thousands of people thing, not his personality.



America does TONS of great things. But again, this is like responding to an accusation of murder with "I gave a lot to the Salvation Army when I was a kid". What does that have to do with whether or not America's militarism is just?




I think it's silly to think that America is an evil or a benign beast. It's millions of people with conflicting interests. But I will say this, I think it's even sillier to think that America's about giving the world a better life. I'm sure that many Americans want this, and economically it often aligns with America's own interests but no American government has ever had a serious priority to improve the the lives of the world, it's always been improve the lives of Americans first and if we have time for charity (and Americans often give generously) then that's fine.

Thing is, many of the time the things America does to improve the quality of the lives of their citizens it comes at a cost to someone else. America is competing on the global stage wayne, and competing very well. History has never seen a greater military, economic, or cultural power. This comes at the cost to others (such as lost economic activity), I see nothing wrong with this, as long as we compete fairly but to pretend that we are some great eleemosynary nation is silly.

In the competition between nations, history has never seen a competitor like America. And America didn't get there by playing Mother Theresa.

Your "my country right or wrong" mentality is far more popular world wide than putting humanity first.

He has dismissed arguments from males with the "shrill" characterization as well. It's an incredibly forceful intellectual argument, I can see why he is fond of it.