McGentrix wrote:I believe it to be EXTREMELY easy to claim innocence as not one American soldier or bomb hit the museum. It was looted by Iraqi's.
Trying to compare the looting of a museum by locals (and blaming American and coalition forces for the actions of the locals) with the blatant destruction of the statuary in Afghanistan is worthless. It invokes the emotions of those here who like to shout about the evils of America, nothing more.
That's why it was a load of crap.
McG
You are correct, the museum was not hit by bombs and it was looted by Iraqis. That's all you have right.
Now listen up because to the degree that folks like you continue to fail to take responsibility for how your government and military keep fukking up life for others, to that degree your nation is going to continue to gain enemies.
Military operations in Iraq have produced far more destruction to archaeological remains than anything the Taliban did.
That is factual. Disregard for this archaeological record marks the military's and administration's operations there. That is factual.
The archaeological community was in touch with the D of D months before the war began, and specifically as regards the Museum of Antiquities. The concerns were damage from explosives AND the near certainty of looting (illegal market for antiquities is huge). The D of D did promise to protect the museum. They failed to do what they promised. Those are all facts.
I don't want the US to be hit again. That's a philosophical concern, a moral concern and a personal safety concern (those of us living in manhattan and riding the subway regularly are almost certainly more at risk than any of you in other locales). To the degree that the US continues to lose its friends around the world and continues to inspire hatred because of acts and ommissions such as above, to that degree it sets itself up for stupid tragedy.
joefromchicago wrote:McGentrix wrote:msolga wrote:(Mortkat must you continue to call Blatham that silly name you've invented? I don't see the point. It's not funny or clever.)
It's odd that I've not seen one single request for people to stop butchering Morkat's name as it has been time after time...
Huh. Odd...
But
blatham, to his credit, has managed to maintain a single identity during his participation in A2K. The same cannot be said for
Italomortochiczagatto.
Thankyou Joe. I knew there was something which differentiated Mortkat and myself and I think you've got your finger on it here.
BBB
Blatham and Mortkat are pissing over what may be facts not supported re the destruction of the ancient statues. The Taliban were primarily educated in Pakistan and many were Pakistanis. The others were from Afghan Pashtun tribes. ---BBB
World: Taliban and Al-Qaeda -- Provincial vs. Global
By Ron Synovitz
There are important distinctions between the Taliban regime that ruled Afghanistan until late 2001 and the Al-Qaeda network that carried out the 11 September 2001 terrorist attacks in the United States. RFE/RL spoke with two experts who explain why those differences remain significant nearly three years after the collapse of the Taliban regime.
Prague, 25 August 2004 (RFE/RL) -- As one of America's preeminent scholars on Afghanistan, Barnett Rubin understands the differences between the Taliban and Al-Qaeda very well.
But Rubin -- the director of the Center on International Cooperation at New York University -- says many others do not.
"Since 9-11 there has been an unfortunate confusion between the Taliban and Al-Qaeda in the minds of people who were previously unfamiliar with this region -- to the point where a U.S. member of Congress once expressed great surprise when I said the Taliban were not the people who [attacked] the World Trade Center," Rubin says.
In fact, it was Al-Qaeda that planned and carried out the 11 September attacks in the United States. The terrorist network had its roots in Afghanistan fighting against the Soviet occupation of the 1980s. But it is composed mostly of Arabs or Islamic militants from countries other than Afghanistan. "Al-Qaeda...is a kind of globalized anti-imperialist movement with Islam as its ideology."
"[Al-Qaeda] has a global agenda which goes beyond any particular country and is aimed at a kind of globalized Islamic jihad -- a very new kind of jihad -- against the United States as a superpower. It's a kind of globalized anti-imperialist movement with Islam as its ideology," Rubin says.
By comparison, much of the Taliban leadership comprised ethnic Pashtun Afghans who grew up in refugee camps or religious boarding schools in Pakistan -- called madrassas -- during the Soviet occupation of their homeland. Rubin says their outlook has always been more provincial.
