9/11 - Violence and Other Lessons
Jeff Alworth
First there was the act, then the politics. And in between, a brief moment of possibility. France's Le Monde captured the mood most iconically in its headline "We are all Americans." Across the planet, the world responded with compassionate familiarity--as if the tragedy had stripped "America" of its symbolism and allowed the world to see New Yorkers freshly, as human beings. Part of the horror of the act was the recognition that the terrorists who perpetrated it could not see the humanity of their targets, in this way losing their own humanity. But in those 48 hours following the attacks, the world was ripe with possibility: it was a rare--almost unique--moment to forge connections based on that compassionate familiarity.
Instead, we chose the opposite tack. Within days, Bush had begun to use the language of "evil."
But our responsibility to history is already clear: to answer these attacks and rid the world of evil. War has been waged against us by stealth and deceit and murder.
For weeks he used this language, constantly dehumanizing "evildoers"--a word he used 181 times before delivering his famous "axis of evil" State of the Union speech. It was a virtuoso example of how to poison minds against an objectified "other." When Bush proposed, a year later, the invasion of Iraq--a country with absolutely no link to 9/11--the stage was set. Not thinking of Iraqis as humans or what the actual cost to them would be, a large majority of Americans supported the invasion.
Measured in bomb blasts, five years is a long time. The logic of violence Bush offered in 2002 now seems fatally flawed. Why did it seem so plausible that invading Iraq would bring security to the US that might prevent a future 9/11? Instead, our friends--in and outside the Middle East--are few. Al Qaida is re-established in Pakistan, Iraq boils with the fire of IEDs, and Israel and Lebanon have been to war. The promise of peace seems at best the embarrassingly naive whimsy of a superpower with too many bombs for its own good.
Violence is still an alluring prospect for many foreign policy thinkers. It is widely regarded as the "realist" position. Even now, as Democrats sprint from Iraq, most politicians do their best to cultivate a "muscular" self-image. Iraq was a debacle, but the logic of violence remains strangely intact. However, for my part, recalling 9/11 and looking at the past five years of violent experimentation, the only lesson I see is in the failure of violence.
If we want a future of relative safety and stability across the globe, it will not be delivered by shock and awe. Dehumanizing other people creates a cycle that continues to play out, over and over. The real future is in our interconnectivity, cultivating a sense of compassionate familiarity and building a sound foreign policy on engagement. I don't expect this to be the lesson America takes away from 9/11, but on this fifth anniversary, anyway, I'd like to imagine it as a possibility.
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Sep 11, '06
I'd strongly suggest reading the cover story of the September issue of Atlantic Monthly. It's entitled "Declaring Victory" and it's by James Fallows. (Unfortunately, ya gotta pay to read it.)
In the piece, Fallows basically argues that we should simply declare victory in the "war on terror" and move the effort to a diplomatic and cultural response in the Middle East.
While you can't read the piece online, there are numeous excellent bloggies about it, including at the Integral Options Cafe and Opinio Juris.
Even better, you can listen to Fallows get interviewed on NPR.
Sep 11, '06
"Its about changing minds before its about killing people." WKC
Sep 11, '06
If only the Clintons would have taken the offensive agaist these terrorists back in 1993 the world might be a bit different right now.
In all the 96 months of his presidency not once did he take the offensive.
On the otherhand, Bush was in office for 9 months and he took the offensive - taking the fight to the terrorists. He could do more, but at least he did something.
Sep 11, '06
If only the Clintons would have taken the offensive agaist these terrorists back in 1993 the world might be a bit different right now.
This should be required reading for the "if only we'd been preemptive" crowd. Sullivan is no Clinton/Gore apologist, but he definitely hit it right on the head. If Clinton had done something (say kill or capture bin Laden) in the late-90s, his accomplishment would have been poo-pooed by the Coulterized Republicans (I was certainly among them at the time) who were bound and determined to destroy the president AT ALL COSTS.
Sep 11, '06
If only the Clintons would have taken the offensive agaist these terrorists back in 1993 the world might be a bit different right now.
In all the 96 months of his presidency not once did he take the offensive.
Other than bombing a factory in Sudan that was believed to be manufacturing nerve gas? The fact is that Clinton tried to kill bin Laden - as he said on learning bin Laden was training people to kill him "That's fair enough, I was trying to get him." He didn't succeed, but the failure was operational, not political. Clinton did use military force, he just used it more selectively than Bush.
