Kudos to The Stranger

[olyclimber]

i've been unable to follow this thread due to the long winded posts. please try to keep them to under 20 words per post people.

[Johnny_Tuff]

i've been unable to follow this thread due to the long winded posts. please try to keep them to under

 

There, I brought your post into compliance.

[JayB]

"Good argument, there JayB. If I understand you correctly, what it all boils down to is this:

 

if the White House wants it published to embarass their enemies, whether it is a leak that may endanger our national security or not, go for it

 

If somebody else wants to publish something that might rile an enemy of ours, go for it.

 

If somebody wants to publish something that might make our government look bad? Lets look very carefully for a reason why it might be "unAmerican." "

 

 

 

 

That's not actually my argument at all - what I was saying is that there's a significant difference between finding a balance between disclosure and security in a democratic society, and submitting to the perogatives of a band of violent fanatics.

 

I do differentiate between our national interests, and the interests of say, those of Al-Queda or the North Koreans - I know this is anethema to the kumbaya contingent but I'm perfectly happy to part company with them on this point - so I think that if there are cases where the distribution of certain information will be detrimental to their interests and beneficial to ours, it's perfectly legitimate for policymakers to take that into account.

[Bronco]

Maybe I'm one of those libertarian freaks.

 

ALL RIGHT MATTP!!!!

[mattp]

WTF are you talking about, JayB? The Kumbaya contingent? Has anybody here ever said they like/tolerate/would somehow seek to appease Al Queda or any other militant Islamist who seeks to blow us up? We might not want to make moderates hate us, but is that - to you - Kumbaya? Or are you just going out of your way to be offensive? If so that's fine, but it doesn't help you come off as one who may actually have anything much to add to any discussion.

 

As far as what is "detrimental to their interest and beneficial to ours" -- it is largely in the eyes of the beholder. You seem to argue that it is OK to (A) stir up the Islamic pot, but maybe not (B) to disclose that our soldiers, at the direction of their commanders, are doing things that we agreed sixty years ago or more that we would not do. If you imply that A is in our interest, but not B, I tend to disagree on both counts. And what about © as Will noted they don't allow any pictures of U.S. causualties? (Note I used the word "tend." I wouldn't necessarily ban anything like the offending cartoons but I do question whether it was a good idea to publish them and I noticed you left some room for argument that maybe printing the abuse photos was OK but we could still argue about just why it might have been OK.)

[marylou]

I love watching Jay and Cj100 go at it. It's like the Itchy and Scratchy show!!

[glacier]

Jesus can kick ass too, as long as its the bloodsucking undead!

 

 

"My God-fu is stronger than yours..."

 

[sexual_chocolate]

The question wasn't who would cheer for you, but which of the two you'd choose. The fact that you won't answer is answer enough.

 

And the fact that you still haven't answered questions asked of you seems to be answer enough.

 

I hate to draw this conclusion, but I think your reluctance to respond to direct inquiries regarding your opinion on what appropriate responses to the situation that you find so offensive might be tends to indicate a mind that is more concerned with the protection and regurgitation of ideas centered upon adopted philosophies that have undergone minimal self-inquiry through methods devoid of the very type that led to the adoption of the ideas in the first place, rather than an honest and open inquiry into the very nature of the phenomenological reality that you are currently facing, or rather, all are facing.

 

It seemed for a moment that perhaps you came close, but a view of the cliff-side drove you to the security of your inland forest of ideas.

[JayB]

Just seemed like it would take an even longer response than even I can hammer out at the moment. Three key components would be letting mashochistic democracy/revolution -------> fanaticism dissipation run its course Iran-style, closer coordination of defense and intelligence amongst liberal democracies through an enlarged NATO, and defiance in the face of continued threats and attacks. Promoting economic liberalism after the masses have become dissilusioned with the mullah-induced poverty and stagnation, but that'd be quite a few years down the road.

[mattp]

Yeah. You wouldn't want to take the time to think about and then post what you actually think or somebody like Olyclimber will call you "long winded."

 

(By the way, I don't think we are likely to be able to pull off your proposed plan -- if history is any guide. I don't think you can look back and point to may times when we've actually known what we were doing and successfully carried it out in a several-step, long term way as you suggest. Not only that, but our man George Bush has been doing all he can to alienate our allies so we'll have a lot of work to do before we can build the cooperative mutual support pact that you envision.)

[layton]

Jesus can kick ass too, as long as its the bloodsucking undead!

 

 

"My God-fu is stronger than yours..."

 

 

Kat_Rosyln and I watched this movie last summer. Good stuff!!!

[willstrickland]

That's a very long sentence you got there, Cocoa.

 

Personally, I say publish it all.

 

I am just tiring of the autocratic loyalists who are more concerned with their "side" winning / retaining power than with consistency of argument, adherence to the conservative ideals they purport to represent, and the principles this country was founded upon.

