You state this as if it is the norm for our country. I taught school 30 years and never once witnessed a “dress up like a Muslim day”. In every single year I taught we sang Christmas carols at school. [/quote]
You can’t sing a Christmas carol in any California school. I am pretty sure its written into the Ed. Code or at least the rules of the two school districts my children have attended. I have shown, in another thread, of two schools that became controversial for insisting on this, within 60 miles of the Bay Area. There was controversy, but proponents argued they were exposing the kids to the CULTURE, not the religion. THis included reading passages of translated Koran.
Wouldn’t be the first time I’ve been accused of that, around here.
He wrought a great deal of terror, and quite illegally. My point was that he, and those whom he represented, acted more from greed than the self-righteousness that we usually associate with terrorists. Some of my friends and acquaintances really dislike twenty dollar notes, because they bear his likeness, but it certainly serves as a grim reminder of what the love of filthy lucre can do.
I can’t believe you really think this. We must not be on the same planet.
Government policy, school curriculum, textbooks, history books, movies, music and other forms of art constantly are concerned with “correcting the errors of the past.” I have already stated, in another way, that this has resulted in a kind of defeatism and self-loathing that has empowered others, including Islam, to reach into the underpinnings of society. A society that seems to weigh its past sins against its assets and finds it wanting, as though other cultures have no blood on their hands.
This is a puzzling area in which to try to make comparisons.
Certainly, the actions of whites who harassed the Indians (attacking them, burning their homes, destroying their crops, squatting on their lands, etc.), with the tacit complicity of Jackson and the government, were practicing terrorism, and their oppression was one of the factors motivating the Indians to capitulate and allow themselves to be divested of their property and moved west.
However, we usually think of terrorists as being from the fringes of society, disenfranchised people with no legitimate power, who resort to terrorism in a desperate attempt to accomplish ends they have no other resources to bring to bear upon. However, in forcing the Indians off their ancestral lands, terrorism was a mainstream tactic, and we don’t usually think of terrorism in that way.
[/quote]
You can’t sing a Christmas carol in any California school.
Weekenders,
I am sorry for the state that California is in ( I really mean that). And frankly, I can kind of understand why you feel the way you do. My point is that it is not like that in the country in general (at least not yet). But the issue of Muslims is probably one of the few that you and I agree on. I just hope that on most issues a moderate view will prevail.
I’m afraid I must totally disagree with your interpretation of events. When the US finally invaded Afghanistan it was because they had been publicly humiliated into taking action, and notice how slow they were to get started at all. The Bush government was tightly in bed with the Taliban prior to 9/11, trying to open up access to oil routes. The Afghani people were in a terrible plight that year. With winter coming on, the UN estimated that a million were about to die due to hunger and exposure. The US govt had no intentions of assisting them, even though they were directly at fault for the people’s condition after the fall of the USSR. The US aid that came to the Afghani people that winter was bin Laden’s victory for the people, regardless of anything that came after. bin Laden saved them through 9/11.
Iraq was a totally different matter. Iraq is strategically located right in the middle of several mid-east states that are anti-US. I question the stories about the US wanting to take control of Iraqi oil, as it was Europe, not the US, that was Iraq’s biggest customer, especially the French.
If you have seen that ridiculously one-sided movie Farenheit 911 you will see a lot of additional conspiracy theories. Perhaps there are many more threads to what is going on over there, but the thing is that the many terrorists who are keeping up the fight in both Afghanistan and Iraq are not even Afghanis or Iraqis in the main, so can we expect that they are only attacking due to the incursion in Iraq, or would they just have found some other excuse to commit the same acts elsewhere?
One of my clearest recollections of 9/11 was how reticent the US govt was to declare who was behind the attacks. Tim McVeigh was still in the forefront in a lot of people’s minds, and it was too real a possibility at the time that the terrorists were home-grown. McVeigh learned his skills in the US. bin Laden, it turns out, was also trained by the US, via the CIA. s1m0n’s points about greed for power just ring through too loudly to ignore. You cannot have a govt like the US that trains people both at home and abroad in terror and then not expect it to eventually come home to roost. And with cultures like in the middle east where suicide bombers are celebrated as heroes, and their innocent victims lauded as martyrs (just to make it all okay) arming such people with the methods of terror is just ridiculously stupid IMHO.
I’m going so far as to say that the actions of Andrew Jackson (the granddaddy of all Democrats) in this matter were quite like how the far left depicts the actions of the Bush administration.
[/quote]
I’m going so far as to say that the actions of Andrew Jackson (the granddaddy of all Democrats) in this matter were quite like how the far left depicts the actions of the Bush administration.[/quote
You are probably right on this. However, the correlation of actions/group affiliation is more accurately made using conservative/liberal rather than Republican/Democrat. The actions of Jackson are a lot like those of Bush, they were/are conservative. The Republican and Democratic parties have swapped positions. The Republican Party of Lincoln’s day was a progressive liberal party compared to the Republican party of today. The Democratic party was quite conservative in earlier days. It is whether or not a party is conservative or liberal that is a better indicator of actions than whether or not it is Republican or Democrat.
Well, of all the bones to pick on, I am glad that Jerry and Waldco took on using the word “terrorist” indiscriminately. In order to have any kind of decent conversation, there has to be a common definition of such terms.
That was one of the large points of a book that I mentioned earlier, “The End of Racism” by Dinesh D’Souza. As I recall, one of his earliest points was to remind and inform readers exactly what “racism” was, to combat its indiscriminate use. And he goes on to talk about what has resulted from a dispersed, non-standard canon of learning by leading experts, intellectuals etc. It really is important to be on the same page with such things. But the explosion of information has subverted that.