Frankly whether the Republicans would have supported it or not is irrelevant. The Republicans spent almost ten years opposing any action against Hitler, it doesn't prevent them from acting as if they were its champions now.
Sep 11, '06
very well-written, jeff. i thought we'd rid our country of the notion that we could deliver freedom with machine guns in a little country called vietnam back before i was born, but some of the republicans in power were too busy partying to learn that lesson, i guess.
much as i eschew violence, i do think the new iraq needs to be protected by a strong, armed police force against the terrorists republican bombs have created. i don't think it should be an iraqi force (the perception by minority sunnis is already that they are being persecuted) and i don't think it should be an american force (our troops are exhausted, and fine men and women though the vast majority of them may be, a few bad apples have delegitimized the bunch).
we need NATO. i wonder why we haven't secured their help yet. is it too much like what bill clinton did to help bring peace to yugoslavia?
(and hi, republican trolls? 9/11 happened almost a year into a republican's watch. monica lewinsky's dress didn't explode and bring down the towers. class dismissed, please go home.)
Sep 11, '06
we need NATO. i wonder why we haven't secured their help yet.
Exactly why would NATO send troops to Iraq to be cannon fodder. Mostly the Europeans that supported the war are busy bringing their troops home out of harms way. Why would the countries that opposed the war send their troops into harms way?
12:43 p.m.
Sep 11, '06
I don't think there's much profit in assigning blame for 9/11 to either Bush or Clinton. That prescription fundamentally misses the point: the 9/11 bombings were years--decades--in the making. It's simply not possible to prevent terror with the barrel of a gun. Having manipulated the Middle East for decades--subverting democracy in Iran, propping up Saddam and overlooking his crimes, being good friends with the Saudi royal family--it's not as if we were going to avoid the wrath of someone. But the way to stop the wrath from growing is to cut it off at its source, not feed it.
Look at the examples: the IRA, the basque separatists, Gaza, Sri Lanka. Neither Britain nor Spain could stomp out their own terrorists with violence. In Israel and Iraq, killing terrorists does not end terror. Why does this still seem like a winning ticket?
And as to partisan bickering, I think we really do let the terrorists get a short term victory when we blame each other--not those who would do us harm. Let's lay off the harsh vitriol. For one day, even?
Sep 11, '06
Happy Freedom Day Number, like 1900 or so, to Osama Bin Laden, the Most Wanted Man on earth, except in the White House where W says he spends more time fantasizing about nuking the Clinton Presidential Library than catching the six-and-a-half foot-tall Saudi evildoer and long-time Bush family friend.
Was W a whora at Tora Bora for buddy Binladen?
That's what the new book "Fiasco" says! Written by a "Fox Friend" no less.
Sep 11, '06
There's no doubt George W. Bush has created more terrorists than he's killed since 9/11. But Democrats always ignore that for the entirety of his presidency Bill Clinton supported the imposition of a humanitarian disaster on Iraq in the form of UN sanctions -- which is one of the primary reasons bin Laden cited for attacking the United States. Remember Mad Maddy Albright saying that the deaths of tens of thousands of Iraqi children was "worth it" if it enabled the US to keep Saddam "in a box"? You want to know why they hated us so in the Arab world prior to 9/11? Look no further than the policies of William Jefferson Clinton.
The 9/11 Commission Report, which is hardly the partisan whitewash it's portrayed here by some (it was, in fact, a bipartisan whitewash), stated that bin Laden gave plot mastermind Khalid Shierikh Mohamammad "the green light for the 9/11 operation sometime in late 1998 or early 1999."
For six years prior to that Clinton had been fanning the flames of hatred in the Middle East and ignoring pleas by humanitarian groups to ease the suffering of the Iraqi people.
Sep 11, '06
For a clearer idea of the world before Sept. 11, read
http://www.fas.org/man/docs/nwc/
Hart-Rudman report--official name was a lot longer. Bipartisan commission set up in the late 1990s which issued a report.
Not only was it a bipartisan report but the press ignored it until after Sept. 11 (Gary Condit and similar trivial stories more important?). Then on like Sept. 12 or Sept. 13, there were all these network interviews of the members of that commission.