 

The neoright is so servile they will go through severe intellectual contortions, typically with inherent contraditions, to justify something daddy Bush and the crony cabinet / corporate lobbyists want, simply so THEIR SIDE CAN WIN. Never mind the merits, morality, or fairness of the idea or policy, the only thing that matters is enriching themselves and retaining power. Fascism anyone? We're already there.

 

"If there is one principle more deeply rooted in the mind of every American, it is that we should have nothing to do with conquest."

-Thomas Jefferson

 

"They who would give up an essential liberty for temporary security, deserve neither liberty or security"

-Ben Franklin

 

It's almost comical that the "big tough on terror GOP" are so fuckin scared of their own shadows that they are willing to toss away their freedoms wholesale in the name of letting daddy codpiece protect them against Usama the big scary muslim, WHO IS STILL ON THE LOOSE. Heckuva job, Bushie. If you still believe this bungling band of idiots is capable of anything, much less protecting us, you need to wake up and soon. These mayberry machavellis could fuck up a soup sandwich.

 

BTW, smallest yearly increase in military pay rates in about 15 years this year. Which means the same craven chickenhawk assholes screaming about "undermining the troops morale" if you question Bush or Rummy's competence...these are the people screwing the troops on pay, body armor, VA services, and abuse of the National Guard deployments. But it's ok, that FUCKING YELLOW MAGNET ON YOUR SUV makes up for it.

[mattp]

Go Will!

 

(You and I disagree about lots of things, but) the depth of the hypocrisy and ineptitude of the current administration is simply staggering. I'm afraid that Mr. B seems bent on going through those gyrations to avoid dealing with the obvious frightening reality. We re-elected those screw-ups!!!

[foraker]

So:

 

1) Continue to respond militarily to terrorist threats. Continue the Lone Cowboy policy (anyone see NATO in the Middle East right now?) thereby over extending our military and destroying us financially.

 

2) Share intelligence with other countries, even though we can't seem to get our own government to share within itself and act on it in a timely manner. Expect them to return the favor, even though we've given them no reason to. Ensure that all intelligence data is 'clean' and hasn't been 'invented' by the politicians. Don't fuck over foreign intelligence agencies of our so-called 'allies' (oh, like we did to Britain).

 

3) Disdain diplomatic engagement. Sit back and wait and let millions live in poverty and oppression while their leaders fill their brains with tripe about how we're "The Great Satan" and responsible for all their woes. Hope that free democratic elections somehow spring out of the ground or that popular revolution occurs (except in countries where we get out oil from) in the face of a modern state-controlled military. In the event of the previous, hope that new state does not destroy itself in civil war or create a new oppressive regime while we sit back and watch and wait for new arms contracts and sources of cheap labor. In the event of spreading violence, see (1)

[foraker]

Did you ever consider that Osama is 'on the loose' because that's where Shrub wants him?

[sexual_chocolate]

Do you really think Iran is a good example of the dissipatory nature of "fanaticism"? (I'll give you the benefit of the doubt regarding your usage of a highly subjective word....)

I would tend to think that in this equation you overlook the inflammatory agents of cause, instead viewing the above example as a closed circuit (while ignoring the fact that the country in question is nearing nuclear capability).

 

With your second point, I would agree that international cooperation, built upon the premises of, say the UN, can do great good.

 

The problem I see with an expectation of benefit from the exploitation of a NATO model is that I don't believe the world model that you are an adherent of is facing a situation that is militarily addressable without turning society at large into a police state. Possibly I don't understand the role that NATO would play in your scenario, nor the threats you would see it responding to....Please expand?

 

Third point question: Would you label the publishing of the cartoons as "defiance"?

[JayB]

It would really take too long to has out those points all at once, but it's worth touching on the fanaticism-dissipation side of things.

 

The funny thing about Iran is that the population there is more pro-American than just about any other country in the Muslim world, and probably ranks fairly highly in this category on a global scale. I was just discussing some of these issues with a colleage from Iran who has an American spouse, who informed me that on their last visit to Iran, when the cab-drivers found out that the spouse was American - they made it a point to either write down addresses, or drive them pass certain buildings - with a request that the spouse pass them along to George W. Bush so that he'd know where to send the bombs. This is kind of a funny story that isn't worth much more than a laugh, except for the fact that it shows that popular resentment has turned decisively against the Mullahs and reactionary Islam, which is quite a change from 20 years ago. Any "Islamic State" of the sort envisioned by the Islamic Brotherhood, Hamas, etc is going to be stagnant, repressive, and corrupt - and the responsibility for this condition will clearly and squarely lie on the shoulders of the folks who are running the show. Once that happens, the people will start to look elsewhere for a model that can deliver what their revolution has failed to.