"The Taliban, of course, are an indigenous Afghan, or Afghan-Pakistani, organization which really grew up during the 20 years that there were millions of Afghan refugees in Pakistan -- where the only education available for them was in madrassas, often in the [autonomous] tribal territories [along Pakistan's border with Afghanistan]. And it recruited from those people. They have an agenda about Afghanistan. They did not have a global terrorist agenda. So it's a completely different type of organization and problem [than Al-Qaeda]," Rubin says.
Rubin says the differences between the two groups reflect the fundamental differences in the outlook of their leadership.
"Mullah Omar, the leader of the Tailban, had never actually been to Kabul, the capital of Afghanistan, [before it came under Taliban control in 1996]. In fact, he has never stayed overnight in Kabul even though he was the head of state of the country. He is a very parochial, local-minded figure. Whereas, Osama bin Laden -- the head of Al-Qaeda -- grew up very wealthy in Saudi Arabia, speaks several languages, and traveled around the world, including to the West. His aides were all educated at universities. Most of the bombers on September 11th had been living in Europe and had university educations," Rubin said.
Rahul Bedi is a specialist on terrorism in South Asia for the London-based publication "Jane's Terrorism and Security Monitor."
"Al-Qaeda were a highly specialized group of people who were drawn from all over the Islamic world. Some of the people who were in Al-Qaeda, in a sense, belong to the 'class of the 1980s' who operated in the jihad against the Soviet occupation of Afghanistan. They were drawn from various Muslim countries, including Pakistan, but also a lot of the Arab countries. And they also had a very close connection with the Saudi Arabian Wahabbi sect -- which is an esoteric sect of Islam," Bedi says.
Like many military experts in South Asia and the United States, Bedi believes the Taliban movement was initially fostered by Pakistan's military and intelligence agencies in an attempt to influence events within Afghanistan.
"The Taliban actually grew from within Pakistan itself. Most of the cadres of the Taliban were youngsters who had been brought up in the various Islamic seminaries in principally two provinces of Pakistan -- Baluchistan and the neighboring Northwestern Frontier Province. These were the people who were then installed in Kabul -- with the help of [Pakistan's] military and Inter Services Intelligence in terms of supply lines, information, and finance," Bedi says.
After 11 September, Pakistani President Pervez Musharraf announced that Pakistan was severing all ties with the Taliban and was joining the United States in the war against terror. But both Bedi and Rubin note that much of Pakistan's effort in the antiterrorism campaign has focused on Al-Qaeda fighters rather than Taliban hard-liners who fled into Pakistan.
In recent months, Afghan Transitional Administration Hamid Karzai and the U.S. military have indicated their willingness to work with former members of the Taliban who were not among its hard-line membership and who are not carrying out attacks aimed at derailing Afghanistan's transition to democracy.
Bedi is critical of making any distinction between what the U.S. military refers to as "hard Taliban" and "soft Taliban."
"By letting the Taliban survive, the Western countries -- and especially the United States, in a sense, is conceding its fight against terrorism. Initially, the fight was not only directed against Al-Qaeda, but also against the Tailban [for] the removal of the Taliban [regime from Afghanistan]. But I think as happened subsequently in Iraq, the Americans thought very little about how to wage the peace rather than waging the war. With hindsight, the Americans and the British did not anticipate what would come afterwards. And that's why there is this deal-making going on with the Taliban -- which, in a sense, is quite hypocritical," Bedi says.
But it is on that point that Bedi and Rubin disagree. "You cannot classify people and eliminate them from politics forever because in the course of this extraordinarily difficult, painful and complex series of wars over the last 25 years, at some point or another, they joined an organization that we have labeled as being an enemy of the United States," Rubin says.
Rubin concludes the label "Taliban" is now being used in a political way by people who are trying to monopolize power in Afghanistan by excluding large portions of the Pashtun population. He says the only people who should be excluded from politics in Afghanistan are those who have committed war crimes or continue to fight against the new internationally backed constitutional order.
blatham wrote:McGentrix wrote:I believe it to be EXTREMELY easy to claim innocence as not one American soldier or bomb hit the museum. It was looted by Iraqi's.