But if one is a partisan, by all means say that one president was good and the other bad. Wouldn't solve anything, but partisans aren't really into solutions, are they?
Sep 11, '06
Sorry, looks like I butchered a butcher's name: Khalid Sheikh Mohammed
Sep 11, '06
The real future is in our interconnectivity, cultivating a sense of compassionate familiarity and building a sound foreign policy on engagement.
Were you Jimmy Carter's foreign policy advisor?
2:00 p.m.
Sep 11, '06
Jim, I wish I had been Bush's. Are you comparing me to Brzeziński? He was, you know, rather a hawk. Interestingly, there might have been early shades of the neocon fervor for freedom in Brzeziński's approach--he was an advocate of dissidents in Eastern Europe. Also interestingly, you identify a President who actually DID have success in the Middle East. Carter managed to broker a peace between Israel and Egypt that continues to today.
Or maybe that was just an uninformed bon mot?
Sep 11, '06
I think we really do let the terrorists get a short term victory when we blame each other--not those who would do us harm. Let's lay off the harsh vitriol. For one day, even?
Yes, but how about not today, on the anniversary of the start of the most destructive partisanship in the country's history. After running away and having Cheney lie to the press about how Airforce One was a target, Bush has treated the 911 bombings as a political opportunity. Domestically he has used it to consolidate power, to attack democrats as weak and to create a climate of fear in which his politics of fear could thrive. He took the opportunity to waste the lives of thousands of young American soldiers fighting a grudge match with Saddam Hussein. In the process, he squandered almost a half century of goodwill that had been built up. He transformed the country from a beacon of freedom and democracy into a symbol of torture and abuse.
Today is a day to remember what really has happened, how the victims of 911 have been used for crass partisan political gain.
3:22 p.m.
Sep 11, '06
monica lewinsky's dress didn't explode and bring down the towers.
BWAH!!!! I love it!
3:25 p.m.
Sep 11, '06
LT is correct about Hart-Rudman. For those who are too busy to read the actual report, read this news story about it -- published September 12, 2001.
3:26 p.m.
Sep 11, '06
Incidentally, one key graf in that story about Hart-Rudman:
So, JustaDog, what were you saying about Bill Clinton?
Sep 11, '06
Thanks Kari.
Perhaps the difference between a partisan and a problem solver is that a problem solver would look at the opening of that news story and ask why the decisions described were made.
Commission warned Bush But White House passed on recommendations by a bipartisan, Defense department-ordered commission on domestic terrorism. By Jake Tapper
Sept. 12, 2001 | WASHINGTON -- They went to great pains not to sound as though they were telling the president "We told you so."
But on Wednesday, two former senators, the bipartisan co-chairs of a Defense Department-chartered commission on national security, spoke with something between frustration and regret about how White House officials failed to embrace any of the recommendations to prevent acts of domestic terrorism delivered earlier this year.
Bush administration officials told former Sens. Gary Hart, D-Colo., and Warren Rudman, R-N.H., that they preferred instead to put aside the recommendations issued in the January report by the U.S. Commission on National Security/21st Century. Instead, the White House announced in May that it would have Vice President Dick Cheney study the potential problem of domestic terrorism -- which the bipartisan group had already spent two and a half years studying -- while assigning responsibility for dealing with the issue to the Federal Emergency Management Agency, headed by former Bush campaign manager Joe Allbaugh.
Sep 11, '06
I believe I am looking forward to the day when we do not have either a Bush or a Clinton in the White House. Hopefully we can get back to doing some business in DC.
Sep 11, '06
jeff, as of november 2004, i'm done shutting up and playing nice with republicans. every day of the year. i'm callin' it like i see it. any group that supported george w. bush's disastrous presidency doesn't care enough about doing what's best for our country. and i do.
ross, it's true that the republicans burned a lot of bridges when they went to iraq without international consent. so we have to kiss up to NATO however they like it best. if that doesn't work, we should shame them -- how can they stand by and watch the iraqis suffer like this because of some grudge against george bush?
i'm just trying to come up with a practical solution, since our leaders seem incapable of doing so. yanking out the troops with no safety net for iraqis is a bad option. waiting dumbly until iraq's military can stop suicide bombers (even though our own military can't manage it) is also a bad option. NATO proved itself very capable of stopping sectarian violence in yugoslavia, because they were no one's enemy. we need something like that in iraq.
