This blog is now read by more machines than humans: RSS robots, spam-laying insectopoids, echoes of blog-gathering .edu projects. This essentially is the state of affairs that all human activities wil
Cleaning Up the Nation
Austin Bay:
If Air America were a conservative radio network its corrupt funding trail and cynical abuse of a poverty program would be front page news at the NY Times and full-time mega-scandal at
Rank Materialism
Freedom. I am now the proud new owner of a Gateway 6020GZ laptop, perfect for students and others with limited means. I can now go into a Starbucks or a Barnes & Noble and look like I'm doing some
Fallujah Fonda
Uh-oh. From the Telegraph comes this exciting news:
Jane Fonda is returning to anti-war activism and embarking on a cross-country tour to call for an end to US military operations in Iraq.
Acros
John Pilger: Partner in Terrorism
In an outrageous piece of terrorist propaganda appearing on the cover of today's New Statesman, John Pilger puts the blame for the 7/7 London attacks not on the terrorists, but rather on Tony Blair:
John Pilger: Partner in Terrorism
In an outrageous piece of terrorist propaganda appearing on the cover of today's New Statesman, John Pilger puts the blame for the 7/7 London attacks not on the terrorists, but rather on Tony Blair:
Blair's Bombs
The bombs of 7 July were Blair's bombs.
Blair brought home to this country his and George W Bush's illegal, unprovoked and blood-soaked adventure in the Middle East. Were it not for his epic irresponsibility, the Londoners who died in the Tube and on the No 30 bus almost certainly would be alive today.
Pilger goes to some length describing the many grievances of the terrorists: Israel of course, the disputed Lancet figure of 100,000 dead Iraqis, and even the number of dead in Afghanistan:
In 2001, in revenge for the killing of 3,000 people in the twin towers, more than 20,000 Muslims died in the Anglo-American invasion of Afghanistan. This was revealed by Jonathan Steele in the Guardian but never became news, to my knowledge. The attack on Iraq was the Rubicon, making the reprisal against Madrid and the bombing of London entirely predictable....
Note that the US takes "revenge", while from the terrorists, there are "reprisals". Pilger can assess the moral character of the West's actions, but not of the Islamic world's actions. This is typical of the Left. When the terrorists act, it is as a force of nature, like animals responding to stimuli. Blame or responsibility for their actions cannot be assigned to them. It is proper, in this view, to trace back the terrorist response to the most recent Western stimulus, because it is only to the Westerner that responsibility can be assigned or in whom the status of moral actor can be invested.
When the West acts it is responsible, morally and otherwise, for the consequences of its actions, and for others' responses to those actions. This is a one-way street. Non-Westerners are never blamed for Western actions.
That Pilger believes that the fault, dear Brutus, is in ourselves, and not in the terrorists is clear throughout:
The hand-wringing over "whither Islam's soul" is another distraction. As an industrial killer, Christianity leaves Islam for dead. The cause of the current terrorism is neither religion nor hatred for "our way of life": it is political, requiring a political solution. It is injustice and double standards, which plant the deepest grievances.
Most egregiously, he writes that the consequences of the first Iraq war are the fault of the West:
In the 1991 Gulf "war", American and British forces left more than 200,000 Iraqis dead and injured, and the infrastructure of their country in "an apocalyptic state", according to the United Nations. The subsequent embargo, designed and promoted by zealots in Washington and Whitehall, was not unlike a medieval siege. Denis Halliday, the United Nations official assigned to administer the near-starvation food allowance, called it "genocidal".
I witnessed its consequences: tracts of southern Iraq contaminated with depleted uranium, and cluster bomblets waiting to explode. I watched dying children, some of the half a million infants whose deaths Unicef attributed to the embargo - deaths which the US secretary of state Madeleine Albright said were "worth it". In the west, this was hardly reported. Throughout the Muslim world, the bitterness was like a presence, its contagion reaching many young British-born Muslims.
