(The shifting sands of "truth")
There are some web pages that have tried to keep count, but it's a tough
job. Funny how people don't notice, isn't it? I suppose Lakoff's
explanation holds good (though he's not in very good odour right now,
and he wasn't at all the first to observe this:
"One of the fundamental findings of cognitive science is that people
think in terms of frames and metaphors - conceptual structures. The
frames are in the synapses of our brains - physically present in the
form of neural circuitry. When the facts don't fit the frames, the
frames are kept and the facts ignored." -- George Lakoff
The frames of reference used by the current administration have been
foisted upon the American people in a highly effective propaganda
campaign. I often wonder why so few of us notice what's happening.
Perhaps moving to someone else's country has enabled me to see the
mind control that many of my fellow citizens can't seem to comprehend.
(The warmonger's perspective on civilian casualties)
As indeed they would be, if they had any sense - and as you say, as
Americans would be too.
But it's the hallmark of the kind of thinking you're having to contend
with NOT to put yourself in the other man's position. You're special,
after all, and if the powers-behind-the-powers-that-be have done their
jobs properly, you've already dehumanised the other guy to scumbag
status, beneath your contempt, let alone your powers of empathy. But
just who is then dehumanised? It's perhaps only our imaginations that
keep us human, and that's exactly what they're for - to put yourself in
the other guy's position.
What bothers me most about this, is how the warmongering talk is
couched in pseudo Christian rhetoric. The antithesis of Christian
philosophy is the very apathy you've outlined above. I personally
have a hard time liking people, but as a Christian, I would certainly
not wish anyone harm. Arrogance and humility are polar opposite
concepts. Christianity requires humility. The attitudes being
promoted in my country right now are not Christian.
(Mr. Chomsky)
Well, that's their problem, isn't it? And, to put myself in the other
guy's position, it's not quite the same as my dismissing people like Tim
LaHaye and Jerry Jenkins as dangerous maniacs, that's easily
demonstrated , and it's easily demonstrated that Chomsky does not talk
nonsense. Conservatives in the U.S., or at least the sector of them that
we're talking of, are now famous for being unable to abide any views
that differ from their own, as you've remarked, their intolerance is
extreme (and most unAmerican, or anti-American). Elsewhere Chomsky is
highly respected, whether he's agreed with or not.
Anyway, okay, it's also your problem, you have to deal with these guys.
Frequently! And yes, it IS a problem!
(Pro Syrian protest in Lebanon)
Virtually the entire US media ignored that, and were heavily criticised
for their bias.
Yet we still hear much grumbling about the "liberal" bias in the U.S.
media. Ironic, isn't it?
Well, as you pointed out, military power is a blunt weapon. "When the
only tool you own is a hammer, every problem begins to resemble a nail."
- Abraham Maslow.
This is why military power should be employed with great reluctance
and careful oversight. The job of a soldier is to impose his nation's
will on other people while preserving his own life. If he dies, he
can no longer serve his country. We consider his willingness to risk
his own life as noble somehow, but in fact, the conduct of warfare is
a ruthless business. There is nothing noble in killing, no matter how
much patriotic language we employ to beautify the brutal.
(Corruption)
Um, especially with American involvement, with all due respect, on a
much bigger scale than Saddam ever had the resources for. The whole
thing is corrupt, all the way from the lies you mention to Halliburton
et very much al to the imposition, or attempted imposition of all the
one-sided neoliberal pro-corporate "rules" to rip the place off and all
its resources. And they talk about democracy! LOL! Barefaced cheek is
not something they seem to be short of.
The idea was that we would "liberate" the nation, then utilize profit
derived from the sale of Iraqi resources for rebuilding the country's
infrastructure. This is pure NeoCon thinking: Use a small force,
supported with overwhelming firepower, then let someone else pay for
the damage. . . When we're done, we'll "support" a democracy that
supports us; all done in the name of God and country.
I'm sceptical, Robert, I'm a journalist after all. But I don't find much
or any conflict between due scepticism/realism and optimism. Is it
people you're suspicious of, or their institutions and organisations and
corporations? They're not the same.