4:19 p.m.
Sep 11, '06
Jeff,
I have absolutely no problem calling al Qaeda or Osama Bin Laden "evil" - it's a good description of someone committed to premeditated mass murder of civilians. In my book, that's calling a spade a spade.
The military action taken if Afghanistan was a just and necessary response to the 9/11 attack. The problem, of course, is that the Bush administration totally bungled Tora Bora. To this day, I have never heard an adequate explanation of why every available soldier wasn't thrown into those mountains when our intelligence indicated OBL was there. To me, the only failure of violence in those initial month's in Afghanistan that we didn't put more soldiers on the ground there.
The second problem is that the Bush administration stopped focusing resources on al Qaeda and Afghanistan prematurely, and began planning to pre-emptively invade Iraq. The consequences of that disastrous choice were eloquently explained by Barney Frank in an 8/30/06 editorial in the Boston Globe entitled: "Afghanistan Ignored":
Every Democratic senator and representative but one voted for the war in Afghanistan. It is this war that represented America's reaction to the murders of thousands of Americans on Sept. 11 . It was the Taliban regime in Afghanistan that was sheltering Osama bin Laden. The reaction of the overall majority of Americans, including virtually all Democrats, was to support the Afghan war as a necessary act of self-defense.
But the fact that the Bush-Cheney claims that Saddam Hussein was involved in the 9/11 attacks have been totally repudiated does not stop the administration and its allies from equating willingness to combat terror with support for the war in Iraq.
Not only does support for the Afghan struggle demonstrate our willingness to resort to war in self-defense, but one of the reasons why the Iraq war does America so much harm is that it has diverted attention, resources, and support from Afghanistan. Violence is rising there, along with the drug trade, and support is eroding for what we had hoped to establish as a democratic regime.
I feel particularly strongly about this effort to obliterate the Afghan war from the national debate because I sat in a church in Raynham early last month and watched a family grieve over the death of a brave young man who had been killed there. I do not regret voting for the war in Afghanistan. But I very much regret the necessity of having to do so. The fact that I voted for the war in which that young man was killed weighs heavily on me as a reminder that while war is sometimes necessary, it is an instrument to use only with strong justification, and when alternatives are not available.
Whether or not one subscribes to the geopolitical aims that motivated the Bush administration's intervention in Iraq, it is clearly invalid to assert that support for that war is the indispensable badge of one's willingness to confront terrorism. Only by adopting the techniques of the big lie can the vice president make his case that those opposed to the Iraqi war fail to understand the importance of a firm response to terrorists. In fact, given the deleterious effect it has had on our effort in Afghanistan, and the enormous boost it has given to anti-American forces around the world, the big truth is that the Iraq war has damaged our ability to fight terrorism.
Americans were united in their response to the mass murders of 9/11. The war in Iraq has weakened the United States internationally and divided it domestically, while draining needed resources. It is precisely because the Iraq war is not defensible on any other terms that the Bush/Cheney approach uses the big lie to defend the war in Iraq on grounds that in fact describe the war in Afghanistan.
Like you, I remember the deep reservoir of sympathy and goodwill that the United States enjoyed immediately after 9/11, and I think it's a tragedy that we have more or less squandered it in the last five years.
Steve
Sep 11, '06
Jeff - great focus on the word "evil" ... maybe we should send 1600 Pennsylvania Ave a few volumes of Nietzsche and school that ship of fools on the problems inherent in their steadfast cleavage to slave morality?
5:31 p.m.
Sep 11, '06
I have absolutely no problem calling al Qaeda or Osama Bin Laden "evil" - it's a good description of someone committed to premeditated mass murder of civilians. In my book, that's calling a spade a spade.
I find no use in it. At best, it focuses attention and opposition--neither necessary in this case. I don't think it's worth debating the utility of language here, but just for the sake of argument, I wonder what it had been like if, instead of rushing to label anyone, our leaders had instead begun intensive work on peace initiatives throughout the Middle East. I can imagine a far more positive September 11, 2006 for the region had we done something like that.