 

The challenge is to contain the fanatics effectively and constrain their behavior outside their borders with an overwhelming deterent capability and better counter-intelligence. The multiple rude awakenings the Euro's have been treated to despite their behavior over the past 30 years is already generating some movement on this front, and why the topic of closer security cooperation with Israel is quietly being broached in Europe. I wouldn't be surprised to see much closer security cooperation with India going forward either.

[crackers]

A few points from skimming this thread. I have to say that this is partially what i've read in papers here, in translation of the leading german papers, and in turkish media. I've also spoken with my workers and my friends. Oh and by the way, having visited Iran and speaking decent persian and fluent turkish, it's not that america friendly. My experience is that's what upper class rich people think, not the vast majority of the country who pretty much don't like the USA very much.

 

The reason that danish muslims and muslims across scandanavia found the cartoons as published very insulting was that the scandal started because a danish children's book writer wanted an illustrator and claimed he couldn't find one. From what i've heard, the book was published right around the time that original page was published in J-P.

 

After that auspicious beginning, they found problems with the way muslims were referenced in all of the cartoons but one. Those drawings struck the the muslim population as marginalizing and stereotyping a group that's actually tried very hard to integrate into danish society. That the paper then refused to meet with the state council of religious leaders pissed them off more. Denmark's largest dairy pulled all of their advertising from the paper at that time, saying that they thought that this was a breach of the publisher's civic responsibility. People compared the drawings of burnt out suicide bombers and all that to watermelon seed spitting black americans. I can't really argue.

 

According to my friends who lived in Copenhagen for the past two years, J-P is a tabloid catering to right wing voters.

 

The wikipedia articles are an excellent reference, but the translation of that strange pencil drawing is not what I heard it means. According to my above referenced friends, the translation of the weird pencil drawing is more like "Prophet? You asshole, keeping women as slaves."

 

here are some links I found interesting:

wiki article about the drawings. wiki article about the danish iman's inflammatory dossier.

[EWolfe]

Thanks for that.

 

It's good to have Glacier back!

Edited February 17, 2006 by MisterE

[sexual_chocolate]

Another funny thing about Iran is that the revolution occurred almost thirty years ago, and while they did move away from what many might call immoderacy, they have now taken a full swing back towards the revolutionary zeal of the Mullahs, and while one may find a taxi-cab driver and many others who would support the end of religious rule, do you really think this is the over-riding sentiment within the country? I really don't see "dissipation" at work; quite the opposite.

 

Why is this?

The political atrophy into self-protection mode in Iran coincided too closely with the emergence of a hostile foreign policy advocated by George Bush etal to think that the two had no correlation.

Before this turn of events, I would agree that Iran was losing its hard-edge militancy to some degree, as evidenced by the temperament of their presidents throgh the '90's. It's unfortunate then that instead of supporting this positive change (internationally), the opportunity was squandered by a group of decidedly reactionary militants in the US in favor of a return to their own brand of Sharia.

 

 

I was online playing a game of backgammon with someone from Iran (or so he said). After he discovered I was an "American", he became vitriolic, expressing much hatred towards not so much "Americans" as Bush. I tried to tell him that not everyone here is in favor of starting wars and killing people (he pointed to all the deaths of innocents in Iraq), but that did little to assuage his very personal fears of being "next in line". I did manage to convince him that it would be very unlikely that Bush would be attacking Iran, simply because of the mess he created in Iraq, which seemed to make sense to him.

 

I then asked him why Ahmadinejad had won, to which he replied "we were scared". (So it works in other countries too.)

[Jim]

By any measure the Bush foreign policy has been a failure. A mid-east strategy started by a group of neocons with no military experience and only the ring-around-Washington rotating chair syndrome of think tanks and bureaucratic positions on their resume have pushed an agenda eagerly picked up by our fern-brained president.

 

Rather than the “move over one” theory, where Iraq would fall, the exiled monarchy of Iran would be returned via popular support, the Palestinians would move to Jordan, and Israel would fulfill the promise of greater Israel, we now have a growing insurgency in Iraq (with an unaccounted for $8 billion and counting), a hard line theocracy in Iran, a stiffened Jordan, and a democratically elected Hamas. We couldn’t have dreamed of such a foreign policy screw-up if we had to 6 years ago. Where exactly is freedom on the march?

 

Bush has no leadership capability and the neocon cabal headed by Cheney was there to hand him their off-the-shelf world view on September 12th. On September 17, Bush said to his war council “I believe Iraq was involved here” – nodding behind him were Wolfiwitz, Pearl, Chaney, Rumsfield, Kristol, and gang.

 

Meanwhile on the domestic side the corporate shills are raiding the treasury from oil lease give aways to Medicare drug benefits that favor only the drug companies, to wealthy tax breaks. The mental gymnastics needed to explain how this fits into a conservative agenda are astounding.

[JayB]

Still a big change from the late-70's early 80's in Iran.