I know myself well enough not to trust anyone like me! :- )
Did you read that piece? It's worth a read:
Incident on Haifa Street, by Tom Engelhardt, September 20, 2004
http://www.motherjones.com/news/dailymojo/2004/09/09_518.html
Yes, I did, some time ago.
But the war, Robert, is in Iraq. Do the Pentagon's post-Vietnam
media-coverage horrors go so far as to forget that?
Most of the upper echelon commanders served in Vietnam. The
nightmares of that conflict remain vivid in the minds of our generals
and the "lessons" they learned are manifest in policies such as a
refusal to allow footage of body bags being unloaded in Maryland. The
"embedding" of reporters within units, where their reporting can be
closely monitored, is another. The Pentagon has learned how to
portray combat in terms of the triumph of technology; hence my comment
contrasting pinpoint air strikes with the Red Badge of Courage.
I went to Gettysburg with my wife last fall and imagined Confederate
soldiers charging toward the Union fortifications on Little Round Top.
It's astonishing how brave they must have been! Our soldiers now
are no less courageous, but we Americans lack the fortitude to
tolerate high casualties. The "insurgents" understand this and are
are seeking to drag us into a conflict which will stir the American
public into outrage.
Our military leadership is working very hard to ensure that this
doesn't happen. Quashing the "insurgency" with ruthless brutality and
overwhelming firepower is yet another technique to prevent the
demoralization of our armed forces. The ghosts of Vietnam are very
much alive in the memory of our commanders.
As yet - but perhaps surviving paraplegics and so on are even more
difficult to hide in the long run than body bags. A point about that is
that people with horrific injuries who'd have died previously are
surviving now - there are two sides to that when it comes to PR. And the
psychological casualties are very high indeed. A Department of Veterans
Affairs analysis of nearly 50,000 combat veterans returning from Iraq
and Afghanistan, published in The New England Journal of Medicine, found
that up to 17 percent have been diagnosed with major psychological
disorders.
This is a consequence for which there is no remedy. We can't run
away from the cost of combat.
"This business of burning human beings with napalm, of filling our
nation's homes with orphans and widows, of injecting poisonous drugs of
hate into veins of people normally humane, of sending men home from dark
and bloody battlefields physically handicapped and psychologically
deranged, cannot be reconciled with wisdom, justice and love. A nation
that continues year after year to spend more money on military defense
than on programs of social uplift is approaching spiritual death." -- "A
Time to Break Silence", Rev. Martin Luther King
Words spoken by a true Christian and patriot.
(Bludgeoning resistance)
Yes, the Mau Mau failed, but a few years later one of their leaders,
Jomo Kenyatta, was the first president of independent Kenya. The mighty
South African military held the upper hand at all times but eventually
concluded that there was no military solution to the black uprising in
South Africa, and look at the place now. I guess we could argue about it
forever, but I'd say it's only a matter of time. There's no winning -
every military action you take is like sowing dragon's teeth, it will
rebound on you in the end.
You know as well as I do that we Americans WILL pay for our hubris.
The scary part is that we are perfectly capable of dragging the rest
of the world down with us. I have to be careful about what I write in
this vein, but I'm confident that we will reap what we have sown. The
rest of the people on the earth will too.
A lot of other people do though, including a lot of Americans. But in a
major arena such as Iraq has become it couldn't go that far, it's not a
colonial world any more.
Yet another reason why this policy is doomed to failure.
(Scorched earth)
Then why damage the oil fields?
Perhaps so the US can't have the oil, if so it's been very effective.
But that oil does not belong to us, and if we utilized it, we'd have
to pay market prices for it. That oil belongs to the Iraqi people,
and it represents one of the few major resources in the region. The
"conservative" part of me sees this as mindless.
What the Iraqi people should be protesting is the "no bid"
contracting process and windfall profiteering that has resulted from it.
I see the point you're trying to make, but Keith, the strategy of
blowing up a nation's infrastructure seems very short sighted to me.
Why loot the Iraqi museum?
Did they? That's still a bit mysterious, quite who was responsible for
that. And why. Rather suspicious, I think.
