[aclug-L] Re: Richard Reid

[Tom Hull <thull2@xxxxxxx>]

My apologies for continuing this thread, especially to Scott Rarden,
whose very different response is equally valid. But Michael Moore's
rant touched a nerve with me: namely that the only response that he
could come up with to Lars' (I thought) modest and touching comment
was to descend into name-calling and wild hyperbole. On the other
hand, Lars' analysis misses or obscures some important points. I've
spent a good deal of time in the last 16 months researching a book
on some of these matters. (Time, I suppose, that might have been
happier and more productively spent writing free software.) So if
you have any interest (and if you don't, stop reading here; you've
been warned), I'd like to try to work my way through this thicket.
Because in the long run, if we cannot reason together, it will just
come down to a matter of power, which leaves all sides bruised or
worse.

Michael Moore wrote:
> Lars von dem Ast wrote:
> 
>>After reading this for a while, I thought I'd attempt to say something.
>>
>>My sister married an Iranian back in the early '80s. I got to know 
>>Mohammed very well over the next 13 years. (They later divorced.) He was 
>>a Shiite Fundamentalist Khomeni supporter--the full 9-yards. We talked 
>>and talked over that space of time. What he said, coupled with my own 7 
>>years experiences in Europe and my military intelligence experiences 
>>(ASA), gave me a very complete but uncomfortable picture of my homeland.

This is, I think, a very credible statement. Arundhati Roi has made the
point that America looks very different depending on whether you are inside
or outside. People who can see both views are bound to be uncomfortable
with the differences, and especially how little the ideals that we cherish
seem to count for in the exercise of American foreign policy.

>>Make no mistake about it, we, the U.S. of A, are running an empire. And 
>>in case you slept through your history lessons, empires rise, dominate, 
>>then fall due to a build-up of fanatical hatred of them, exhausted, 
>>sucked-dry clients, and internal decay and collapse. The Roman empire 
>>fell hard. So will we probably--not like the 19th century European 
>>empires who snuck out the back doors and went home. And many, many 
>>millions will celebrate. You can tell yourself pretty lies like "You 
>>hate our freedom" when describing our enemies, but at some point our 
>>domination will end just like all fat, greasy, obnoxious empires end. 
>>We're now somewhere between Jim Jones and Captain Ahab.

There is a problem with characterizing the U.S. as an empire, which is
that the U.S. government functions very differently from any classical
imperial government you can name. Traditional empires have big central
states which are directly supported on the backs of their subjects. The
U.S. has a relatively weak (except in the military sense) state, which
is nominally subject to the will of the American citizenry, although in
practice the U.S. state typically works in the interest of multinational
corporations -- especially in foreign policy, which most of the time
American citizens take no special interest in. A good example of this
in action is that when the U.K. took control of Iraq following WWI it
forced Iraqi oil to be developed exclusively by British oil companies;
the U.S. position then and since has been that all oil companies should
have access to Arab oil, which being an anti-imperialist position was
for a long time a major source of good will between Arab nations and
the U.S.

However, the U.S. has developed some trappings of empire: a string of
military bases all around the world; a willingness to meddle in the
internal affairs of other nations (especially in the cause of anti-
communism); a horrifying arsenal of military power; and especially in
the current Bush administration a belief that the U.S. should not be
subject to any sort of limits, such as CO2 emissions that contribute
to "global warming", the World Court, treaties against the spread of
chemical and biological weapons and mines, etc. These trappings come
off as extreme arrogance, especially in Western Europe, which has
little reason to fear the U.S. (except to the extent that the Captain
Ahab analogy bears fruit).

The real question here is how (if at all) do American citizens actually
benefit from having this "empire"? And is that benefit (if any) worth
the cost? Conversely, if the U.S. stopped acting like an "empire", what
would happen? Would our life be worse, unchanged, or better? When Lars
talks further down about this empire falling, he makes it sound like
we're losing something, but I'm hard pressed to identify anything that
we might lose that we won't be better off without.

> Will the USA as we know it come to an end?  Perhaps.  But, comparing us 
> to the Roman Empire is very insulting.  Maybe, you should go back an 
> read your history books.  Last time I checked our Presidents don't come 
> to power by killing the previous President.

The "you hate our freedom" quote came from the judge who sentenced Reid.
I think the sentence was just, but the judge came off sounding like a
prejudiced doofus. The net effect of those comments was to politicize
the trial, making Reid look like the victim of American inquisitors,
rather than the failed murderer he is.

