War.... (Historical: 9/11 discussion thread)

[Hotfoot]

This is from an e-mail I sent a friend on the subject. Perhaps it can help a little here...

quote:

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Here's my current stance on things:
The attack was a horrible thing. To compare it to something else simply
degrades both events (Pearl Harbor, JFK, Oklahoma City) but sometimes it's
the only way to convey even a fraction of what's happened to someone who has
no other point of reference. What happened was that there was a
well-planned, well-executed, deliberate strike against the nation made by
Terrorists. These people want to instill terror into us (meaning simply
anyone who was affected, shocked, horrified by this event) and make us react
to them. It's an old lesson with a new spin, make your enemy react instead
of act, and you have won the battle. If we lash out blindly in anger,
they've won. If we give in to hate, they've won. People died all this week
because one vital thing was forgotten, we are all human. The terrorists on
the planes were human. They might not have been good people, or likeable
people, but they were still people. The people dancing in the streets in
the middle east are still people. The people who died in the plane crashes
are still people, not angels, saints, or demons. People. Humans. Able to
make their own decisions and their own mistakes, they are still humans, even
if we hate the results of those choices.

The terrorists, the people dancing in the streets, they can't very well
think of us as people. They've learned to hate us as enemies, as monsters.
They're willing to kill other people who have done nothing to them at all,
because they think that all of us are the same. They have forgotten that we
are human, it's an easy thing to forget when all you have been taught is
anger and hatred.

The people who are attacking innocent Arab-Americans are humans as well.
Humans blinded by anger, fear, hatred, and shock. They have forgotten that
the people they are hurting are human as well. Just as America forgot
during World War II that Japanese-Americans were human.

The people who want to kill the terrorists and the people dancing in the
streets have forgotten that those people are human as well. Will they feel
better about killing the humans who danced in the streets? Would they dance
in the streets if those people were dead? We can't just kill people for
being happy, even if they are feeling happy about something which to us is
tragic. They have forgotten we are human. We are the enemy to them. We
need to prove to them that we are human, not just the enemy.

The perpetrators of these actions should be brought to justice. Justice is
not vengeance. It is not revenge. It is not slaughtering the people
responsible in the most gruesome ways possible. It is not hate. Hate is
what created this, and continuing to hate will simply drag it out for
generations. I'm not saying we should love the people who did this, but we
have to remember that they are still human, even if they don't.

They want us to sink to their level, to forget that they are human and
respond accordingly. If we forget that these people were human, they will
be vindicated, and even more terrorists will spring up to replace those that
we would kill.

It's not a case of who did what first. That doesn't matter. The people
that started this are long since dead, only leaving behind a few chapters in
the history books. For all we know all this started when someone ate the
Last candy apple at the party in the beginning of the universe. I can't
answer for any raping and pillaging my Nordic ancestors might have done
centuries ago, and I shouldn't have to. I can't answer for the Inquisition,
or the Crusades, I can't answer for the actions of the Romans or the Gauls
or the Celts. I can't speak for the Neolithic man who killed a bear to
protect himself. How am I supposed to be responsible for the actions of my
father or my father's father before I was born? No one should be expected
to bear the weight of history on their shoulders, and to ask any one member
of a nation to answer for that nation's actions is ludicrious. We have to
past to reflect on, the present to act, and the future to dream. We can
only affect the now. That's all we could ever do. And what might seem
right to some people now could seem horrendous to our progeny in the future,
when the future is now. But they can't change what happened, they can only
learn and move on.

It's time to learn that every person alive is a human being, not a monster,
not a demon, not an angel, not a saint. Just something in between with the
ability to make choices and decisions, both good and bad.

If we lash out in anger, rage, fear, or terror, then the people who have
died this week have been the winning blow for the terrorists that did this.
We will have lost. It won't matter how many more die, the outcome has been
decided, and well will be what it is that we claim so much to hate.

---

Make of it what you will.

[tesco samoa]

See this is why this forum is the #1 forum in the world. Look how we can express our anger and fears and lash out. Then through heated dicussion we stop, and release that we do not hate each other but respect each other.

