BS: Sorry I just don't get it

Subject: BS: Sorry I just don't get it
From: Justa Picker
Date: 22 Jun 04 - 04:05 PM

So the U.S. is being probed over "abuse" of prisoners while the insurgents behead innocent civilians?

I think the U.S. needs to hire the same p.r firm that the Palestinians and the Iraqis are using.

Everything is just so ass backwards these days.

Subject: RE: BS: Sorry I just don't get it
From: Wesley S
Date: 22 Jun 04 - 04:09 PM

Aren't we trying to hold ourselves to a higher standard than a terrorist would ? You can judge a society by how it treats it's prisoners, older people, children, the infirm, ect.

Subject: RE: BS: Sorry I just don't get it
From: Wesley S
Date: 22 Jun 04 - 04:11 PM

And yes, Justapicker - everything IS backasswards these days. No argument there.

Subject: RE: BS: Sorry I just don't get it
From: CarolC
Date: 22 Jun 04 - 04:12 PM

It should be noted, just in case anyone is confused- the people who did the beheading, have not, so far, been Iraqis or Palestinians. They have been Saudi Arabians and Jordanians.

Subject: RE: BS: Sorry I just don't get it
From: Bill D
Date: 22 Jun 04 - 04:16 PM

what 'some' of our people did IS abuse, whether or not 'some' on the other side are cruel and inhumane. You don't win points OR wars by lowering yourself to their level. Didn't Ghandi and Martin Luther King teach us anything?

Subject: RE: BS: Sorry I just don't get it
From: Megan L
Date: 22 Jun 04 - 04:20 PM

Two wrongs don't make a right!

Subject: RE: BS: Sorry I just don't get it
From: Peace
Date: 22 Jun 04 - 04:40 PM

Three lefts do.

Subject: RE: BS: Sorry I just don't get it
From: jimmyt
Date: 22 Jun 04 - 05:30 PM

but two wrights made an airplane

Subject: RE: BS: Sorry I just don't get it
From: Justa Picker
Date: 22 Jun 04 - 05:37 PM

If it were a perfect world, then sure turn the other cheek and show them all that we're a cut above them. (No pun intended.)
But in doing so you won't win the hearts and minds of insurgents. Point taken b.t.w. Carol).
The only thing they respect is overwhelming force [sic] The Powell Doctrine.

I do believe that to extract vital information that can potentially safeguard the security of the U.S. and their allies and/or potentially save American and coalition lives, ANY necessary measures to extract that information are just fine.

If through these "abusive" methods or lets say through the use of psychological or physical torture, they were able to glean intellgence that prevented a massive radioactive dirty bomb, or a major chemical or nuclear attack, etc.etc.etc. on main land America, would you not think the means to extract that intelligence more than justify the end?

There's no other way sometimes.

Subject: RE: BS: Sorry I just don't get it
From: Bill D
Date: 22 Jun 04 - 05:37 PM

not every topic/post should be fodder for puns & jokes....

just one old curmudgeon's opinion...

Subject: RE: BS: Sorry I just don't get it
From: CarolC
Date: 22 Jun 04 - 05:46 PM

Mudcatter, Norton1, a former Marine and Vietnam Veteran had this to say about abusive information gathering methods in another thread:

Torture does not obtain good intel. Fear either. It's an anachronistic procedure that is mainly myth (probably from the days of the Catholic purges). Put anyone in enough pain and they will tell you anything you want to hear. I'd suggest a reading of any of the American prisoners of the North Vietnamese if you doubt any soldiers ability to withstand pain.

To gain good intel requires treating prisoners with respect and dignity. One must be above what the prisoners are expecting and what they have received from their own folks. And intell is what gets people's lives saved, on both sides, by theoreticaly bringing (or at least hastens) the end of the conflict.

Gen Karpinski re Iraq prisoners

Subject: RE: BS: Sorry I just don't get it
From: Little Hawk
Date: 22 Jun 04 - 06:03 PM

Good one there, jimmyT... :-)

I think it's the moral behaviour of one's own troops that one is required to regulate...since it is one's own troops that one is enabled to command and control. That is quite regardless of what the other guys are doing...specially when the other guys are guerilla fighters under little or no centralized command. How can one expect to control that? One can't.

As for "only respecting overwhelming force"...that describes EVERY participant in a war situation. No side gives in until it is overwhelmed by force. That's the definition of a fight or a war.

Still, one is well-advised to have some kind of moral code of conduct to aim for in how one carries out said warfare. Any game is played within a certain rulebook. For example, the Arab-Israeli conflict could be quickly ended by the USA simply nuking Israel and its neighbours and just killing them all, couldn't it? We don't contemplate doing that, partly because it would be insane, and partly because we would all consider it morally without justification to do so.