 

If the cartoons were so offensive in and of themselves, it seems odd that the travelling mullah's would have found it necessary to spike them with forgeries that they passed off as originals, and explicity enlisted the help of other influential mullah's and other actors like the Syrian government to stoke the flames, ditto for the fact that the cartoons were published in Egypt and generated zero reaction.

 

At the end of the day, unless folks realize that the death-threats, the suicide bombings, the honor killings - etc tarnish their image far more effectively than any cartoon ever could - the same backwardness, stagnation, and decline that compelled so many to emmigrate to Europe in the hopes of something better will be theirs to endure indefinitely.

[crackers]

At the end of the day, unless folks realize that the death-threats, the suicide bombings, the honor killings - etc tarnish their image far more effectively than any cartoon ever could - the same backwardness, stagnation, and decline that compelled so many to emmigrate to Europe in the hopes of something better will be theirs to endure indefinitely.

 

Which is precisely why most muslims in Europe moved there!

 

Having their immigrant goals of transcending bigotry and zealotry thrown back in their faces by zenophobic danish bigots who refuse to acknowledge any of their positive contributions to danish society pisses off and alienates the would-be assimilators off. Nobody deserves congratulations for doing a normal job well, but everybody appreciates it. From what i hear, the islamic immigrants to northern europe would at least like to be thanked for providing doner as an alternative to sausages for street food rather than be constantly discriminated against and treated as subhuman by other citizens or area residents.

 

On a side note, i've never seen more bigotry and racial hatred than between east germans and turkish germans. Its really crazy and frankly kind of scary.

 

Personally, I think the dossier of the Danish Imams is baroque, bizarre and mostly very wrong. It's also really really weird. Read it, you'll see what I mean when I say it seems to have been written by a bipolar nutjob who wanted to catastrophically destroy the reputation of anybody who read it and took it seriously. It's worse than the protocols of zion.

 

I think that your views on Iran are very rosy colored glasses.

[mattp]

Jay, I think your post a few hours ago suggests you may be looking for a panacea but getting a sugar pill. You argue that what we need to improve our position in the world is to better cooperate with our allies on intelligence gathering. While nobody is going to argue against seeking good intelligence, it will continue to be more important what we do with that information than how much information we are able to gather. What is clear is that, throughout our relations with the Middle East and elsewhere, we consistently seem to ignore intelligence we don’t like, maybe even lie about it, and that even if we can get a good snapshot right now we are unable to or even unwilling to look ahead and consider where a particular policy choice will take us. Improved spy operations will not fix any of this.

 

I don’t know what will help, but one thing I think DOESN’T help is our consistent reliance on military intervention and covert operations to try to impose our solution on a given situation. It is pretty much always just a bandaid that doesn’t address the underlying issues, and even where it might be a good bandaid we seem unwilling to cooperate with the host nations unless there is a very clear and immediate benefit or support for us or for some American enterprise.

 

Your friends in Iran went around pointing to houses that we should bomb. This shows that they expect the only thing America is going to do for or to them is to drop bombs. You didn’t mention their pointing out hospitals that need repair, or a broken sewer line, or a growing intellectual movement or an industry that needs partnership with American business, or ....

[JayB]

Well - the bottom line in all of this is that any group of people who organize their politics around millitant Islam, or their economies on socialism - will wind up in the shitter. Embracing both will accelerate the process still further - and the burned hand teaches best.

 

I think that one of the biggest obstacles to political reform in the Middle East is the fact that most of the countries there still adhere to the old, discredited, pan-Arab socialist model cooked up by Nasser. The staggering failures of this model played a huge role in generating both the popular discontent, and the political repression in the middle East. It's really the same wherever you go - when the state controls all of the industry and the wealth, this raises the stakes of political change in a very destructive way. All of a sudden losing an election not only means that you are out of office, but you are broke, powerless, and probably have very good reason to fear for your life. Hence the reluctance all around the Middle East to allow free and fair elections - it's not just the prospect of the Islamists taking over, it's the prospect of losing the ability to direct patronage to one's favorites, skimming off the top of the national purse, etc - not to mention the possibility of someone taking a look at the books and dispatching an armed contingent to your villa when they figure out what you've been up to. For those that take over the reins in a socialist economy, the ability to determine who eats and who starves is a handy means of asserting control.

 

Unfortunately most of the Middle East is convinced that it's Uncle Sam and the Jews that are responsible for their lot in life, rather than the retrograde tendencies invariably coming along with consenting to live in a quasi theocracy, and the stagnation and poverty that socialism guarantees.

 

I say let them install the Mullah's, give total control of their economies to the state, let the fanatics turn their attention towards repressing their fellow citizens instead of blighting the rest of the world, watch from the sidelines, and contain the whole circus within a Hadrian's Wall of heavily armed democracies - and wait for the fever to break.