I have turned to this forum to give me a little comfort, escape and hope.

Thank you all.

It is nice seeing people speak truefully with each other.

It is nice seeing people showing respect to others.

No crap, No bull. Just the heart and mind.

------------------
L? GdX $ Fr C++ SdT T+ Sf* Tcp+ A M++ MpTM ROTS Pw+ Fq+ Nd Rp++ G+

[dmm]

quote:

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Originally posted by Baron Munchausen:
Actually, Israeli occupation begins in 1948. They NEVER HAD ANY RIGHT to the land to begin with. It's been one long invasion, just like the creation of the United States from the 'new' world, that just happened to have several million inconveniant natives. Do you challenge the historical record that the Palestinians had been living there for centuries? Or are they the wrong color to have rights to land they've occupied for centuries? They were trying to 'push them into the sea' because they CAME FROM THE SEA. They were invaders. The SE IV analogy is just as relevant on the other foot. How do you deal with an invader? Give him your territory with a smile and wander off to die? Or fight back?

The small technical differences between the Israeli occupation and some other historical parallels, that the Palestinians have not been slaughtered en masse but piecemeal, or that the people who are courageous enough to resist openly are more likely to get shot hardly makes it morally right. Living in this media-saturated age, they know they can't get away with open mass-murder. If not for the ubiquity of cameras, I have little doubt they'd find ways to reduce the population of Palestinians more quickly.

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So, basically you are saying that Israel has no legal right to exist, that Jews have no historic claim to Palestine, that all of Israel was obtained entirely by conquest, and that the Israelis would love to kill all Palestinians. Do you really believe those things, or were you just a bit overwrought? Either way, I think you should study some more history.

quote:

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Originally posted by Baron Munchausen:
But you really betray the vulgar American mindset that makes people angry by your final comment. The 'value' of the West Bank is irrelevant. These people want the right to live their own lives, with self-determination and dignity, ...

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I was simply responding to assertions that the (supposed) economic problems (supposedly) inflicted on the Palestinians justifies them inflicting economic damage on the US. My point was only that the GDP of the WTC is bigger than the GDP of the West Bank, so that's an unfair tit-for-tat even if the asserters are correct, and even if no one at the WTC had been killed. (Actually, I was overwrought, and have no hard numbers for the relative GDPs. So that Last point might be BS on my part, unless you include the rebuilding cost.)

You and I are totally in agreement that freedom is priceless.

[dmm]

quote:

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Originally posted by Baron Munchausen:
Yeah, and how is this different from assorted Christians in the not-very-distant past hating everyone who wasn't a Christian?
...
Yet, there have also been both 'Christians' and 'Muslims' through history who actually read their scriptures and recognized that their religion said things like 'do not kill'. Islam may not be a "nice, sweet" religion but it's no more responsible for lunatics who use it to justify their lunacy than Christianity is to blame for the brutal conquest of the Americas or thousands of other crimes committed by criminals trying to use it as justification. Cultures have phases of development, much like people. Just think of Muslims today as Medieval Christians and you'll see there's no real difference between the religions.

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So, what you are saying is that Muslims today are primitive? Should the West simply wait 500 years for their society to "grow up"? Wow! Sounds like I'm not the only arrogant Westerner!

The difference is not in maturity level; it is fundamental. For instance, Christ taught his followers to love and do good to their enemies. Mohammed taught his followers to kill their enemies. It is insulting to both Christianity and Islam to say that "there is no real difference." (Hint: don't say something like that in a Muslim country.) For a Christian perspective on the differences, see http://www.light-of-life.com/
You can probably find a Muslim perspective somewhere on the web also, but this one web site should be enough to show that Muslims and Christians have totally different worldviews.

[Baron Munchausen]

quote:

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So, basically you are saying that Israel has no legal right to exist, that Jews have no historic claim to Palestine, that all of Israel was obtained entirely by conquest, and that the Israelis would love to kill all Palestinians. Do you really believe those things, or were you just a bit overwrought? Either way, I think you should study some more history.