You have to draw the line somewhere. The US personnel crossed that line in their treatment of Iraqi prisoners. So did the fighters who beheaded Americans. The thing is, those fighters are not under our jurisdiction, but our own soldiers are. You discipline those who are under your own jurisdiction. That's just normal in running a military system or any other system.

Subject: RE: BS: Sorry I just don't get it
From: DonMeixner
Date: 22 Jun 04 - 06:14 PM

I think that unless we have an inner line directly to the terrorists we can't say for certain exactly who beheaded who or whom.
   I understand those brave middle eastern Freedom Fighters always had their heads and faces covered and their victims hands and feet bound.
   Let us stop saying shat nationality prople are until we know what it is. Lets just call them terrorists, or murderers.

   Don ( just sneaking in a non-side taking comment)

And I must say that any thread is fair game for puns and jokes...
A middleaged curmudgeon's opinion.

Subject: RE: BS: Sorry I just don't get it
From: CarolC
Date: 22 Jun 04 - 06:18 PM

Well, in that case, Don, how do we even know that they are Middle Eastern?

Subject: RE: BS: Sorry I just don't get it
From: DonMeixner
Date: 22 Jun 04 - 06:32 PM

"Let us stop saying shat nationality prople are until we know what it is. Lets just call them terrorists, or murderers."

(Is my typing really this bad?)

OK Carol, How do we? If you had to guess, who would you say it is?

Don

Subject: RE: BS: Sorry I just don't get it
From: Big Mick
Date: 22 Jun 04 - 06:39 PM

While there is much to debate as to the morality of this whole operation, one thing is not debatable. Those that make a bound hostage beg for his life, parade him about, then decapitate him with a knife while he screams his life away, and publish the video's are animals. This is the very definition of barbarism. Anyone ... regardless of their cause or what country they come from .... that commits this type of act deserves no quarter. No matter the religion, there is a special place in hell for them. There simply is NO justification for it. Anyone that disagrees need only watch the Berg video.

Mick

Subject: RE: BS: Sorry I just don't get it
From: Bobert
Date: 22 Jun 04 - 06:55 PM

Well, first of all, what the Bush administration did in invading Iraq was set the CIA back decades in their ability to collect intellegence and intellegence, not force, is the only way to win a Wae on Terrorism.

With that said, I agree with Claymore (CarolC's post) that better intelllegence can be gained by not stooping to the level of the criminals who are doing these things. Force will only get you the answers that the detainees think you want to hear.

Bobert

Subject: RE: BS: Sorry I just don't get it
From: CarolC
Date: 22 Jun 04 - 06:56 PM

I don't know, Don. I was willing to accept the "official" word that they were Jordanians and Saudi Arabians. However, since you're questioning the validity of that "information", I guess I can think of a lot of different groups who might have agendas that could be served by such acts, and not all of them are Middle Eastern, or even on the same side as Muslim extremists.

Subject: RE: BS: Sorry I just don't get it
From: DougR
Date: 22 Jun 04 - 07:08 PM

Mick: for once I agree with you. Hope you are feeling better now.

DougR

Subject: RE: BS: Sorry I just don't get it
From: McGrath of Harlow
Date: 22 Jun 04 - 07:12 PM

"ANY necessary measures... are fine"

Including killing captives and videoing it as a way of influencing their comrades? In fact there appears to be evidence that people on "our side" have done precisely that kind of thing.

If the rule is "ANY necessary measures... are fine", on what grounds can we say that this does not apply to our opponents as well as to us?

When it comes to brutality towards innocent people I think there is very little either side has to teach the other, or to learn from the other. The type and scale of brutality and the weapons used will vary according to circumstances, but that is another matter, governed as much by contingency than anything.

The big difference between "them" and "us" is that we have the responsibility to control and monitor the activities carried out on our behalf.

Subject: RE: BS: Sorry I just don't get it
From: Peter K (Fionn)
Date: 22 Jun 04 - 07:22 PM

Big Mick, it's worth remembering that different cultures are at different points along different curves. Christians, among others, have done worse things than anything you've described there.

One thing's for sure: main force is an inefficient, and often counter-productive way to deal with fanatics. To say they deserve no quarter is a logical reaction, but they wouldn't ask any, and they would probably be undeterred even if their fate was to be torn apart by dogs.

Someone above made sarcastic reference to the bravery of those doing the beheading. What of those willing to blow themselves to pieces as suicide bombers in the same cause? Both acts require a degree of commitment so far beyond my comprehension that I would put it close to insanity. But then I tend to go along with Prof Richard Dawkins in seeing all religions as forms of mental illness.

