Tell me about your mother....
Man you have a way of getting the best and brightest to engage you in conversation...
The answer for this is more human contact so that people will value human relationships more and will be less likely to start wars.
One could also say war is the result of human contact. I am not aware of anyone declaring war on someone they didn't know existed...
our manner of war is more abstract and commercialized than suicide terrorism.
When I was part of it the words abstract and commercialized never came to mind. I have a lot of words that I could use to describe how it felt but those two aren't them.
Not starting a war would spare thousands of lives and billions of dollars.
Only if no one else starts one either. We are in one now, doesn't make much sense to get in a who started it argument. But just because it't fun
He started it.
'More human contact'- Another way to say 'Can't we all get along?'
The answer to that is no- smarter people than us have tried that route and it doesn't work.
Until the ideologies of freedom are available to all, we just are not going to get along- and no matter how Oliver Stone portrays Castro, it won't be our fault, either.
This is ground control to Major Tom...
When will we get the cosmic perspective that'll teach us we're all in this together? 7 or so billion people bunched up on a tiny bluish pebble in the middle of NOTHING!
trite, cliche, what-have-you... but really... can't we all just... well, you know...
::changing tune::
I'd like to teach the world to sing in perfect harmony...
We'd all like to sing that song.
Do you suppose that will be taught in the madrassahs in Pakistan?
Thank you for responding and giving me front page treatement. You ask a lot of questions and I experience that as respectful. Some of them are rhetorical, but I'll try to answer what I can.
You start by interpreting my remarks as saying that starting a war in Iraq causes Islamic terrorism. There is not a sentence in my statement that implies that so this is your own interpretation, your own anxiety about locating the disowned qualities you are projecting in the other, in the enemy.
You say that the ideology for which we started a war is "called freedom." That is a one word description of the content of the ideology just as other ideologies you describe might include "class struggle" or "religion" or "piety" or "protecting the nation."
You ask if I am seriously comparing Al Qaeda and Republicans. I don't know that I necessarily am. I can say that oranges and apples are both fruit without saying that an apple is an orange. If you ask me for evidence I would say that in the last five years Al Qaeda and America have killed similar numbers of civilians. It is within the same order of magnitude. The fact that Republicans are passive and abstracted in their killing is not a virtue so much as it is a description of why they will lose their wars. I also credit Al Qaeda with not stealing money from children to fund their wars. They pay their own way.
You ask if I am saying we should have given Saddam billions. Of course not. You asked a question asking me to describe the war in Iraq caused terrorism. That wasn't any part of my argument, but in response to your question, I focused on lost opportunity. I am confident that if our nation had $200billion to spend promoting democracy in the middle east you would have done a lot better giving me the money. We would have been decades ahead if we had endowed 100 universities, ended famine in Darfur and, buying the Gaza strip. We'd still have $100 billion left over and no loss of life.
You ask again if I am comparing parents in Islamic world with parents in America. I believe that as long as you are trying to find your place in the world by comparing yourself to others you are lost -- lost in defensiveness. You should be satisfied with your own level of self awareness when you are working to live up to your potential. You should not be satisfied with your level of self awareness because you compare yourself to others and judge yourself to be superior. The comparison is irrelevant.
In "hold the applause" you went on to take the insults you received for your writing on parenting as evidence that you were genuinely touching on real defenses. But there are places here where you respond to me with insults instead of argument, asking "what the hell is wrong with me." So this is an opportunity for you to feel within yourself the dynamic that you are projecting onto others -- to own the qualites you are disowning.
Also you seem by your interpretation of me that I am saying that US policy has a deleterious effect.
I see 1800 dead Americans, thousands maimed and wounded and $200billion stolen from our future as deleterious effects. I see tens of thousands of dead Iraqis as a deleterious effect Do you not see that?
There will be a quality of abstraction in your thinking which facilitates you not being aware of these costs.
I believe that people are most empowered when they take responsibility for their own situation, their own life. Your insult that it is "ridiculous" for me to see people as responsibile for their own lives, their own situation is an expression about yourself and your own orientation to your own responsibility.
By your own words, the money would have been spent, albeit differently.
You would have given it to Saddam, et al.
I'm sorry, copithoprne, but you are looking for a morality that cannot exist in the environment you create.
Further, if in the end, the money spent was seed money for democracy in the reguion, well, it was a small price to pay.
In fact, if the money spent will result in the end of fgm (100 MILLION and counting), I would consider it money well spent.
Wouldn't you?
If anyone asked, politically, do we have $200billion to promote democracy in the Middle East, the answer would have been no. I would have said no.
It turns out, we did have that kind of money. Who knew?
There's an obvious conflict between the stated goals and the actual results. If we were to sincerly pursue (y)our stated goals, we would have gone about things differently.
To follow up, too, you describe the ideology for which you (or America) are willing to kill as "freedom." I don't think the content is so important so much as the relationship you have to it. There is a belief system. You have the desire and the entitlement to kill people on behalf of that belief system.
So, it isn't really necessary to speculate on Islamic parenting. You can look at your own experience and try to uncover how the ways in which you were parented supported you in valuing belief systems over the lives of human beings.
I would think you would find that there are also social and political influences as well as family/pscyhological readings.
I don't understand "the end of fgm." I don't know if that is a typo or an abreviation with which I am unfamiliar.
People can't get along with each other if one of them doesn't concede the other's right to exist.