Pilger doesn't mention Saddam's invasion of Kuwait as the event that precipitated the war. Why bother? There can be no moral responsibility there. And one can easily imagine that if Saddam's action was mentioned, there would still be no blame in it. Pilger would of course push the blame back on the West by arguing that the US "supported" him and sold him weapons. We've all heard this a hundred times.
It's not merely a tactic of the anti-Western left, it's part of their belief system by now. The only people capable of wrong-doing, in any meaningful way, are Western.
So naturally, the bombs of 7/7 are Blair's. The Islamist terrorists who actually built and deployed them were acting in a blameless way, with the inevitability of falling rain and lions pursuing prey. You don't blame the rain for falling. You don't blame lions for killing gazelle. And you don't blame Islamist terrorists for bombing London.
In this view, the terrorists aren't "wrong" per se. They're just reacting. The only way to get them to stop is for us to change.
To the degree that getting us to change policies is a goal of the terrorists, then John Pilger's way of thinking is necessary for terrorism to work.
The Left is the fulcrum about which the lever of terrorism might turn. Terrorism, without the Left's helpful pronouncements about why there is terrorism and what we need to do to satisfy the terrorists and how it really is all our fault, is just senseless, directionless violence. Without a fulcrum, a lever is just a stick. The Left uses terrorism to push us in the direction of least resistance in the face of terrorist pressure- a direction the terrorists can anticipate and take advantage of. It takes the Left's approval of the terrorist program to achieve the terrorists' aims. The Left provides the terrorists with a mechanism that allows them to do so.
If, as John Pilger believes, the goal of the 7/7 terrorists was to get the UK out of Iraq, how is his call for the UK to get out of Iraq, in part because of the 7/7 bombings, nothing less than an impromptu, after-the-fact partnership with the terrorists? If John Pilger had had a conversation with the terrorists beforehand in which they agreed that the London tube would be bombed and that John Pilger would then trumpet their cause, thus amplifying the terrorists' pressure on the UK to get out of Iraq, his article today would be little different than it actually is.
Pilger is using the terrorist attack as a weapon against Tony Blair in a way that is complementary to the terrorists, according to Pilger himself: they're both using terrorism to get the UK to disengage from Iraq. That's a low place to argue from, and why John Pilger is, in effect, a partner in terrorism. John Pilger needs the terrorists in order for his views to have any relationship to force at all and the terrorists need people like John Pilger to translate their application of force into real movement. Lever and fulcrum. Partners for change.
Update: More commentary on the Pilger piece at Brainster's Blog, Western Standard, Ari on the Web, Stephen Pollard, Bloggledygook, and Oliver Kamm, who asks "Have you left no sense of decency?"
Update: Jeff Goldstein has a post up exploring a related angle.
Update: Episode III: Some commenters on LGF mention that one of Pilger's factoids from the New Statesman piece, "There were no suicide bombers in Palestine until Ariel Sharon, an accredited war criminal sponsored by Bush and Blair, came to power," is in fact wrong. Gene at Harry's Place also blogs about it in Pilger's lie.
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1. "Root cause" theology from Professor Froward's Slough of Despond
Brian O'Connell over at Spartac.us has nailed it beautifully, barring one big caveat...
2. 3 steps for understanding cognitive dissonance from protein wisdom
1. First, re-read my original post on "Why Rhetoric Matters". 2. Then, go here and read how that post is packaged and presented by a guardian of the "reality-based community." Pay particular attention to how the author alter...
Wrong boys, he's one of the few to actually attempt to explain why all this is happening. So let's say Pilger is lying, or even a terrorist, can you offer a reason for 7/7, beyond your pathetic "just senseless violence" theory. There's a reason for everything boys; but I suppose you Jews do tend to have an exclusive view of other people. I tend to believe people are products of their environment. And if I had a West Bank home, I'd probably do anything I could to defend it.