I would not be too concerned about Justa Picker's views, since he seems to live in a very small world, but I am alarmed that they seem representative of views that exist even at fairly senior levels in the administration. In his own way JP is as fanatical as those he decries: I expect he will never open his mind to a rational and pragmatic arguments such as Norton1's. I have always conceded that Justa Picker is a magnificent guitarist, but then even Mozart was supposed to be a bit of a shit.

Subject: RE: BS: Sorry I just don't get it
From: kendall
Date: 22 Jun 04 - 07:40 PM

They should have known better than to build their country on top of our oil deposits

Subject: RE: BS: Sorry I just don't get it
From: GUEST,Sleepless Dad
Date: 22 Jun 04 - 08:59 PM

"No matter the religion, there is a special place in hell for them. There simply is NO justification for it. Anyone that disagrees need only watch the Berg video."

Mick - I agree - there is a special place in hell for some of these people. I just don't think we should be the ones to send them there. We shouldn't sink to their level.

Subject: RE: BS: Sorry I just don't get it
From: GUEST,Clint Keller
Date: 22 Jun 04 - 09:58 PM

Mick, Justa --

I never heard anyone here say that the beheaders are good guys. They're evil. I'm certainly with Mick.

What I, and some of the rest are saying, is that we shouldn't be evil too. Why let them decide what's fair?

We're the good guys. Anyway, I sincerely hope we are, in the long run.

Did you really want to rape Jeffrey Dahmer, kill him and eat him?

clint

Subject: RE: BS: Sorry I just don't get it
From: kendall
Date: 22 Jun 04 - 10:01 PM

Opinions, opinions; They think WE are the evil ones. Some of our military people hung one prisoner up on a door until he died. Another was beaten to death by one of our Rangers. Now, which one of these victims is the deadest?

Subject: RE: BS: Sorry I just don't get it
From: CarolC
Date: 22 Jun 04 - 10:22 PM

I have to admit that I'm having some difficulty figuring out how experiencing a slow death by torture at the hands of US forces would be any less unpleasant than being beheaded by insurgents.

Subject: RE: BS: Sorry I just don't get it
From: Big Mick
Date: 23 Jun 04 - 12:15 AM

That is equivocation. My position has nothing to do with what we do, or even if we are justified in being there. It is much more elemental than that. Anybody that renders their prey helpless, binds them hand and feet, and then decapitates them in this manner is an animal. I don't want to hear about where they are on the curve, or if bombing is worse, or any other horseshit. For me, war happens and I have experienced it. It is horrible. But this amounts to brutality of the first order. It is heinous, and deserves no attempts at rationalization.

Mick

Subject: RE: BS: Sorry I just don't get it
From: GUEST,Boab
Date: 23 Jun 04 - 01:30 AM

Barbaric conduct without a doubt. And those who perpetrated those recent atrocities should be brought to justice. But it sickens me, for one, to hear the perpetrators of acts of equal or even greater barbarity using the recent horrors as a chance to "justify" their own war crimes.And, sadly, it seems that they are finding it all too easy to hoodwink some people.

Subject: RE: BS: Sorry I just don't get it
From: GUEST,Clint Keller
Date: 23 Jun 04 - 01:33 AM

Not attempting to rationalize it.

One more time:

I never heard anyone here say that the beheaders are good guys. They're evil. I'm certainly with Mick there.

What I, and some of the rest are saying, is that we shouldn't be evil too. Why let the bad guys set the standards?

clint

Subject: RE: BS: Sorry I just don't get it
From: kendall
Date: 23 Jun 04 - 06:43 AM

Those bastards are trying everything they can to get all foreigners out of Iraq so they can set up an Islamic state. If they succeed you can imagine what will happen to our oil supply.

I find myself tempted to walk up to an S.U.V. and leave a note saying, "Thanks to selfish assholes like you, the Arabs have us by the balls. Wise up and get a more fuel efficient vehicle."

Subject: RE: BS: Sorry I just don't get it
From: McGrath of Harlow
Date: 23 Jun 04 - 06:44 AM

Killing prisoners is an evil thing to do, no doubt in my mind about that, whether it's done by masked fanatics, stressed soldiers, or bored prison guards in Baghdad.

Subject: RE: BS: Sorry I just don't get it
From: CarolC
Date: 23 Jun 04 - 09:26 AM

Mick, I certainly hope you don't think I'm rationalizing anything.

I have a problem calling any human beings "animals". The worst of us is just as bad as the worst of them, in my opinion. And I don't want to call the worst of us animals either.