Saddam was a dictator who thought he had the right to wage aggressive war against Iraq, and against Kuwait, and to kill the Kurds when they were inconvenient, and to massacre the Shiites when they rebelled.
Saddam was a very, very bloody man whose only creed was his own survival. I don't think it is possible to negotiate with someone like that.
Now, it might well be true that Saddam's parents were at fault, but while it is not the mad dog's fault it has rabies, it still must be shot.
Tommy, when I say that the American way of war is commercialized and abstracted, I an referring mostly to the fact that people who support the war pay other people to fight it.
In that circumstance, there are issues of class, power, politics that may come into play in a way that's different from someone who makes a decision to kill himself and others through a suicide bomb. I still agree that sigcarlfred's psychological reading is a powerful one. It's just there may be other readings that are also pertinent.
Maxed Out Mama, you seem to be rehearsing your defense of why you think it was/is appropriate to start a war against Iraq. I don't have the experience that that is what this particular conversation is about. But in response, each of your sentences involves abstraction and projection about the enemy out there rather than self awareness about your own behavior and choices.
Who in this circumstance didn't concede the other's right to exist? Who in this circumstance is asserting the right to engage in aggressive war? Who in this circumstance is the bloody man following the creed of their own survival? Each of these applies to both sides in this war.
And who in this circumstance has actually been shot? Thousands of men, women and children and none of them are Saddam Hussein.
Sigcarlfred presents a powerful psychological reading of a group he identifies as an enemy or adversary. While he is doing that he is also demonstrating that he has an opportunity for deepening his understanding of his adversary through self-awareness of his own behavior.
copi, I shall respond later, in a new post.
FGM is female genital mutilation.
SC&A, a well argued, well thought out and completely correct response, not only on the post but in the comments. Why should we have let Saddam continue to promote and encourage genocide and mass murder?
Any dictator is a block to democracy and freedom and should be removed. Personally, I would have gone for the secret assassin option, myself, but bringing his heinous crimes to light to the world - though the bleeding-heart liberals play the see, hear and speak no evil game against evil and will never agree that what we did in liberating the Iraqi people was the right thing to do.
We have lost less military personnel in this war than we did during WWII. Yet but their arguement, we should not have gone in to help rid the world of the Nazi filth named Hitler and his SS? One might note that that war lasted a lot longer than this one. A lot of wars like WWI, Korea and Vietnam lasted longer than this one. We were winning in Vietnam until the peace activists and angry hippies and the anti-military, anti-government establishments started spreading negative propaganda at home against our own troops, against fellow Americans, and relished in bringing the morale of our fighting men over there down into the sewers. What happened to our troops who fought in Vietnam from fellow Americans
here in the USA is disgusting and shameful. Their words and deeds did more to hurt POWs than the actual torture infliced upon them by their captors. Imagine hearing from a fellow American, a fellow soldier, that they were compared to Ghengis Khan - John Kerry should have been brought up on treason charges for his role in falsely stating the charges he leveled agains his fellow soldiers. Mostof what he stated was heresay, unless he was actually there alongside the soldiers raping and pillaging. Yellow stripes run long, Kerry, and you're about as yellow as they come.
The problem today is that people expect a "fast food" war. One that is over and done with in a matter of weeks or months. Well, people, war isn't like that. War doesn't subjugate itself to your schedule. War lasts for years, some even for centuries. You may not agree with war, but you damn sure should support our soldiers in uniform over there. After all, they're keeping the wolves from your door and America's backyard. They're dying to keep you safe while they're dying to keep the Iraqi people free. If the terrorists weren't over there fighting our soldiers, with their hatred of America where the hell do you think they would be doing their suicide bombing? Not Paris or the Carribean, I can tell you that much. Think about it. Think hard.
Your remarks re a fast food' war are good ones. We suspect there is a lot of truthto that- quick fixes are fast becoming the norm in a world where quick fixes got us into the messes to begin with.
To answer the question do I believe starting a war in Iraq would be worth it if it ended female genital mutilation.
For myself, I don't believe that killing people is one of the options I have available to me in my pursuit to build a better world.
I don't believe that you are entitled to kill people in your pursuit of building a better world.
Some of the foundation for that is that violence is not an effective method for creating positive change. I think your idea that starting a war would reduce fgm is about as imaginary a view of cause and effect as anything in the mind of an Al Qaeda operative.
Also, I think any sustained inquiry into moral reasoning would lead one to see that destroying people as a means to an end is not moral behavior, whatever value one sees in the objective one is pursuing.
I might speculate that you wouldn't feel similarly entitled with your fellow citizens. I guess that you would not think that you are entitled to kill your next door neighbor if you came to believe that would create a better world. I imagine that you perceive yourself to engage in different moral reasoning than Eric Rudolph or Ted Kascynski.
Is that so? Is it just people from other countries that you are entitled to kill as part of your plan for world improvement? Do you understand what Eric Rudolph's moral mistake is?
I will assert in my own authority as a Christian and a religious person that your moral reasoning is not consistent with any true religion. Do you have a sense of what the source of your moral reasoning is? Is there a philosophy that inspired you? Or is it something that is unconscious?
Also, there is another opportunity for you to have your own speech reflected back to you. You were troubled or disdainful of the anti-American/anti-Western reaction expressed by the Brazilians. But if you feel entitled to kill people in other countries and if the majority of Americans feel as you do, then anti-Americanism would be a natural, understandable and accurate response on the part of people of other nations.
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