Excellent post. Regarding Pilger's lie, of course, terrorism against Israel began long ago. But what can one expect from a sicko like Pilger? Here is a very partial list of attacks, some of them suicide attacks, that took place before 1970.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Terrorism_against_Israel_before_2000
And here are links to lists of suicide bombings in Israel since 2000. They began many years before Sharon took over, at least since April,1993 with a car bomb near Mechola. Of course, hundreds more were prevented:
http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/middle_east/1197051.stm
and here: http://www.ecaar.org/Newsletter/Nov04/saleh.htm
Ronan,
There is nothing wrong at all about what was said. If your daughter is raped, do you blame her because she shouldn't have been in that place, wearing those clothes?
Its the same thing, the terrorists made the choice to bomb. To look at motivation, and counter-motivation, ad-infinitum is pointless.
Your sentance about Jews is both pointless, and anti-semitic. Peace has been offered many times, the ONLY thing holding up the process is the Palestinian terrorists, and the Palestine version of the manifest destiny. Namely, the eradication of Isreal, and the destruction of the Jews.
As it stands, there is no excuse for terrorism in any form. From Bin-Ladins screed about military bases in the holy land, to leftist ramblings about Blair and Bush, its all empty.
If all Bin-ladin wanted was the US out of the holy land, all he had to do was spend his millions on a PR campaign that would have been both cheaper, and more effective.
The only proper responce to terrorists is the fist. There can be no negotiations with people who calmly saw the heads off of others to make a minor point. Any other opinion is pointless and counter productive.
Ronan: ...you Jews...
L'Chaim!
I tend to believe people are products of their environment.
Yes, it's all society's fault. Let's arrest them then.
Thank you for expressing a point I've been trying to press for some time. One sees this sort of thing almost daily on sites like Indymedia - Islamic fascism/extremism is merely a natural given that will exist no matter what we do - it's simply their 'nature.' And who are we - especially Americans - to deny a population its natural right to 'self-determinaton' as they define it? It is simply up to us to change our ways to avoid their wrath. Chickens coming home to roost, and all that.
I dunno about you, but there's a word for that: 'surrender'
Ronan, of course there's a reason for everything. You've just selected the wrong reason. Hitler claimed some of his land was stolen, didn't he? Maybe the "reason" for the attacks has something to do with Churchill's observations about Moslems, below.
BTW your religion of leftism is dying. Its flame is going out in the universe.
Your obsession with a redemption myth and on a utopia that can never happen due to the animal nature of mankind, a nature that you naively refuse to understand, is bad enough.
Your willful recklessness towards dismantling and destroying the current society with little regard to what might replace it - which is most likely a totalitarian regime led by a madman that will kill tens or hundreds of millions, including you and your own families - is a sign of unadulterated mental derangement.
Your de facto alliances with, and apologetics for, the most brutal and oppressive movements on the face of the earth, and your sociopathic disregard for the mass injustice and the horrible deaths of 100 million people your enablement of monsters has already caused, is the final symptom of your madness.
You hate the U.S. and Israel, arguably the most decent nations on the planet, and the Jews with their l'chaim-let's-celebrate-life culture, because those are the major groups that block your glorious, nihilistic destruction of the West.
Reasonable people are now being informed of the truth about your religion due to the stunning defeat of your mainstream media's lock-hold on information dissemination, a defeat led by the US-military-created Internet.
This will be your undoing as more reasonable people increase their political and, yes, physical resistance against you. Rathergate was just the very mild beginning.
Your secrets are out; your madness and stupidity exposed; you will not survive.
May I remind what Churchill said of the leftists' friend, the Islamists:
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 civilisation of modern Europe might fall, as fell the civilisation of ancient Rome.
And if i had a West Bank home I'd probably do anything I could to defend it
Really? Would that "anything" include compliance with UN Resolution 242-- like agreeing to end terrorism as a political tool, recognizing Israel's right to exist with secure borders, and engaging in a peaceful negotiated settlement?
We need to negotiate with the terrorists, fnd out what they want, and come to some reasonable compromise.
Like we could forbid women from driving vehicles with more than four cylinders.
We could let women wear crotchless panties under their burkhas.
We could stone homosexuals half to death.
We could push the Jews into the sea up to their waists.