Subject: RE: BS: Sorry I just don't get it
From: Peter K (Fionn)
Date: 23 Jun 04 - 11:37 AM

Kendall: SUVs and outdoor space heaters?

Mick: Since you're not even trying to be rational, it would follow that you dismiss opposing views as horseshit I suppose.

Subject: RE: BS: Sorry I just don't get it
From: GUEST
Date: 23 Jun 04 - 11:53 AM

The beheadings are a response to the ways the occupation forces are conducting themselves vis a vis Iraqi prisoners AND Iraqi citizens, regardless of the Iraqi's innocence or guilt. That is the message the beheading jihadists are sending to us, and it is extremely effective. Anyone who thinks those beheading videos are for the benefit of recruiting more fodder for the fundamentalist jihad is nuts. Those videos are to make American TV viewers react just like Big Mick and JustaPicker. They are viscereal, and that is just the sort of emotional reaction they are going for. A sort of 'right back in your face, motherfuckers' counterattack to what is happening at the hands of the Americans and Brits and their 'coalition of the willing'.

It's all war porn, orchestrated and disseminated to elicit pwoerful responses that are unthinking, uncritical, and reactionary. Just as the dragging of the bodies of the American contractors was pornographic. War pornography sells, and that is why both sides--us and them--are using it to such devastating effect.

Neither side is all goodness and righteousness or evil and perverse. Both sides in every war manifest this grey-area moral ambiguity. Just as that is the nature of war, so is it the nature of war pornography.

Subject: RE: BS: Sorry I just don't get it
From: Peter K (Fionn)
Date: 23 Jun 04 - 03:52 PM

Spot on, guest.

The reason that these particular atrocities have penetrated the imaginations of JP and Mick may well be the simple fact that they were filmed. But how else do you get some of these issues into the media?

You won't have seen much about it in the papers, but comparable atrocities have been commonplace in Sierra Leone, Colombia, Kenya (forced female circumcision without anaesthetic), DRC, Rwanda, Northern Uganda, Uzbekistan (but that's OK cos they're helping with the oil), Chechnya, Kyrgiztan, China (really buddies, China)....and a few other places, I wouldn't be surprised.

Within living memory such atrocities went on in the good ole USA. And from Mick's tone, I fear he'd have been there in the thick of the lynch mob. But unlike some other lynchers, Mick would probably wake up the next day full of remorse at what he'd done. He certainly would if he's as big as fok say he is.

Subject: RE: BS: Sorry I just don't get it
From: Peter K (Fionn)
Date: 23 Jun 04 - 03:55 PM

...as folk say he is...

Subject: RE: BS: Sorry I just don't get it
From: darkriver
Date: 24 Jun 04 - 04:22 AM

Peter K (Fionn),

Lay off Big Mick. He may be expressing outrage, but he is not, as you suggest--and has never been--part of any lynch mob or lynch mob mentality. Click on his highlighted name and you'll see all his posts.
Read them and you'll see what a decent man he is.

So fuck off.

doug

Subject: RE: BS: Sorry I just don't get it
From: Wolfgang
Date: 24 Jun 04 - 06:46 AM

Looking at death purely from the how-does-it-feel-like point of view overlooks one big dissimilarity. In our law and I would guess in your too a planned killing is treated very different from a death as an unplanned consequence of mistreatment. Both are wrong and are deservedly punished but the sentences differ a lot.

Just for a moment consider the USA would announce that from now on they will decapitate a Guantanamo prisoner for each US soldier killed in Iraq. Would you really argue seriously that there is not much difference since the two death by mistreatment must have felt at least as bad as the decapitations? You wouldn't. And therefore you shouldn't downplay the beheadings by wrong comparisons.

Just in case you are interested, If that was the only choice left I'd prefer being beheaded to being beaten to death, but as I have argued that should not matter here.

Wolfgang

Subject: RE: BS: Sorry I just don't get it
From: GUEST
Date: 24 Jun 04 - 08:43 AM

Some may be trying to downplay the beheadings based upon some 'more preferable form of murder' standard, but that isn't what I, or PeterK are discussing.

Atrocity can always be used by those who react viscerally, to justify further atrocities. Vengeance is the preferred mode of response for those who are reactionary, and who feel the need to get the adrenalin rush one gets from striking back, regardless of whether those new victims of vengeance are guilty or innocent.

There is nothing moral or decent about any of it.

Perhaps it is time to trot the film 'Hearts and Minds' back out again.