> I don't think people of other Nations hate our freedom.  In fact, I 
> think lots of times we are hated just becuase of our success.
> 
> There's no doubt that if a group or a country is successful for a long 
> period of time other people get jealous and over time people want them 
> to loose so they can have a chance to be on top.

s/loose/lose/

Some do, some don't. The latter would like a piece of the action, which
is, of course, where U.S. immigrants come from, as well as most of the
people who look favorably on the U.S. from abroad. But in a sense this
is becoming self-delusional: like Machiavelli's Prince, we are flooded
with sycophants who flatter us into ignoring what's really going on.

One such problem is that the U.S. has gone deep into hock to support its
bloated world-wide military, while the rest of the relatively well-to-do
nations have cut back and steered clear from debilitating wars. The U.S.
has been running trade deficits for 30+ years now, running government
deficits for longer than that (except for a couple years under Clinton);
the U.S. has watched most of its manufacturing economy move abroad, and
is well on its way to losing its high-tech edge.; the U.S. economy has
been propped up by foreign investments while its own largest companies
have moved most of their profits abroad. The one thing that the U.S.
still unquestionably has is the ability to kill unimaginable numbers
of people, but that's hardly a trait that we can expect much admiration
for.

Sure, some foreigners are jealous of "our success"; but others are leery
of it, and more and more are starting to question what's so great about
a country that spends a lot of money on elite health care and education
yet maintains such inequality that it is middle-of-the-pack or worse in
almost any accounting; etc.

> How about a typical American Sports Reference:
> For example; Look at the NBA team the Boston Celtics:  They won 
> championships 11 years in a row.  The majority of the country got tired 
> of them winning all the championships becuase they wanted their team to 
> be #1.  So, a lot of people really started hating the Celtics.  But, 
> know body started killing them.

Maybe because they're smart enough to know that basketball's just a game?

>>What! You may scream. The U.S. is a mean old empire just like Rome? Oh 
>>yes! Sure, I would also call the terrorists just a bunch of lunatics. 
>>But I guarantee you there are many millions of young men throughout the 
>>world who envy the "heroics" of those terrorists. The actual terrorists 
>>are just the tip of a huge pyramid of anti-American sentiment. That's 
>>why this is so significant. The fact that you only see radical Muslims 
>>attacking us is that only the wildest hatred spills over into such 
>>action, while the vast sea of hatred towards us isn't translated into 
>>such actions, and the cooler, more rational heads who would make good 
>>dialog with us are pushed aside, unheard. This only fuels the fire....
>>
>>The vast majority of anti-Americanism I have encountered in my life 
>>abroad came from decent, level-headed sincere people. Most of these 
>>people understood that a certain amount of "pushiness" on our part 
>>simply comes with the superpower territory. The world by and large has 
>>been very tolerant of us. 
> 
> Tolerant of Us!!!  Yes, I agree we are the enemy.... NOT.  You make it 
> sound like we are not just an Empire (as you put it); but, and Evil 
> Empire and we must be destroyed.  The more I read what you have written
> the more I think it was written by Susan Sarandon.

This is a pretty scary series of logical leaps: Lars says that the world
has been very tolerant of the U.S., and you seem to hear that he's saying
that the U.S. should be destroyed. I think he's saying that we've been
pretty lucky that the world hasn't viewed us even more harshly. If you
wanted to pursue that observation you'd find that there are many people
around the world who are very critical of some things that the U.S. does,
but who also like and admire other things about the U.S. (Just as there
are Americans who can look outside of the country and see that sometimes
we do bad things, these foreigners are often the ones who can look inside
the U.S.)

Whatever Susan Sarandon might have to do with this baffles me.

>>But we're a machine. We're a mindless growth 
>>machine
> 
> A mindless growth machine......Obviously, you are speaking about 
> yourself.  You don't represent me.
> 
>>pushing our global economic agenda to every corner of the world, 
>>always trying to dress it up as "aid" or "development" or "stability" or 
>>"progress". And now we've got enemies like you've never heard of before. 
>>Just like Rome. Of course a Frenchman turning up his nose at an American 
>>tourist putting ketchup on an omlette is different from a terrorist, but 
>>there is a huge sea of negativity towards us--and now it's coming at us.
> 
> I know you have sincere concern  about how we are viewed.  But, how 
> would you change it.  After all, know matter what we do we are going to 
> be hated for it.  You said, we are a mindless growth machine.

s/know matter/no matter/

I suppose you're just being sarcastic, but it looks like you're waffling
here. Still, the notion that no matter "what we do we are going to be
hated for it" is pretty fatalistic. I've been reading John Dower's book
on the American occupation of post-WWII Japan, and it's interesting how
ordinary Japanese welcomed the American occupation and how warmly and
enthusiastically they embraced the ideals of democracy and demilitarization,
despite the fact that the U.S. did some pretty horrible things to Japan.
But I'm also struck by the fact that that was a very different U.S., one
which still believed in and acted on its professed ideals. (Would Iraq
welcome American occupation now? I seriously doubt it.)