Trying to compare the looting of a museum by locals (and blaming American and coalition forces for the actions of the locals) with the blatant destruction of the statuary in Afghanistan is worthless. It invokes the emotions of those here who like to shout about the evils of America, nothing more.
That's why it was a load of crap.
McG
You are correct, the museum was not hit by bombs and it was looted by Iraqis. That's all you have right.
Now listen up because to the degree that folks like you continue to fail to take responsibility for how your government and military keep fukking up life for others, to that degree your nation is going to continue to gain enemies.
Military operations in Iraq have produced far more destruction to archaeological remains than anything the Taliban did.
That is factual. Disregard for this archaeological record marks the military's and administration's operations there. That is factual.
The archaeological community was in touch with the D of D months before the war began, and specifically as regards the Museum of Antiquities. The concerns were damage from explosives AND the near certainty of looting (illegal market for antiquities is huge). The D of D did promise to protect the museum. They failed to do what they promised. Those are all facts.
I don't want the US to be hit again. That's a philosophical concern, a moral concern and a personal safety concern (those of us living in manhattan and riding the subway regularly are almost certainly more at risk than any of you in other locales). To the degree that the US continues to lose its friends around the world and continues to inspire hatred because of acts and ommissions such as above, to that degree it sets itself up for stupid tragedy.
Had the US attempted to stop the looting (By shooting people) imagine the uproar that would have caused. Damned if they did, damned if they didn't.
You are trying to compare the Bush administration with the Taliban and it won't fly with me Blatham. The Taliban, through DIRECT action destroyed antiquities that can never be recovered or rebuilt. Most of the antiquities looted by Iraqis from the museum have been recovered.
Your case has no merit.
McG said:
Quote:Had the US attempted to stop the looting (By shooting people) imagine the uproar that would have caused. Damned if they did, damned if they didn't.
False. All they had to do was precisely what they were doing at the Oil Ministry building on exactly the same days.
Quote:You are trying to compare the Bush administration with the Taliban and it won't fly with me Blatham. The Taliban, through DIRECT action destroyed antiquities that can never be recovered or rebuilt. Most of the antiquities looted by Iraqis from the museum have been recovered.
No, most have not been recovered. I'm not trying to compare the US and the Taliban in any other aspect than in who has caused the most needless damage to absolutely irreplaceable achaeological information from what is accurately termed the crade of civilization.
It is irrelevant that the act by the Taliban was one motivated by a pathological and extremist religious zeal and that the destruction caused by the US was as a consequence of mere disregard.
blatham McGentrix and others don't, or present as if they don't, give a **** about lost antiquities or such things as might be considered life enrichening so why bother with the debate?
bvd
No, I'm not at all convinced that is true for McG. He's clearly a Bush supporter and apologist but I don't think the other part is accurate.
you are a good and gracious man. I myself would need more convincing.
McTag wrote:.
I have been criticised elsewhere for suggesting that this current US Administration is presiding over a nadir in the history western civilisation. Anyone who read the LRB report with open eyes would surely tend to that view.
Back to that nonsense are you? It might be instructive for those of us who greet such broad assertions with a high degree of skepticism to know what you consider to be other like "nadir(s)" in Western Ci9vilization. Would you include the Penal laws imposed on Ireland by a British Empire, that then had no seriuous rivals - and certainly nothing to fear from Ireland - in that category?
How about the blindness and folly with which the rulers of Britain, France, Germany, then Austria-Hungary, and Russia approached the coming slaughter and destruction of WWI? Would you include the deliberate destruction of the Ottoman Empire by Britain and France, interested only in the growth of their imperial domains, in this category? One could also add the greed and deceptions of the British and French governments (augmented by the vanity and foolishness of the American President Wilson) that went into the negotiations in Paris and the "Peace" Treaty at Versailles which merely set the stage for a continuing struggle.
The events above set the political stage for the entire ghastly 20th century. Indeed we are still dealing with the aftereffects of these misdeeds of European powers, which, at the time, faced no serious external threats except each other, and which had no real reason for their struggles other than greed. That was a real nadir. The events to which you refer do not even begin to approach it in scale, motivation, or likely effect. Your characterization can only be interpreted as betraying a serious lack of understanding of history.