Subject: RE: BS: Sorry I just don't get it
From: GUEST
Date: 24 Jun 04 - 09:30 AM

Oh wait! We can go see 'Fahrenheit 9/11' instead.

Subject: RE: BS: Sorry I just don't get it
From: Peter K (Fionn)
Date: 24 Jun 04 - 10:40 AM

Darkriver, I'm probably as familiar with Mick's posts as you are, including one or two that have left a deep impression with me. He has said himself that some of his thinking in this thread is irrational. If it were reflected at any serious level in government we would be reduced the law of the jungle - exactly what he is protesting against.

Subject: RE: BS: Sorry I just don't get it
From: CarolC
Date: 24 Jun 04 - 10:42 AM

Wolfgang, just in case any of your post was directed at anything I've said in this thread:

I have made no attempt to downplay anything. My objection is to the practice of calling human beings "animals". This practice has nothing to do with laws. It is a visceral response based on cultural ideas about some ways of killing being more acceptable than others. Personally, I think that any kind of illegal killing is bad, and that the kinds that cause the most suffering are the worst. I don't really give a shit what the laws have to say in that regard. We here in the US are not in a position to call anyone "animals". And even if we were, we still shouldn't do it.

My other objection is an agreement with some of the other posters in this thread. We shouldn't use the beheadings to justify our own wrongdings. Especially ones that occurred prior to the beheadings. What we see happening is that we have behaved in a way that is barbaric and wrong. Some other people have responded by behaving in a way that is barbaric and wrong. Then we say, "see... we were right to treat them that way because they are no better than animals". This is a profoundly blinkered way of looking at things, and also a very dangerous one.

BTW, the law says that all human beings are human beings, and should be treated as human beings, even the ones who break laws, and, yes, even the ones who do barbaric things.

Subject: RE: BS: Sorry I just don't get it
From: GUEST,Frankham
Date: 24 Jun 04 - 11:21 AM

The problem is that terror extends from the Middle East all the way to the White House.

There is no justification for ignoring the Geneva Conventions.

There is no profit in becoming like the Al Quaeda network.

An "eye for an eye" creates blindness.

The terrorists are disassociated from their own feelings and compassion.

The problem is that terror extends from the Middle East all the way to the White House.

Frank

Subject: RE: BS: Sorry I just don't get it
From: Amos
Date: 24 Jun 04 - 11:24 AM

...and back again.

A

Subject: RE: BS: Sorry I just don't get it
From: Wolfgang
Date: 24 Jun 04 - 12:04 PM

We shouldn't use the beheadings to justify our own wrongdings.

And vice versa, Carol. But I know you would agree with that.

My point was not directed at you in particular, though your 22 Jun 04 - 10:22 PM post is an example of that thinking I disagree with. McGrath for instance, 23 Jun 04 - 06:44 AM, makes a similar point in stressing the similarities and disregarding the differences.

All the other points you have repeated, 'animals' etc., I find nothing wrong with from my point of view.

There are so many things said in this thread nobody really is in disagreement with, whereever she comes from. We should not sink to the level of the terrorists and so on.

The interesting difference is which things one side stresses and which they do not. That shows their hidden (or less hidden) biases and I sometimes like to point out biases when I see them. (The funny thing with me is that I often point out biases when I am in principal agreement with a position. I know that's often difficult to understand). Take McGrath's statement
Killing prisoners is an evil thing to do...whether it's done by masked fanatics, stressed soldiers, or bored prison guards in Baghdad.
That's a statement noone here can be expected to disagree with. It is good, harmless, well meant, humane, ethically conscious and all that. I cannot but agree.

However, look at it in the context of this discussion. McGrath in one breath mentions unintended deaths with intended deaths. I'm sure he doesn't mean it to come over as it does when I read it, but by failing to mention the obvious differences and by only mentioning the similarities he puts the two incidents in the same class. When he does not agree with some point of view, he is very quick (and good, no doubt about that) to spot the differences and mention them.

Wolfgang

Subject: RE: BS: Sorry I just don't get it
From: McGrath of Harlow
Date: 24 Jun 04 - 12:57 PM

There is a distinction between accidentally killing someone and intentionally doing so. But it isn't a black and white distinction.When we know that the likely or even the certain consequence of our action is that someone will die, I don't think it is right to describe it as "accidental"

In the case of death in the course of interrogation it gets even more complicated. One method of interrogation which has been around for a long time has been to kill one person as a way of inducing other people to provide information. Sometimes this is done directly, for example by picking a prisoner more or less at random and shooting them, or beatingbthem to death. Sometimes it is less direct - when a prisoner dies in the course of interrogation, that death will be used as a form of inducement, perhaps with the added refinement of video-tapes of it happening. Can such deaths be described properly as "accidental".