I don’t mind or blame people for being ultra-critical of Bush for his actions, but it’s a misuse of the word “terrorist” to describe his actions, even if the consequences are terrible. Similar with Jackson. He was basically an agent of his government, behaving in what might be considered a rogue fashion, more than a marginalized dissenter against a larger social system.
If you don’t consider Andrew Jackson’s tactics to be terrorism (and I’m quite willing to allow you that), I would still have to assert that he was in league with terrorists.
The continual harrassment of Indians by incoming whites was a major factor in driving them off their ancestral lands. If you look at what the militant white settlers were doing to the Indians, I would have a hard time understanding how that wasn’t terrorism. I haven’t seen any indication that Jackson was deeply concerned about trying to stop this in any other way than by using military force to add to the pressure to drive the Indians out. I would have to take another look to see the extent of Jackson’s involvement in the Trail of Tears tragedy, but that would certainly qualify as a crime against humanity by any who were involved.
This was exactly what I was trying to say in my earlier post. It’s hard to know how to compare, even though the tactics may have been much the same, because we tend to equate terrorism with marginalized groups, rather than mainstream players. I wonder if a similar dichotomy is operating in our tendency to characterize Palestinian actions as terrorism and Israeli actions as self defense.
If the actions are taken by governments we choose to deem legitimate, or by civilians who are deemed part of the legitimate mainstream, we don’t call the actions terrorism. If the same actions are taken by people who are marginalized and deemed outside the mainstream, we call the actions terrorism.
So the definition of terrorism seems not to be based on the actions themselves, but rather, on whether those who engage in such actions are deemed to be in the mainstream or on the margins.
There isn’t any agreed definition of terrorism for exactly this reason. Various US laws and agencies have no less than FOUR* distinct definitions which in places contradict each other.
The UN has grappled with this question and also failed to come up with a definition.
The truth is that there is no logically consistent definition of terror which can safely divide our friends from our enemies.
The good guys, in other words, use terror as much as the bad guys.
~~
I went and looked them up a couple of years ago: the State department had one, the CIA another, the military a third, and there’s at least one buried in law. This was before the passage of the Patriot Act, etc, so I expect there are a few more available by now.
It was a crime against humanity. I was originally implying that it was something worse than terrorism, but the more I thought about it, I couldn’t see that there is anything worse than terrorism, therefore, I really didn’t follow through with that line of thought.
I couldn’t see that there is anything worse than terrorism..
I don’t know; maybe genocide?
~~
Terrorism is (largely) symbollic warfare, and does little real damage*. It’s the weapon of the not-quite-powerless.
For real death and destruction, you need an army.
~~
*In comparison with every other mode of warfare, that is.
Terrorism is the bottom rung of the ladder of warfare; every rung above it does more damage and kills more civillians than does terrorism.
Terrorism kills very few individuals, most of them civillian. A super-military like the US army can and does kill many many times more when it lumbers into battle. Although an increasing percentage of these are legitimate combattants rather than civillians, the disparity in firepower is so great that in gross numbers far more civillians are actually killed.
In today’s world, a terrorist is a coward who will hide behind children, or in places of worship, and wants to kill as many innocent victims and civilians or legitimate soldiers as possible. A terrorist never stops wanting to kill human beings he/she hates. A terrorist will use as large a weapon as possible on innocent civilians, including dirty bombs (nuclear) or even biological and chemical WMD if they are available. A more powerful terrorist will even kill fellow terrorists if there are disagreement. A terrorist will then run and hide.
A legitimate soldier, on the other hand, is one who will make him/herself known and will attack and kill as few humans as possible without the intention of ever wanting to kill innocent victims and civilians. A legitimate soldier will not kill a fellow soldier if there is a disagreement among them. A legitimate soldier will only kill after the enemy has been warned in advance and has first been given an opportunity to correct the dispute in a peaceful way. A legitimate soldier will not run and hide.
A terrorist is more to be feared than a legitimate soldier because a terrorist will pose as your friend to find out all the details, then disappear and kill your wife’s family–children and all–until you give in to the demands.
That being said, I don’t agree with hardly anything Israel or America has done in the Middle East. It’s just that the more powerful have always called the shots, and always will. I don’t think we in America begin to understand Islam or the Arab way of thinking. And we refuse to understand the deep and qualified resentment that would cause terrorists to act in such an irrational way (in our view) as to become a suicide bomber. We only do what is good for our way of life and continue to try and spread democracy and human rights (as we see them) on a darker and less civilized world (as we see it).
But, Islam does not have an innocent history either. Nor does Israel. Nor do we. Nor does anyone in Europe or Asia who has been through a war. In one way or another, war has always had the same causes. Those of us who live in and were born under a new kind of freedom, take a lot for granted. Our minds are only as large as to understand domestic and neighborhood disputes. We don’t really have any answers on an international scale, only complaints. I don’t think any of us begin to understand what it takes to have a lasting peace around the world. If someone does have an answer, please make it known.
The only problem I see is that this dispute in the Middle East will never be settled, at least agreed to by all parties, until Israel ceases to exist. The oil and the economy is a secondary matter that has more likely solutions.
[/quote]
And frankly, I can kind of understand why you feel the way you do. My point is that it is not like that in the country in general (at least not yet). But the issue of Muslims is probably one of the few that you and I agree on. I just hope that on most issues a moderate view will prevail. 