I saw a BBC documentary on that a couple of weeks ago. The testimony
of the local American commander fit the facts better than did the
story of the museum's curator. (The Americans claim that the museum
was being used by "irregular" soldiers to harass U.S. troops in the
area. Prepared firing positions, spent ammunition, discarded Iraqi
weapons and other evidence substantiate that claim.) Footage shot
inside the museum was particularly heart-wrenching. Antiquities had
been broken. Disorder and lack of organization characterized much of
the museum's collection, to the extent that knowing what was missing
and what remained was impossible.
The record of civilization's cradle should have been carefully
guarded. I was sickened as I watched the film.
Why use Mosques and hospitals as firing positions?
Turns out to be good anti-US PR, doesn't it?
Perhaps. Places of worship should be sacred. Using a holy place for
combat repulses me.
Possibly, but I think more likely they've been ready and willing
recruits. There are some good interviews with insurgents, have you seen
any for them?
No. That would be interesting.
I'm well aware of that, but for how long can it fly in the face of
reality? It's shrinking, on all fronts. There are many indicators of that.
Perhaps in the rest of the world. I keep looking for these
indicators over here, and I'm not seeing any.
I didn't say it would work out well. For instance, when these people
lose their popular support, as such, when reality starts hitting home in
the end, do you think they're going to hand over the reins of power in
good grace and retire from the scene?
Political philosophies often die hard. You're right in this, but the
historical difference in our day and age relates to the degree of
destructive power available to the political rulers of my country.
This is unprecedented. Our discussion with respect to other nations
developing nuclear weapons serves to fuel more fear and justify
sustained or increasing military expenditure. There's a bit of Catch
22 going on here; the cold war all over again, but with a different,
less well defined enemy.
We hear a lot of conjecture and speculation about the "threat". We
hear a lot of justification for warfare based upon the 11 September
attacks, a significant level of blame laying (it's Canada's fault for
"harboring terrorists", even though U.S. customs let every one them
into the country), laughing at liberals for their "weak" responses in
the past; all without memory, it seems.
My problem is that I DO remember. . .
(Preparing the world for Armageddon)
There's no doubt about that. What puzzles and annoys me is how long it's
taken people to wake up to it, those few that have. This scenario has
been terrifying me for 20 years.
It's been going on for well over a century. The Schofield Reference
Bible has been a seminal document in the inception of this wickedness.
Meanwhile they've built up their strengths, laid their groundwork, with
virtually no opposition. The same goes for the Neocons. Why haven't
Americans been defending their freedoms and their great traditions, now
so sadly eroded when they're so badly needed? You've all been fast
asleep, dreaming your unassailable dreams that you're the good guys and
so all's well and all the other comforting myths and cherished notions,
oblivious to the evaporating realities behind them.
Don't underestimate how deeply we were humiliated by the Vietnam
experience. The Soviets seemed to be making strides in turning
Central America toward communism. We watched the Iran crisis unfold
with deepening despair and helplessness. We saw our flag being burned
in various places around the world and felt like we were on the
defensive wherever our interests led us. In the midst of an energy
crisis, we simmered in anger at the Arabs who controlled the world's
oil. Most of us longed for the greatness and respect that we
inherited from the WW2 generation. When Mr. Reagan came to office,
many of us believed he would restore our place as a great nation, and
much of what Mr. Reagan did with domestic policy actually worked.
This dream of greatness may be a misconception, but it's a powerful one.
Those of us who argued against our eroding freedoms and the increase
of militarism have been blamed for the problems we faced as a nation.
Our inability to "win" in Vietnam was placed on the shoulders of a
"liberal" media. Voices crying out against the erosion of civil
liberties have been classed with the ACLU, the much maligned
organization often credited with giving criminals more rights than is
given to the victims of crime. The NAACP, which endeavored to elevate
the rights of black Americans, has been associated with "big
government", "tax and spend" as well as a not so subtle racism that
few of us who are not black can even detect. The flight of jobs out
of our nation has been attributed to excessive government regulation,
prompted by "enviro whackos". In brief, we believe what we WANT to
believe.
Yes, we've been asleep, and all this time we've been dreaming a
nightmare.
robert luis rabello
"The Edge of Justice"
Adventure for Your Mind
http://www.authorhouse.com/BookStore/ItemDetail.aspx?bookid=9782>
Ranger Supercharger Project Page
http://www.members.shaw.ca/rabello/
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