Again, if an occupying power threatens that, unless insurgents surrender, there will be an bombardment of an area, or is there is such a bombardment as a reprisal, I cannot see the completely predictable killings of non-combatants that result as falling within the accidental category.

Noone should try to diminish the stark horror any sane human must feel at the kind of public and premeditated killings of captives we have seen - but that should never be used to diminish our horror at the other types of atrocity that are around. In fact our reaction should be the reverse - a realization that this in really what it is like, even when it isn't taking place in the glare of the spotlight.

Subject: RE: BS: Sorry I just don't get it
From: CarolC
Date: 24 Jun 04 - 01:00 PM

My point was not directed at you in particular, though your 22 Jun 04 - 10:22 PM post is an example of that thinking I disagree with.

All the other points you have repeated, 'animals' etc., I find nothing wrong with from my point of view.

My post of 22 Jun 04 - 10:22 PM, was (in a round about sort of way, I suppose), a way of introducing the points I was making in all of my subsequent posts. They are all the same points, just expressed in different ways.

And vice versa, Carol. But I know you would agree with that.

I can't imagine why you would think any differently.

BTW, when assessing what you think other people's biases are, I think it would be a prudent thing to factor in who started the thread being posted to, and what their original point was. For instance this thread was started by someone who appears to be equivocating on the subject of wrongdoings on the part of the US, and pointing fingers only at one group of people. So it is perfectly natural in terms of the flow of thread discussions, for people to respond to those particular points. The fact that they do so is not, necessarily, indicative of bias.

The first posts says, in essence, that the US is justified in using whatever tactics it wants because the people on the other side are using tactics we don't like. Some of the others in this thread, myself included, are saying we don't agree with this premise. It is not at all logical to infer from our disagreement with this premise, that we agree with the tactics used by the other side. That is a non-sequiter and it has no basis in logic.

Subject: RE: BS: Sorry I just don't get it
From: GUEST,Casual Observer
Date: 24 Jun 04 - 01:16 PM

If you're going to target SUV's, then make sure you also include full-size pickup trucks, passenger vans, and luxury cars with V-8 engines.

However, that being said, when are we going to pour more effort into finding alternative sources of fuel?

Subject: RE: BS: Sorry I just don't get it
From: Justa Picker
Date: 24 Jun 04 - 01:42 PM

However, that being said, when are we going to pour more effort into finding alternative sources of fuel?

Well the U.S. Government has never been a long term/ bigger picture thinker now, have they? Alternative energy sources should have been a major priority after the OPEC crisis in the early 70s.

It's really sickening that so much of their foreign policy is tied to oil. If it weren't the case, don't you think they would have told most of the middle east to go fuck themselves, a long time ago?

Subject: RE: BS: Sorry I just don't get it
From: GUEST
Date: 24 Jun 04 - 02:50 PM

The main bias/blind spot Westerners have about this subject, is the belief that bombing many innocent people at once who have no way of bombing you back, isn't as bad as beheading individuals, one at a time.

We've got airplanes and bombs. We kill thousands upon thousands of civilians with them, but for some reason believe there is no price to paid for that.

We are stupid, arrogant, and blind to this fact, and it is that stupid, arrogant, blindness that resulted in deeply wounded, angry young men flying airplanes into the WTC and the Pentagon, blowing themselves up as suicide bombers, etc.

That direct correlation SHOULD be as clear as the nose on our faces. It is to the Muslim world, to Europe, to Asia, to Latin America, and to Africa, but it isn't to the US and Israel, is it?

Subject: RE: BS: Sorry I just don't get it
From: michaelr
Date: 24 Jun 04 - 10:33 PM

CarolC and Guest -- I agree completely, and anything I would post on the subject has already been said by you.

JustaPicker -- I strongly suggest you travel outside the US, and talk to the people who inhabit the majority of the planet. It should be an eye-opener.

Cheers,
Michael

Subject: RE: BS: Sorry I just don't get it
From: GUEST,Casual Observer
Date: 25 Jun 04 - 10:58 AM

I'd love to travel outside the US. But there's this thing called money, and they won't generally let you on a plane without it.

Subject: RE: BS: Sorry I just don't get it
From: GUEST
Date: 25 Jun 04 - 11:10 AM

Just to turn conventional thinking on its head for a moment, surely the deliberate beheading at least ackowledges that life is precious. they do it because of the preciousness of life and the impact that taking it away will have on their enemies. the abuse leading to death is just the opposite, it is saying that you mean so little that your death is meaningless. i dont care if you live or die. My pleasure in inflicting pain is more important.

just a different point of view, not necessarily one i totally agree with, but it just occurred to me.