>>Once my brother-in-law was confronted by some typical American who 
>>shouted at him, "Why you hate us? Why you call us 'the Great Satan.?" 
>>Mohammed said God works through the spirit and Satan through the 
>>material. So what place on earth is the most materialistic? What place 
>>pushes materialism on the rest of the world?
> 
> We don't push materialism.......we push freedom.  I would be interested 
> to know of just (1) US American who ever said we are triing to help 
> liberate a people in the name of Materialism.  By the way,  you don't 
> have to be materialistic........In the name of freedom you have the 
> choice not to be materialistic.  If you want to make all these people 
> with this twisted view of Americans happy, then destroy all of your 
> possessions (including your computer) and wonder the streets.  Also, the 
> rest of the USA is not going to do that either.

Materialism is a rather imprecise, misleading code-word here. It's mostly
used by people on the religious right (Muslims, Christians, Jews; I don't
know but I'd bet that there are Hindus who are worked up over it too) to
disparage a supposed loss of spiritual values in capitalist society. Some
of us unreligious types actually think it's a pretty good thing. But to
be precise, U.S. foreign policy does not promote materialism: it promotes
free trade, property rights, fiscal responsibility (which mostly means
taxing workers enough to repay foreign loans), and sometimes democracy
(which came into vogue after the Sandinistas were voted out in Nicaragua,
after the U.S. had failed to overthrow them the old-fashioned way -- by
subsidizing a guerrilla "insurgency", training death squads, etc.; the
idea seems to be that it's cheaper to buy an election than overthrow a
government by force). Some of these points do relate to freedom, but
there are other definitions of freedom that are not taken into account,
and where the U.S. supports oppressive dictatorships (which has happened
a lot) even our most basic definitions of freedom are dispensed with.

> Okay, so you don't want to make them that happy.  So, how do you solve 
> this problem.  Well, what many Democrats want to do is sit back and do 
> nothing.  Let these terrorist come and destroy us and then the world 
> will be happy.

I don't know of any elected Democrats who want to sit back and do nothing.
In fact, they were even more trigger-happy after 2001-09-11 than the
Republicans, which I'd like to think was the basis of Bush's popularity
surge at the time. If that's changed since then, it's probably because
Bush has used the "war on terrorism" to promote his own partisan agenda
(although I'd like to think that they are having second thoughts about
the usefulness of the military as a tool for dealing with scattered and
isolated cells of criminals).

But the point that I really have to take exception to is the idea that
terrorists even could "come and destroy us" -- I really can't believe
that such a small and pathetic group could do any real damage, except
by provoking the U.S. government into acts of insanity.

>>When the 9/11 attack happened there was a very big soccer match just 
>>beginning in Iran, their version of the Super Bowl. At the Teheran 
>>stadium they asked for a minute of silence in the memory of the WTC 
>>victims, likewise, on the TV broadcast of the game. Dead silence. Do you 
>>think some tragedy in Iran would have had our Super Bowl audience silent 
>>for 60 seconds? What would those slobs have done but cheered for dead 
>>Iranians? For a brief moment, even those who hated us the most 
>>sympathized with us.
> 
> You have got to be joking?  I don't know what kind of sick people you 
> hang out with; but, if they would cheer for dead Iranians you should 
> pick new friends.  There are Iranian terrorist camps and there are some 
> terrorist coming out of Iran.  If one of those people gets killed before 
> he can complete a successful terrorist attack, then no I am not going to 
> have a moment of silence for that dead terrorist.
> 
> On the other hand, if the Iran govt uses some of their terrorist or 
> military to kill some of their population that is triing to establish a 
> Democracy movement then you bet a moment of silence is in order.  I 
> don't know what your ex-brother-In-Law has told you recently; but, there 
> is a large portion of the Iranian people that are friendly toward the 
> USA.  There is a younger generation movement in Iran that wants freedom 
> and anytime things look like they might progress the Iranian govt slaps 
> it down.

I didn't realize you were such an expert on Iran, but I have to point out
that what you say is at variance with what almost everyone else who has
personal experience has to say. The U.S. has in fact done at least three
very bad things to Iran: 1) the CIA overthrew Mossadegh and de-nationalized
the oil industry, turning it over to a cabal of American, British, and
French oil companies; 2) the U.S. installed and supported the Shah, who
managed to make enemies across the entire political spectrum of Iran,
leading to almost universal support of the revolution to overthrow him;
3) the U.S. supported Iraq in a grueling 8-year war against Iran, which
cost the lives of a million or more Iranians. It's very generous of all
those young Iranians not to hold grudges over matters like this.