Of course, the reason leftists refuse to hold Arabs and Muslims morally responsible for their actions is that they do not, in their heart of hearts, consider them quite human.
What the left has done is resurrect the uncivilized and unjust idea that provocatively dressed women raped/murdered by apostate priests are to blame for their own predicament.
The left uses the argument of ad infinitum in that irrespective of the unjust action of the aggressors (in this case Muslim terrorists - aka Islamofascists), those unjust actions can be justified/rationalized by adverting to any number of previous actions that the original aggressor believed, or could believe, justified their reaction. Also known as the argument of tit for tat, this argument invariably devolves into false moral equivalences.
There is not secular or Christian equivalent to what Islamofascists are doing so jihadists can never justify their terror murders. And one has to wonder what the left's response would have been if Christians were beheading atheists and Jerry Falwell or Pat Robertson were flying Egypt-Air jetliners into holy sites in Mecca. I would imagine there would be wholesale condemnation of Christianity. And if Christian militia groups were being harbored by the American government, the left would gleefully condemn the whole kit and kaboodle. But not so the radical followers of Islam.
It's amazing how lacking in nuance the left is when it refuses to see a qualitative difference between what Islamofascists do and what American soldiers are doing even when they accidentally kill Muslim civilians who find themselves too close to the bad guys when bullets begin to fly. It's almost like the left is willing to argue there is no difference between first degree murder and involuntary manslaughter or even self-defense.
For example, terrorists purposefully targetted innocent civilians in order the inflict maximum damage and this action is predicated upon any number of nebulous references that can be made with respect to any number of foreign policies which in turn could have resulted in a series of non-specific events which caused some Muslims to die. Or it may simply boil down to America's friendship with Israel and whatever offenses that the Arab/Muslim world CHOOSES to take regarding that. It's no secret that the vast majority of Muslim are anti-semitic, particularly since the Koran itself says in Surah V that Jews "are apes and pigs." Really, it's no secret.
America has shown extreme patience from the Iran hostage crisis to the 1993 WTC, the bombing of American consulates, the bombing of the U.S.S. Cole and many more Muslim atrocities that were directly aimed at innocent Americans. And if nothing else, these same Islamofascists can always cite the thousand year old Crusades as the cause du jour of their present jihad. You can't argue against such mendacious insanity.
I have been reading (or trying to read) John Pilger's writings for at least twenty years. He has never changed his views about The West.
However, I have just lately been thinking about him and a number of other Liberal (not a strong enough word) commentators in an economic light. There are only so many ways for a writer to make money. You have to pick a niche where you can make a mark for yourself. There are millions who would read and purchase his works. What better way to finance your life than to attack the mean horrible conservative's of the world.
Just think - he does it for the money.
would i correct in saying that the first terrorist act in the modern era was carried out by Jewish extremists (Irgun Tsvai-Leumi) in 1946 when they bombed the star of David hotel which killed 91 Christians,Arabs and Jew's,or would this be classed as an internal security matter???
from Kev in Ireland(a country that knows all too well about state terror)
kev:
Do you mean the hotel which had been taken over for us as a headquarters by the British military? Do you mean the planting of bombs in a military headquarters followed by the phone warning which told when the bombs were scheduled to go off and requested that the British military command evacuate the hotel? Do you mean the loss of life that occurred when the British high command posted guards to prevent people from leaving the hotel? Do you mean the bombing that was carried out by an extremist wing that was condemned by the mainstream resistance?
By all means let us compare it to the 1929 murders of innocent students in Chevron, the constant murders of innocent men women and children to our present day.
Why are Americans still so pig ignoranyt after all that's happened?
Christ, do they lead pollute the drinking water over there or what?
kev,
No you would be wrong.
The numerous lynching, shooting and bombing of Jewish civilians (by guess who?) which occurred primarily, but not only, in 1920, 1921, 1929 and 1936-39, would be more likely to be considered terrorism than a bombing of military HQ, and of course they DID occur before 1946.