Subject: RE: BS: Sorry I just don't get it
From: McGrath of Harlow
Date: 25 Jun 04 - 11:22 AM

The danger is, to get into a frame of mind which says that one kind of killing (beheading hostages, for example) is really no worse than some other kind (such as dropping bombs on residential districts); or the other way round.

The truer way to see it is, to recognise that one kind is really just as bad as the other.

Subject: RE: BS: Sorry I just don't get it
From: CarolC
Date: 25 Jun 04 - 12:47 PM

http://story.news.yahoo.com/news?tmpl=story&u=/040625/photos_ts/mdf608663

I just saw this picture for the first time today. I don't really have anything to say about it or the story that accompanies it, other than to note that the prisoner died during an interrogation that was being conducted in the presence of the top military intelligence officer at Abu Ghraib. And to note the demeanor of the US soldier in the picture.

I just think we need to be very honest with ourselves about what our values really are.

Subject: RE: BS: Sorry I just don't get it
From: Amos
Date: 25 Jun 04 - 01:33 PM

We've spent a lot of time being a not-very-nice country, haven't we, for all our superficial talk about values?

A

Subject: RE: BS: Sorry I just don't get it
From: Metchosin
Date: 25 Jun 04 - 02:34 PM

sadly, if one were to draw a keffiyeh on her head and a black beard on that shining, white, smiling face, any differences in values would not seem all that significant.

Subject: RE: BS: Sorry I just don't get it
From: Peter K (Fionn)
Date: 25 Jun 04 - 04:04 PM

That picture was well aired in the UK media two or three weeks ago, Carol. The disturbing thing for me, and part of the reason I hold out for law and order and civilised values above my own gut instincts is that I might behave just as crassly as him if I'd been sucked into a similar situation. War and other violence does have a capacity to deprave, and I suspect we don't honestly know how we'd withstand that unless we've been there (and I appreciate that Mick, for one, has).

If I'd written that guest post at 2.50pm yesterday, I'd want to put my name to it, but maybe guest has his or her reasons. Also I couldn't quarrel with Justa Picker's last post, which is saying something, as quarreling seems to come quite easy to me....

Subject: RE: BS: Sorry I just don't get it
From: GUEST,petr
Date: 25 Jun 04 - 04:17 PM

interesting point about the warporn, this is definitely a media war.
Internet and tv are used by the terrorists very effectively because they know there is a certain revulsion in the west to beheadings. It gets noticed a lot more than if someone is just shot.

the media attention is focussed so much on this region, however that no one notices the victims in Africa. Sudan probably has the worlds longest running war with countless thousands dead - and there is no media to report the victims. In India the previous year during the Muslim and Hindu fighting the number of people killed was in just two months was more than the last 15 years of the Palestinian Israeli conflict.

Subject: RE: BS: Sorry I just don't get it
From: GUEST
Date: 25 Jun 04 - 04:48 PM

There is also 'disaster pornography' too, though. Last week on NOW with Bill Moyers, British journalist Julie Flint talked about the problems with that too. In other words, there is a vicarious thrill factor people get from seeing these really pornographic images of violence, death, and suffering that doesn't result in anything changing. We just get to be disaster voyeurs, or war voyeurs.

Actually, a lot is being written about those kinds of things right now. I've mentioned these works in other threads too, but I'll list a couple of them again as they seem quite relevant to the thread:

'War is a Force that Gives Us Meaning' by Chris Hedges

'Regarding the Pain of Others' by Susan Sontag

'A Problem from Hell: America and the Age of Genocide' by Samantha Power

Subject: RE: BS: Sorry I just don't get it
From: GUEST
Date: 25 Jun 04 - 04:59 PM

Sorry guest, petr. I meant to also mention that the interview with Julie Flint is about her very recent trip into the Darfur region in Sudan. She balked at the notion that it was too difficult and/or too dangerous for international journalists, who are currently amassed on the Chad border rather than going into Sudan to get the real stories, to get into Darfur. Here is the gist of her response (cant' find a transcript of her interview on the NOW site, so this is from memory)to a question about how she got into Darfur when all the reporters along the Chad border said they couldn't get in:

"I walked right across. It's easy. It's easy. I'm sorry, I'd like to tell you I did something terribly brave and dangerous, but I didn't. I simply walked across the border and found the rebels."

If you watched any of the documentaries on the 10th anniversary of the Rwandan genocide, Julie Flint's interview is eerily similar to the reports of the sole Western journalist (from the BBC) who stayed behind in Rwanda once the massacres began, to act as one of the handful (literally, only about 5 people) of Western witness to the genocide, after Western journalists, diplomats, and their families had left.