Sep 11, '06
When I was over in Europe this summer, talking politics in Germany and Croatia to be exact, many people pointed this proud American to the recent Economist cover showing the carney act of Bush and Blair with the headline, "Axis of Feeble?".
Blair's quitting. The English despise him. His polls are lower than our 20-percenter named Cheney. So, only one more lying loser to go.
Sep 11, '06
"Bad" and "axis of bad" wouldn't have the same ring to them, but they would be morally superior (and even tactically advantageous) to the positions carved out by "evil" and "axis of evil."
"Evil" betrays nothing more than a latent jealousy or admiration for the wealth, power, or even sinister majesty of what Jeff rightly identifies as an objectified other. In that, speaking of an "evil other" only serves to reveal one's own weakness.
Sep 11, '06
Liberal threw a hissy fit when Reagan called the USSR the "Evil Empire," too.
And all Ronnie did was defeat them, after the failed Carter policies had appeased them for years.
The fact is, liberals can't stand calling evil by its name because the ideology is inherently moral-relativist.
Sep 11, '06
People who crash civilian jetliners into skyscrapers are evil.
Those of you who are unable to accept this simple fact should seek psychiatric counseling, or (at least) try not to procreate. Your kids will be a danger to society: moral relativism will only lead to selfishness and social destruction.
Ever wonder how cheerful eight year olds become heroin addicts? They have parents who can't distinguish between right and wrong.
Sep 11, '06
Mr Tee, I'm sorry but you are the one with the relativism. We invaded Iraq killing thousands in a war based on lies. So just how was Iraq a threat to us? No one really answers this but uses it to justify our shock and awe and accompanying occupation...
Jeff Alsworth, thank you for your well written piece...
Sep 11, '06
We know that Mister Tee has already on other threads, and contrary to anything recognizable as the values of true American patriots, fully supported the immoral slaughter of civilians who were on the opposite side of the butchers with whom he happens to proudly identify. He is the textbook definition of a moral relativist, and a deceitful one at that.
And so is Pozey. The indisputable fact is, but actual moral relativists like Posey never acknowledge facts that contradict their selfish, immoral view of the world, that it was the involvement of the S.U. in Afghanistan that was what brought them down. The same thing, combined with our illegal immoral war in Iraq, that is destroying our society with the obvious support of people like Pozey and Mister Tee.
Come on Pozey and Mister Tee, continue to show us what true moral relativists, and unpatriotic American-haters like you are really all about.
Sep 11, '06
Ask1st: you've got it all figured out.
Bush is the mass murderer, Bin Laden is simply responding to American Imperialism, Saddam Hussein was an innocent bystander, Al Qaeda are freedom fighters, and Islamo-Fascism will set you free.
What a tool! Are you sure you know which side you're on?
Sep 11, '06
Tee, what are you talking about? How can subjective judgments of "evil" even remotely be considered facts?
Yes, it many ways ours is a binary, digital, off/on world - does our ethical sense and moral attitude have to be dumbed down to some retarded and crass division of right and wrong? And who died and made you my arbiter of arrogance?
And Jim, we took down the USSR? Yeah, we sure did a number on them, especially with the USSR collapsing from within over the course of decades and all. That the USSR began to bail in earnest during Reagan's time is at least in part (if not more so) a historical coincidence.
And you have to admit, moral relativism doesn't look that bad when it's set beside the dopey and naive shortsightedness of absolutism. At least there's a debate in that mix.
Sep 11, '06
And all Ronnie did was defeat them, after the failed Carter policies had appeased them for years.
Jim, are you one of those who believe Ronnie ended the cold war all by himself? That Lech Walesa, Vaclav Havel, Alexander Dubcek, the Pope from Poland, all those folks who held candlelight vigils at churches in E. Germany, and all the unknown E. Europeans involved in the crusade to end Soviet domination (not to mention what Gorbachev and Yeltsin and Arbatov did in the USSR) had nothing to do with it because it was Ronnie's doing and no one else is allowed any recognition? That no one born on the other side of the Atlantic who grew up in a European country or the USSR had anything to do with the end of Communism?
Perhaps you don't remember Georgi Arbatov. I wouldn't remember the name except I have the old news magazine graphic (2 inch high hammer and sickle and large print quote from Arbatov). We are going to do something terrible to you--we are going to deprive you of an enemy.