> I must admit: that Bush's reference to Iran in his State Of The Union 
> Speech in 2002 was not wise.  He should have made a distinction between 
> certain Iranian factions and the Iranian people themselves.
> 
>>For once, I totally agree with the Mennonites peace 
>>and reconcilliation approach. Can you imagine where we'd be today had 
>>Bush taken the Mennonite approach? The world's collective jaw would have 
>>dropped and a great reconcilliation would have begun. But I know very 
>>well why he didn't. Because the world would TELL us what they didn't 
>>like about us. Bush and his handlers know already and don't want to 
>>hear. That's why we follow the insanity of total revenge.
>>
>>Mark my words, Bush is taking us down the road to ruin. 
> 
> Well, this is where you have shown your true colors.  Like the rest of 
> the Left-Wing Liberal Democrats your hatred for Bush is clouding your 
> judgement.  Get over it, Al lost.
 >
> Frankly, I am insulted by all this policatical rediric you spout.  You 
> would rather sit back, do nothing and put all our lives in jeopardy.

s/policatical rediric/political rhetoric/

> I am really becoming amazed to see how many liberals there are in this 
> club.  Am I the only conservative in this group?

You don't sound like a conservative. Conservatives normally want to keep
things the way they are/were. The Republicans started to split with the
conservatives back in the '80s, when people started talking about a
"Reagan Revolution".

>>Historically we 
>>can be compared to Rome right about when they sacked Jerusalem ca. 60 
>>AD. i.e., big and powerful...and beginning to have to use that power 
>>more and more. We're on our way out with Bush....

The Roman Empire, like all empires of antiquity, was built on forcefully
expanding its perimeter -- by conquer and plunder, but also by extablishing
the Pax Romana, a region of peace and stability inside the perimeter. It
fell apart for lots of reasons, hardly worth going into nowadays.

The American "empire", on the other hand, didn't conquer -- it was in
effect opened up by a world weary of war, which let the U.S. take charge
partly because of its towering economic strength (in large part because
the war didn't take place here), and partly because the U.S. did not
(then) have the reputation as an unfair or unreasonable power. Things
have changed since then: the U.S. is no longer an indispensible economic
colossus, and the rest of the world (with minor exceptions) has settled
into a pattern of nonbelligerency and cooperation. The U.S. is trying
to claim that those minor exceptions (rogue states, terrorism) justify
America's military expense and war-making powers, but as time goes by
this role is becoming less tenable, and less accepted, for in the long
run people will run their own countries, and there will be no more
empires.

>>Beating up pathetic wannabes like this Reid character might feel good, 
>>but the huge sea of anti-Americanism out there won't go away just 
>>because we do self-righteous "feel-good" Perry Mason theater and lock 
>>him up forever.
> 
> Do me a favor and send your email to the people on that flight.  I have 
> a feeling their response would be a lot harser than mine.
> By the way, Reid was not a pathetic wannabe.  He was in the process of 
> lighting the fuse to the explosives in his shoe when he was taken down.  
> 
> Democrats new moto "Have you hugged a terrorist today?"

You know good and well that no Democrat has ever said that, or ever will.

>>One parting thought: Let's look at 1930's Germany. The Germans were 
>>blustery and jingoistic and nationalistic and talked about how wounded 
>>they were and how they weren't gunna take it anymore and had a big 
>>military and a loud-talking leader--lots of anxieties fueled even more 
>>by a weak economy. Sound familiar?
> 
> Simply Amazing.  Comparing the USA to Natiz Germany.  And comparing Bush 
> to Hitler.

s/Natiz/Nazi/

Clearly there are differences. I don't know what it is about Bush's
conservatism that's supposed to be compassionate, but we don't see
even in Bush's most reactionary followers (like Ashcroft) anything
like the casual brutality or virulent racism of the Nazi period. (Not
that Ashcroft doesn't have a nasty history of casual racism.) As far
as "blustery and jingoistic and nationalistic and talked about how
wounded they were and how they weren't gunna take it anymore and
had a big military and a loud-talking leader", as far as that goes
it doesn't seem far off the mark with Bush.

> Are you sure you posed this to the right place?  I think you are looking 
> for the anti-american news-group.

s/posed/posted/
s/anti-american/pro-american/

>>Lb

Michael Moore wrote:
 > lowell wrote:
 >
 >>Very well-said; ever read "The Ugly American"?
 >
 > Oh yes, very nice.   If you like to compare the USA to Natiz Germany.
 > And compare Bush to Hitler.

s/Natiz/Nazi/

BTW, "The Ugly American" had nothing to do with Hitler. It refers to
the tendency of post-WWII American tourists to disrespect foreign and
native customs and peoples, the casual arrogance of a people who think
they're God's gift to the world.

 > Looks more like something the Jihad would write.

-- 
/*
  *  Tom Hull * thull2 at cox.net * http://www.tomhull.com/
  */

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