It just causes your heart to ache. It makes you so bitter that we are so weak hearted, that we are so cowardly.

Subject: RE: BS: Sorry I just don't get it
From: GUEST,Art Thieme
Date: 26 Jun 04 - 11:53 AM

A most endangered species, indeed, is the folksinger. Strangely, those doing the endangering call themselves folksingers only while making their career. All while we do what we do in Iraq, and they, whoever thay are, behead their screaming captives---and both do it in the name of a God that, if you ever needed any clearer proof, never existed except to subdue His own followers and his/their enemies, and to make laws to keep the uppity people in line. Yes, heaven and hell are here on Earth---and both always ave been of our own making.

Art Thieme
(as noted in the Gospel Of Thomas too)

Subject: RE: BS: Sorry I just don't get it
From: GUEST,Frankham
Date: 26 Jun 04 - 12:05 PM

One of the great aphorisms of all time is "you can't just do one thing".

There are reasons for the beheading. They are horrible but they must be put into context with how this Administration has dealt with foreign policy.

Saddam and Bush have one thing in common. They both ignored Al Quaeda and bin Laden.

Now, as Micheal Moore suggests, can an old man in a cave on dialysis have orchestrated the monumental tragedy on 911? What role did Saudi Arabia play since many of the hijackers came from that area?

Another question has to be asked. Does Saudi Arabia have designs on Iraq?

Frank

Subject: RE: BS: Sorry I just don't get it
From: GUEST
Date: 26 Jun 04 - 01:27 PM

It should also be remembered that public beheading is the legal means used for Islamic judicial executions/the death penalty in Saudi Arabia, just as in the US we have the electric chair, hanging, lethal injection...

Kinda makes you wonder why the US media doesn't tell us that, and put these public executions being carried out against foreign nationals by the insurgents into a legitimate context, doesn't it?

Oh yeah--that might generate some public interest and debate on the death penalty in the US, and the ruling elite in the US want that debate to happen just as much as the Saudi ruling elite does...

Subject: RE: BS: Sorry I just don't get it
From: Peter K (Fionn)
Date: 26 Jun 04 - 01:36 PM

Frankham, I don't know about Saudi Arabia, but you can be sure that Turkey and Iran are keenly interested in any possibility of Iraq fragmenting - and in helping to fill any kind of vacuum that might develop in the territory.

Subject: RE: BS: Sorry I just don't get it
From: GUEST
Date: 26 Jun 04 - 05:38 PM

Agreed, Peter K.

Turkey surely would like to appropriate Kurdish lands.

Iran would probably like a Shi'ite Iraq.

Saudi Arabia is interesting because of their power in the US.
Would they be in cahoots with the Bush dynasty? Oil again?

Where is the bin Laden family now? And have they really dissascociated themselves with Osama as some claim?

What about Wahabiism? Wouldn't it be very much alive in Saudi Arabia?

Is there a connection between Wahabiism and Al Quaeda and is that a rhetorical question or what?

Iraq is up for grabs it would seem.

Frank

Subject: RE: BS: Sorry I just don't get it
From: GUEST,petr
Date: 28 Jun 04 - 01:10 PM

Regarding Sudan, 1.5 million dead mostly South Sudanese Christian and Animist mainly by the North Sudanese.
barely makes the news, mainly because there are no survivors to tell the tale, no newsmedia etc.

Subject: RE: BS: Sorry I just don't get it
From: GUEST
Date: 28 Jun 04 - 04:42 PM

Not to trivialize the atrocities that are being committed by the "good guys" as well as the "bad guys" in this "war" (I stopped believing Americans to be the good guys in white hats who always rode in to save the day about the time I stopped believing in Santa Claus and the Tooth Fairy)...but since I stopped hanging out at this place so much to spend more time playing music, what people think about these important and solemn issues seems less relevant to me.

I would like to think that by focusing more on my music, I have trivialized the things that make me different from everyone else -those things that separate and isolate me from the rest of the world. The effect has been to make those differences unimportant. The world of musicianship is all-encompassing and highly tolerant. It's hard to hold someone's opinion against him or her when s/he is playing a jaw-dropping phrase or an incredibly difficult passage.

And to think it all came from making air molecules wiggle in specific ways....

Subject: RE: BS: Sorry I just don't get it
From: McGrath of Harlow
Date: 28 Jun 04 - 05:14 PM

It was that picture Carole just came across that I had in mind when I wrote this song a couple of days ago - Fishin' for Secrets