It was TIME, May 23, 1988.
But if it is an article of faith with you that good things only happen when Republicans are president, and only American Republicans solve problems, don't let me rain on your parade.
Sep 11, '06
I'm not going to split hairs and wrestle with semantics. Usama Bin Laden is either evil, psycotic, a meglomaniac, paranoid, delusional, an Islamo Fascist, mass murderer or all of them. I'm sure many people can add or detract from the list. It really doesn't matter except that he needs to be captured and brought to justice and left to rot in prison with a 300lbs roomy rapist named Billy Bob from rural West Virginia.
The facts are that W's incompetance and misguided policies have prevented the capture of Bin Laden, caused irreparable harm to this countries standing, has virtually left Afganistan to fend for itself, allowed American to exhaust it blood and treasure in a war of our choosing based on deceptions, exaggerations and half truths at best. Iraq will go down as blight or a malignant curse in American history. If we are lucky and can find a way to bring some modicum of stability in Iraq, then we can hope it is the former not the latter. However with the cabal of W, Chenney, Rove, and Rummy it won't happen in the next two years.
Sep 11, '06
Heya Mister Tee. You say heroin addicts grow up with parents who can not distinguish between right and wrong.
Agreed.
Just ask Florida Governor Jeb Bush about his hellacious drug addict of a spawn named Noelle. Nice girl, I hear, when her nose is clean. Like most junkies. Like Rush.
And as for heroin, the cost on American streets is at a new low, low price thanks to the Taliban falling and then rising up again to kick our @ss in Afghanistan. Remember Afghanistan?
http://www.iht.com/articles/2006/09/05/africa/web.0905province.php
Sep 11, '06
"Those who put others through hell will never go to heaven."
This is a quote from former Iranian President Mohammend Khatami, referring to Osama Bin Laden and suicide terrorist; from a speech at Harvard University 9/11/2006.
But I would stated that President George W Bush and cabinet, this quote applies to you too.
1:01 p.m.
Sep 12, '06
Keith Olberman had an amazing and scathing commentary on Countdown last night. Linky for those who missed it. I'm really growing to love this guy...
1:10 p.m.
Sep 12, '06
Interesting the vitriol from the left on 9/11--it caught me by surprise. I particularly liked Kevin Drum's commentary, which seems to capture, without the kind of scarred reactive quality, the anger:
I am still not convinced we should reserve 9/11 as the day of partisan retribution, but I'd happily opt to designate as that date September 12.
Sep 12, '06
Sid,
when did the Taliban make you their spokesperson? I didn't realize they kicked our @ss. Did I miss the troop pull-out and declaration of defeat?
Thanks again for keeping us informed, Sidney. I can tell that your time working as a grunt @ CNN has served you well.
Sep 13, '06
You really need to read Paul Williams' book -The Dunces of Doomsday- American Hiroshima- he makes a credible case that there are suitcase nukes in the US, smuggled from Mexico - after 9/11. Bin Laden has stated in 1997 that he will unleash an "American Hiroshima" on the 10 US cities with the highest Jewish population.
According to the International Atomic Energy Agency between 1993 and 2004, there were 662 confirmed cases of smuggling of nuclear and radiological materials.
If this is true, all of your assets will be worthless & millions will be dead- but happily, for idiot Dems, Bush is foresquare to blame by leaving the borders open!
Sep 13, '06
Heya Dan.
Unlike you, I cited an International Herald Tribune article backing my point.
Staff Sgt. Robert J. Paul, from The Dalles, Oregon, knows the Taliban is back. They killed him last week in... Afghanistan... America's forgotten war.
http://www.blogs.oregonlive.com/oregonian/newsupdates/default.asp?item=181668
Going to the funeral?
Of course not. The truth hurts you chickenhawks. Bad.
Sep 14, '06
Sid
I hate to inform you of this, but the Taliban haven't won. This must be deeply troubling to you, and the cut-off-the-nose-to-spite-the-face faction of the lazy liberal left. Your internet post did little to back up your wild eyed claim that the T-ban has kicked our @ss.
Good try.
As for Robert Paul, I'm very sorry that he died. I did not know him so I won't be attending his funeral. I only attend funerals of people that I personally know and love, or in direct support of a friend or family member (that I know).