(Also, it's the King David Hotel)
To be fair, a lot of people (particularly in Britain) share your opinion. Try relying on more accurate sources of information.
well ye answered my question alright(altough when i said 'modern era',i was talking about post WW2) and ye have proven that jewish people support acts of terror,no differently than palestianians,irish,basque etc people do.one mans terriost is anothers freedom fighter.the slave owner george washington was labeled a terriost by the british but you won't find too many americans agreeing with this.i have alot of symptoy with the jewish prople over what happened to ye during the holocaust(we in ireland suffered genocide by proxy which was conveintly called a famine altough only one crop failed while the rest of our food was exported by our good friends the english at gun point)but i'm also disgusted at the treatment dished out daily to the helpless and impovrished plastine people whom are helmed into their gettos by massive walls.me thinks the lessons or warsar haven't been learnt
" the bombing that was carried out by an extremist wing that was condemned by the mainstream resistance?"
question,did any of the bombers move on to the idf or politics and make up future israeli governments
Ronan:
How about this for a reason: the cultural dissonance of living in resource-rich country that's become a third-world cesspool because your stagnating culture won't let you move into the modern world, while people you've been taught all your life to consider immoral and decadent are enjoying the benefits of the 21st century?
Kev:
I can see why you'd be a big fan of the palestinians - just like the Irish, they've "never missed an opportunity to miss an opportunity", in large part because your "freedom fighters" beleive that it's better to rule over ashes than to push a broom in a stable, thriving country at peace. Unlike many Americans, I understand what a debt we owe to Ireland's pain (to many of the founding fathers, the revolution happened because the only alternative was to become the next Ireland). That being said, the famine was a LONG TIME AGO. The Italians went through a very similar situation at the hands of the Burgundy princes, you don't see us whining about it these days. The difference? I personally suspect it's that awful Irish food - go have a nice Italian dinner (try the veal!), a little cianti, and GET OVER IT. As for Washington and his slaves, applying 21st century sensibilities to 17th century actions is only productive if your goal is a false sense of moral superiority. At the end of the day, you're still a whiny twerp, and GW was still a Great Man.
Ricardo:
In the immortal words of Sir John Geilgood: "Go screw yourself" (think of it with a Oxford accent).
Letter to Americans: Hope you don’t take offence, but feel certain you will
As a Brit. and therefore representative of the League of Has-been Nations, let me be the first to welcome you on board. You got kicked out of Vietnam; you’re going to get kicked out of Iraq.
This hardly needs saying, but the reason London got bombed the other day, rather than say Paris or Vancouver was because of Britain's support of the US over the Iraq occupation.
Blame for atrocities being committed by US forces in Iraq (use of napalm, cluster bombs, depleted uranium munitions, plus mistreatment, aka torture of detainees) does tend to rub off on us Brits. So essentially we got hammered partly because of your misdeeds, but more likely just for being in Iraq with you. Thanks a heap Tony and George. Another fine mess you got us into. Foreign policy on the basis of whether or not you approve of a country’s leader and government.
Also, there is UK's presumed No.2 ranking on the terrorist hit list, although softness of target must be a factor. And as GWB minders realised when he stayed at Buck House, British security leaves a lot to be desired. The cops are too keen on brutalising demonstrators and monitoring speed and surveillance cameras to be pro-active on the street. Bottom line: Cops don’t make good counter-terrorist operatives. Also, what's the word I'm reaching for, oh yes, incompetence. So when they finish giving out conflicting, misleading information, watch for them arrest sombody, anybody. Because you have to assume there will be some convenient patsies. Amazed you guys let Bush get away with allowing bin Laden to run rings round your people trying to catch him. But you can start to see why: Killing would make him a hero and martyr to the Arab world, but if he’s put on trial who knows what he might disclose to the embarrassment of the Bush family.