One can't really disagree with that Mac.
We are actually in zenith territory and pushing that upwards all the time.
George-What about this Russian gas supply cut off?
the bush admins is realatively innocuous, the voters who put him in office are the real danger.
Quote:Maev Kennedy
Saturday January 15, 2005
The Guardian
Iraqi authorities will today take back responsibility for the site of Babylon in a formal handover from the coalition forces. But what they will inherit, say experts, is a catalogue of disasters.
According to the report of the British Museum's John Curtis, the site has been severely contaminated and parts have been irreparably damaged.
The report details:
· damage to the dragons decorating the Ishtar Gate, one of the world's most famous monuments, from attempts to prise out the relief-moulded bricks
· broken bricks inscribed with the name of Nebuchadnezzar lying in spoil heaps
· the original brick surface of the great processional route through the gate crushed by military vehicles
· fuel seeping from tanks into archaeological layers
· acres of the site levelled, covered with imported gravel - which Dr Curtis said would be impossible to remove without causing further damage - and sprayed with chemicals which are also seeping into the unexcavated buried deposits
· thousands of tonnes of archaeological material used to fill sandbags and mesh crates, and equally damaging, when that practice stopped, thousands more tonnes of material imported from outside the site, contaminating the site for archaeologists forever.
http://www.guardian.co.uk/Iraq/Story/0,2763,1391085,00.html
It seems McG's argument is that it didn't happen if it wasn't intentional. The fact is that a lot of archeological sites have been damaged, far more than the 2 statues destroyed by the Taliban. The US has destroyed far more from lack of attention or down right negligence. There is little question of that in the archeological community.
georgeob1 wrote:McTag wrote:.
I have been criticised elsewhere for suggesting that this current US Administration is presiding over a nadir in the history western civilisation. Anyone who read the LRB report with open eyes would surely tend to that view.
Back to that nonsense are you? It might be instructive for those of us who greet such broad assertions with a high degree of skepticism to know what you consider to be other like "nadir(s)" in Western Ci9vilization. Would you include the Penal laws imposed on Ireland by a British Empire, that then had no seriuous rivals - and certainly nothing to fear from Ireland - in that category?
How about the blindness and folly with which the rulers of Britain, France, Germany, then Austria-Hungary, and Russia approached the coming slaughter and destruction of WWI? Would you include the deliberate destruction of the Ottoman Empire by Britain and France, interested only in the growth of their imperial domains, in this category? One could also add the greed and deceptions of the British and French governments (augmented by the vanity and foolishness of the American President Wilson) that went into the negotiations in Paris and the "Peace" Treaty at Versailles which merely set the stage for a continuing struggle.
The events above set the political stage for the entire ghastly 20th century. Indeed we are still dealing with the aftereffects of these misdeeds of European powers, which, at the time, faced no serious external threats except each other, and which had no real reason for their struggles other than greed. That was a real nadir. The events to which you refer do not even begin to approach it in scale, motivation, or likely effect. Your characterization can only be interpreted as betraying a serious lack of understanding of history.
You keep missing my point, which is that none of these historical tragedies was carried out by a government which claimed the moral high ground, to be representing the law, while at the same time lying to its own people and to the international community. Even Hitler did not claim to be Mr Nice Guy, only that what he was doing was necessary. GWB and Bushco, the self-proclaiming leaders of the free world, are the most cynical misusers of power yet seen, in scale and scope, imo.
In the 1940s the bad guys lost, although it was a close-run thing. How is the world going to recover after Bushco?
Claimed the moral high ground?
Do you have a quote for that?
McGentrix says Blatham's post is a load of crap. Are you surprised, McGentrix? Blotham is notorious for making things up as he goes. He generalizes more than the most addled headed high school sophomore.
I do not think that Blotham can produce any reliable evidence that "the US war and occupation has produced damage to our archeological heritage many multiples greater than what the Taliban did"
The "many multiples greater"is a laugher and a typical Blotham exaggeration. How many multiples greater? Who says so? What are the specific pieces of "archeological heritage that the US can be proven to have destroyed PURPOSELY AND WITH INTENT?