I support families by not attacking the causes that they have died for, unlike you.
I have said a prayer for his family. That is what I do when I read the name of someone that has died serving this country.
I have some real doubts about your motivation in siting his death to back up your weak arguement.
Seems pathetic to name a fallen soldier as proof that the Taliban is once again able to (in your words) "kick our ass in Afganistan".
I'm sure glad you don't occupy any position of leadership.
Sep 14, '06
Jeff, as long as you believe the nonsense "the terrorists who perpetrated it" were nineteen names who were not in any airline reservation records and who were not ticketed passengers, you shall forever fail to understand the fascist political acts which are made in that nonsense.
As long as you believe Santa Clause flies to all the rooftops around you one night a year, you shall forever fail to understand cause-and-effect reality.
Find yourself a shred of evidence there were nineteen hijackers. I know, you saw photos on TV. And you saw photos of Santa Clause on TV, too.
Or look into the evidence it was planned and directed out of the Oval Office in the White House, I mean, the Evil Office in the Fright House. There is lots and lots of evidence Bush/Cheney/Republican totalitarian fascism staged it. [One place to look is GlobalResearch(dot)CA (as in, CAnada, where the Fright House censors websites less easily).]
Perhaps the strongest evidence is the politics since it happened that are said to be because it happened. What you call "the logic of violence Bush ... seems fatally flawed." It is not at all flawed. The first things any criminal culprit logically does is tries to blame someone else and tries to cover up what they did. Their logic is not fatally flawed, but thinking you can ever follow the logic in something you think which is complete nonsense, now that is fatally flawed.
When you think the wrong someone did a crime, you are never going to know how and why they were at the scene of the crime. They weren't. You got the wrong someone. Faulty flawed logic is in the mind of the illogician.
Sure, when you let yourself look at the evidence showing you the Evil Office, Fright House, committed Nine Eleven Op and mass murdered Americans, you are going to feel detached from the people and the lies they say in the hypnotic mass media. That sounds like how a Jew or Hindu feels during mass media's Christmas shopping season.
You may feel detached from mass media world, but you don't need to feel lonely. In fact, the majority has become the ones logically knowing and saying (in your neighborhood, not on TV) that Nine Eleven Op has not been factually reported.
Now, there are some political behaviors and ideas you have to figure about carrying out, when you think one way or another of how to arrest and justly punish the N.E.O. criminals. And dive right in those politics.
But here's a salient personal behavior to be responsible in, that is radically different when you think one way or think another way. How are you going to protect yourself, and yours, from a N.E.O. repeat?
And I focus on that aspect just as my personal contribution by my unique gift-of-birth talent, in which I feel, and am, responsible to give to the world my best effort. You probably know, since I said here before, that I foresaw Sept. 11, 2001's, explosions and said I saw them, on the morning of Sept. 10. I have 'suffered' seeing visions all my life. (Actually, I do not suffer in seeing them, per se. The suffering when I am pained comes at the hands of others who want to deny that I see them.)
I foresee a repeat of Nine Eleven Op, a 'sequel' you may say, 'the other shoe dropping,' coming soon, before election day in November, and politically exploited to postpone and then cancelling elections. As best I can tell about the timing, it is set to occur October 25. Uh, twenty-oh-six.
I foresee it as a contaminated eruption (not necessarily an explosion, maybe a plane crash or something) that gets poison in the air and drifts it in a stripe path like a hundred miles wide, killing thousands and thousands of souls, from south California to north Texas. It is unseen to me where it starts, or what it is exactly. What I see is a 'swath of murder' and poisoned land that afterwards is uninhabited, inhospitable, and mostly 'untraverseable.' I foresee the demise in it of the person you say, Jeff, who espouses "violence fatally flawed." It seems, (yet it is unseen to me in visions, so far), that such a demise of that person engenders wide sympathy for him, and that that emotional storminess in people is politically exploited to blame the crime (it is premeditated, not accidental) falsely on an innocent party (Iran).
You can figure the rest as well as I, after your mind enters to think of such things. I see a stripe of devastation and mass murder, timed at Oct. 25.
As for your personal behavior to be safe yourself, and yours, from it, apparently you don't have to do nothin'. Don't go there and get in the way, is all. It's the 'wrong place at the wrong time.' You might not have to go register to vote anymore, either, ever again. For myself, I am moving before then to a location undisclosed here, where I am now not.