Here's a tip: You guys never really learnt to be colonists. You start by trying to be best buddies with the people you conquer and when that doesn't work, you resort to brutality. You murder one guy, his brother becomes a suicide bomber. You have to keep the locals at arms’ length; firm but fair. They won't love you, but at least they will respect you. Unfortunately though, colonialism has passed its sell-by-date. When the Brits colonised India, we planned for the long term and took over or established administration; police, army, civil service, banking, commerce, judiciary, transport, media, culture, etc. You guys go in with some nebulous plan to “bring democracy to the region”, which essentially the locals don’t want or understand. Face it, they just aren’t ready for democracy.
The throwaway line: “Nice country, nice people, shame about the government” applies pretty much across the board. As top nation you have to realise that most people/countries dislike you, some actively hate you and the rest are jealous in various degrees. You need to be aware of this even if can't do much about this, and not to let it bother you too much. China's coming up fast, so you won't have to put up with being top dog for long. The Chinese still have some admiration for us Brits, amazing isn’t it after “No Dogs or Chinese”. So young Brits with some get up and go still have a shot at making their fortune in the colonies. Learning Chinese is going to be a bummer, all those bloody kanji characters.
The Iraqi military invaded Kuwait only because it interpreted the signals it was getting from the Mafia Dons in the Pentagon the wrong way. Saddam's only offence was not obeying his orders.
There were peace offers made to resolve the situation but, as usual, these were dismissed out of hand by the US (govt). The US immediately moved to the arena of violence where it is strongest. A peaceful political settlement wouldn't have provided the US with enough opportunities to increase its grip on the region.
As we all know, the US government has no political support in the world, which is why it has to go on military adventures or support corrupt despotic and racists regimes.
The trigger for the US attack was Saddam supposedly attempting to invade Saudi Arabi, after he invaded Kuwait. No such evidence has ever been presented by the US to substiate their claims and actions.
What about post- Gulf Farce I - the re-installation of the corrupt totalitarian Kuwaiti Ruling Family ? So much for democracy!
Total twaddle as an analysis ofg John Pilger's article. How many times is 'terrrorism' mentioned in such a short space, it must be a world record of sorts.
joe90: The Iraqi military invaded Kuwait only because it interpreted the signals it was getting from the Mafia Dons in the Pentagon the wrong way. Saddam's only offence was not obeying his orders.
That's a perfect example of the "twaddle" that I was talking about in the first half of the post. Don't concern yourself with the history of Iraq-Kuwait relations, or with Saddam's history of belligerence, or with Saddam's greed and delusions of grandeur, or with the rape of Kuwait itself. Iraq's invasion of Kuwait was "only" a response to the most recent Western stimulus, and being such, the responsibility belongs to the US. Brilliant. Quoting myself: It's not merely a tactic of the anti-Western left, it's part of their belief system by now. The only people capable of wrong-doing, in any meaningful way, are Western.
Andrew: Face it, they just aren’t ready for democracy.
Aye, there's the rub. This might be true, time will tell. But what do we do if they're not? Isolationism doesn't work anymore- the world's too small.
Andrew Milner -
Kicked out of Vietnam? Check your history books. We weren't kicked out. We left. The reasons are numerous and complicated, but I won't bother you with the details, since you didnt bother wither. The real point is Iraq is not another Vietnam. We are not trying to fight another Korea-like political conflict with the objective of hold Communists at bay. WMD's? Maybe they were there and are now in Syria, home to so many fine upstanding Jihadists. Stabilizing the area? Positively. Saddam was a madman who wanted more power and was scheming to again build strength to take over parts of the Middle East.
The bombing in London would have happened regardless of whether the British were in Iraq. As an American, I'm glad they are there, and thank them for it. What was the reason for the attack on the World Trade Center in the 90's and again on 9/11? Was Iraq or any other Arab country invaded at that time? No. The was on terrorism is a war of ideologies. They want to destroy Western Culture.
Read the news. They are killing Arabs in Iraq, not British or Americans. Why are they doing that, because the people of Iraq invaded their own country? Or because they are sucessfully adopting freedom, an open market economy, and an open culture? I would have thought that you would applaud that move. You lib's just love open cultures. After all, it has done so much for Europe (NOT!). Of course, no offense intended...