Blotham should really reserve his rancor for the damage done by American bombers to the Archeology of Germany and Italy by American bombers and invasion.
Joefrom Chicago, who must have somehow been offended because I rubbed his nose in it recently questions my name. I am astonished to hear that someone who would not question my sexual orientation is so intolerant and biased that he has a problem with a name.
Detano Inipo- All one has to do is prove him wrong, you say.
I am afraid that does not count on some of these threads. If you need proof go to the Global Warming thread to view a list of EIGHT SOLID REASONS I GAVE TO SHOW WHY GLOBAL WARMING WAS MAINLY BOGUS.
I proved my case.
People, Detano Inipo, who don't know how to respond to facts merely go on regurgitating their errors. I posted facts. All anyone had to do is to attempt to rebut them. None did.
I hope this has been helpful to you.
McTag wrote:
You keep missing my point, which is that none of these historical tragedies was carried out by a government which claimed the moral high ground, to be representing the law, while at the same time lying to its own people and to the international community. Even Hitler did not claim to be Mr Nice Guy, only that what he was doing was necessary. GWB and Bushco, the self-proclaiming leaders of the free world, are the most cynical misusers of power yet seen, in scale and scope, imo.
In the 1940s the bad guys lost, although it was a close-run thing. How is the world going to recover after Bushco?
You are dead wrong in these assertions. The British imposed the Penal laws on the Irish in the name of preserving civil order. Never mind the fact that they were excluding the native populatiuon from public life and equal opportunity in commerce, taxing them to support a religion that wasn't theirs, and subjecting them to an inheritance tax structure designed explicitly to break up their holdings and transfer the ownership of land to absentee Englishmen. During the Famines Ireland was a net exporter of food - grain and cattle - as cash crops for English consumers raised on lands stolen from their former Irish owners. Throughout all this the pious English rulling class fretted about the need to preserve civil order and proper thrift while the unruly Irish starved and emigrated by the millions. Jonathan Swift even suggested a well known "Modest Proposal" for the improvement of all this proper Victorian virtue. You might find it interesting reading.
Read the contemporary rhetoric about the descent into the abyss of WWI. The British were all about preserving their concept of Freedom of the Seas and their continued ability to "bear the White Man's Burden" in bringing enlightenment to the poor backward black and brown-skinned people of Africa and South Asia. For the unfortunate Indians this meant the enforced destruction of a local textile industry in favor of distant producers in the UK; for the Chinese it meant enforced opium importing from English merchants; for the Southern Africans it meant subordinating the rights of native peoples for the fulfillment of the avarice of Cecil Rhodes . Germany was in search of its place in the sun in a world already gobbled up by the British, French and Russians. France was for protecting the benefits of French enlightenment in their rapidly expanding African and Pacific empire and protecting themselves from another defeat at the hands of the Pruussians (now Germans) - never mind the fact that they plunged willingly into the 1872 War; Austria was about the preservation of traditional rule in an increasingly restive and polyglot empire. The Russians sadly allowed themselves to be the dupes of the French and British in a conflict in which they had even less interest than any of the other players (except perhaps for British and French loans that bought their foolish committment.).
All of these parties clothed their avarice and stupidity in far greater and more lofty self-serving rhetoric than did President Bush. He at least contented himself with a War on the Terrorists who had already struck at us and the need to create a new model of modern government in an Islamic world caught in two hostile and failed paradigms.
George OB1- No one, no one, who knows a modicum of 19th Century History could disagree with your post. But McTag will not, I predict, accept the validity of your truths. This is why I marvel at your self-restraint and your equanimity. When presented with facts, some people ignore them as if they do not exist.
I wait in vain for posters like McTag and, especially Blatham, to give even one fact backing thier positions. They do not, opting to live in the land of airy generalizations.
McTag talks about the Moral High Ground. I put the phrase into Google and could not find any statement by any member of the Republican Administration that they possessed the Moral High Ground.
Is it possible that McTag is hallucinating?