<h1></h1>Sep 14, '06
Hey Liberals,
the post by Tenskwatawa is proof that the medical pot card system can be horribly abused.
Aren't you glad he's on your side attacking GW.
Sep 14, '06
Heya Danno. This just in to the BlueOregon newsroom...
The Pentagon confirms it REFUSED to kill dozens of Taliban bad guys in Afghanistan when they were all IN THEIR SIGHTS. DOD wondering who stopped the kill. Drunken W? Deadeye Dick? The Twins?
http://msnbc.msn.com/id/14823099/
Gee, did W re-hire CIA hack George Tenet from WalMart?
So, again, Danno, tell us all why you have refused to fight in W's WW3. Did the recruiter see you foaming at the mouth and think you have rabies?
Do tell why you are here and not OVER THERE in Iraq. We'll wait. We always do.
Sep 14, '06
Sid,
I loved your response. Just as weak as your first one.
That bit of news happened yesterday and I agree, they should have sent in some firepower and united the Taliban with the 100 virgins waiting for them.
They didn't do the job as the meeting of the Taliban was a graveyard funeral. Rules of engagement don't allow bombing graveyards.
I disagree with those rules of engagement.
I'm only guessing that in your high school yearbook (assuming you actually graduated, there is some doubt based on your postings) you were voted most likely to receive Gov't assistance.
That, of course, makes you a good liberal.
Keep trying Sidney.
1:24 p.m.
Sep 14, '06
Hey Liberals, the post by Tenskwatawa is proof that the medical pot card system can be horribly abused.
A marvelously unhinged comment, agreed. But at least our nuts aren't speaker of the state house o--more disastrously--running the country.
Sep 14, '06
There's no cause to go dissin' Santa Claus, dear Tenskwatawa!
Sep 14, '06
Heya Dan.
There are two types of people in the world: the kind that work at The White House and the kind that take the free tour.
I use my real name because I have done something with my life -- CNN, Gannett, NBC-TV, even the locals.
You, sir, are an anonymous little troll too scared to say who he is and what he stands for. Besides breathtaking cowardice, that is, because real men go to Teheran.
Sep 14, '06
Working at CNN is tantamount to working at the White House? Was Sid more like Josh Lyman or Sam Seaborn.
If CNN is like the White House, then does that make Ted Turner the President? Can he pardon himself from paying alimony, or is Hanoi Jane still on the payroll? Does that make his pledge to the United Nations a conflict of interest?
Yo! SID: Since you are way past the public tour: do you think I could sleep in the Lincoln Bedroom? With Monica....Dressed up like Santa Claus! Nothing kinky or anything: I just want to read her some of Tenskey's classic prose while she hums Hail to the President.
Mmmmm. Mmmmm. Good.
Sep 15, '06
Sidney,
You must be a bit raw on the shoulder-blades from patting yourself on the back all day.
Your posts reveal you to be a stay at home dad. Not that there's anything wrong with that. Its just that the language and lack of compelling sentence structure suggests a person that spends his whole day talking to children.
Hopefully your time here at BO will improve this deficiency.
Sep 15, '06
Gee, maybe I should use a "sock puppet" like Mister Tee and Danno.
But, like Jeff, Kari, The Commissioner, and others on this board, I have done something positive in my public live.
You guys are anonymous trolls, probably roomies in a SE duplex basement on an old 386.
Bottom line -- you girls refuse to fight W's WW3, he begged you to fight, so we all know you are COWARDS, from the time your Step-Mom gets you out of bed in the morning.
Sock puppets. I'm arguing with sock puppets.
Sep 15, '06
No, Sid, you're talking to assholes and it sounds like you expect something other than shit comes out of them. That's all there is between their cheeks. Put a cork in it, step away from their hate-baiting, and they explode.
Save your good voice for betterments.
Did you see the great compendium Ginny posted -- 'betterment' -- on the thread before (below) this one, a veritable Nine Eleven Op memoriam donnybrook ...
<h1></h1>Sep 15, '06
I hope you guys brought Astroglide.
With Sid pitching and Tenskey getting warm in the bullpen, the left is going to get reamed. A$$holes win.