Andrew:
In the past three years we Americans have had to endure lectures from the French about arrogance, lectures from the Germans about militarism, and I've even seen a lecture on government from Italians, but I'm still not comfortable being lectured by a Brit on colonial management. As you say, no offence meant, but taking a page out of the British colonial handbook is a lot like taking cooking lessons from Jeffrey Dahlmer.
If you check your map, you'll find that nearly every "hot spot" in the world today was once either a British (or French) colony. Even in America, many of our most pressing social problems have roots in institutions we inherited from England (black slavery comes immediately to mind). Wherever your grandfathers went, they intentionally threw out generations-old tribal boundaries and drew new national borders to ensure future bloodshed; either they grouped together ethnic groups that hated each other to set the stage for future interethnic civil wars, or divided ethnic groups along indefensible borders to ensure future international ethnic wars. Then they set the natives at each other's throats and used the ensuing carnage to put a patina of respectability on the continued Imperial presence. Any time there was a hint of rebellion among one ethnic group, they used soldiers from an opposing group to put it down, thereby fanning the flames while keeping English hands clean. You may wax lyrical about the British administration of the courts, banks, police, etc. in India, but at the end of the day it as nothing more than a means to institutionalize a privileged minority so that they could more effectively exploit the natives.
In fact, the nations of Iran, Iraq, Turkey, Jordan, "Palestine", Lebanon, and (if I recall correctly) Syria are all artifacts of post-WWI British map-making, and most have "enjoyed" British colonial administration. As I understand it, the modern nation of Israel can be traced back to a promise the British made (and later reneged on) during WWI. The last time Arabs and Jews agreed on anything, it was getting the Brits out of the middle-east.
I don't hold with the concept of "modernism" (the practice of applying current sensibilities to ancient injustices) - what your grandfathers did was probably right and proper by their own lights, or at least justifiable in their minds for "the greater good". But recommending that we adopt the same techniques today is really indefensible. My daughter may love Jane Austin, I but know that the gentility of the Edwardian age was paid for by taking food out of the mouths of Indian, African, and Chinese peasants (not to mention Ireland and Scotland), who were killed by remote control it they had the temerity to object. I’m in no hurry to see a return to “the good old days”.
This may be hard to understand, but we're not interested in turning Iraq into a colony. We don't want to set the Sunnis to killing the Kurds who then kill Shiites, etc. We're not there to set up long-term control of the country in the name of "altruism plus 5%". The object is to set up a stable democracy that's compatible with he basic tenets of Islam (throwing out, of course, the inconvenient bits about second-class citizenship for non-Muslims and women being the cause of all sexual misconduct).
And one last thing – stop equating Abu Graib (and GitMo) to torture. If you really need details on this, I suggest you try actually looking at what was done to the prisoners and what's been done to the guards as a result, and then compare that to what goes on in jails across the Moslem world on a daily basis. I'm certainly not proud of what happened, but compared to the sharia that the jihaddis want to establish, Abu Graib was a Sunday school outing.
Perhaps, I am getting more involved and concerned about politics as I get older. I just saw a commentary on NBC where Tom Selleck was reading a speech by Abraham Lincoln and it had many ramnifications for today. However, I truly don't believe this is a government "of the people,for the people, and by the people". I see a government ran by big politicians, millionaires and billionaires, powerful lobbist, and big corporations. I see a president elected through the same. I see a country in a war it is largely opposed to because of those same things. Money is power and those of us that have very little (if any) have no (or almost no) power. It is the 4th of July today but I see no real reason to celebrate. I was once jailed under stupid, misleading charges (which have been esponged) and I say you are guilty until proven innocent. All in all, I am not happy in the least as to what direction this country is going.
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Steven Den Beste has been doing some cold, Jacksonian calculating about what it would take for the US to go nuclear in this war, and what the consequences may be. A guy (?) from Tehran later wrote Den
Madsen Follow-Up
I emailed Wayne Madsen about the previous post because I usually give someone a heads up if I'm posting about them. In reply, Madsen reminded me to keep the time controversy in mind and wrote that Mik