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No, dmm, I don't need to study any more history. You don't get a lease in perpetuity on a piece of land just because your ancestors lived there once. If that were the case then most of the nations of Europe could claim most of Europe rather than just their current borders. Hmm, many of them did actually. Which is why European history was so bloody. The European Jews who invaded Palestine had/have no more claim to the land than the Irish have to Spain (which is where the Gaels originated -- they are descended from Celts who fled Roman conquest and found Ireland) or the Germans have to the Ukraine (which is where ethnic Germans are first found in history). When someone else lives on the land for centuries you cannot just move in and evict them on some claim of 'prior right'. It was a terrible mistake on the part of the Western powers to allow this to happen in Palestine, but they had some underhanded motivations of their own (if those Jews had remained in Europe they would have asked many difficult questions about the lack of response to the Holocaust) and so another innocent people was sacrificed to political expediency. So, your simplification of my views, though indeed a simplification, is essentially correct. And my views are more informed by history than you realize.

quote:

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So, what you are saying is that Muslims today are primitive? Should the West simply wait 500 years for their society to "grow up"? Wow! Sounds like I'm not the only arrogant Westerner!

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Yes, so-called 'Muslims' who think that God condones the murder of anyone in their own countries who doesn't belong to their religion, or the mass-murder of innocent people in other countries as revenge for wrongs committed by their governments are primitive. Just as so-called 'Christians' who thought that God sanctioned their right to conquer and rape the peoples of the 'new' world because they weren't 'Christians' were primitive. As I pointed out and you conveniently skipped over, there are a few people who genuinely understand what both religions are about, but they were in the minority in Medieval Europe and are in the minority now in most contemporary 'Muslim' nations. Ergo, the societies were/are primitive. That doesn't mean that any given individual Muslim is automatically primitive. Actually, not very many contemporary Westerners are that much ahead of their Medieval ancestors, but at least they have (mostly) stopped pretending to be 'Christians', which is some sort of progress. It's funny, but the 'non-religious' people of the West have now become far more "Christian" in behavior since they gave up on formal religion. An interesting paradox. (The US is of course the exception in the Western world, we're still something like 70 or 80 percent self-declared religious people. But then we also retain more of the old European imperialistic attitude, too, so that figures. They seem to go together.)

I'm well aware of the hostility among the cruder "fundamentalist" types of each of these religions to the other. These are precisely the people who are FALSE 'Christians'/'Muslims'. They are merely tribal jingoists that have chosen to twist religion for their xenophobic purposes. And yes, this phenomenon is almost EXACTLY parallel in the Muslim world today to what it was in the Christian world in the past. Genuine Christians and Muslims know that their respective religions, as opposed to the political movements masquerading as religion, are nearly the same in message. It takes some pretty major nit-picking about doctrine to generate contradiction between them. I could quote something about "the letter" and "the spirit" of the scriptures here but I've not got the reference handy. And if the "fundamentalist" types would obey the FUNDAMENTAL rules of the religions they claim to represent, including rules like "Thou Shalt Not Kill", the strife we have in the world today could not exist.

[Baron Munchausen]

It seems I was quite right about many 'Westerners' being not very far from the old primitive attitudes of their ancestors. Anyone interested in reading some quality news coverage instead of the jingoism coming from the major networks should visit salon.com and specifically http://www.salon.com/news/feature/20...ash/index.html for some unreported information about the reaction to recent events in our "advanced" culture. Let us hope that the spirit of civilization can restrain the spirit of tribalism.

[This message has been edited by Baron Munchausen (edited 14 September 2001).]

[Rich04]

America: The Good Neighbor.


Widespread but only partial news coverage was given recently to a remarkable editorial broadcast
from Toronto by Gordon Sinclair, a Canadian television commentator. What follows is the full text
of his trenchant remarks as printed in the Congressional Record:


"This Canadian thinks it is time to speak up for the Americans as the most generous and possibly
the least appreciated people on all the earth. Germany, Japan and, to a lesser extent, Britain and
Italy were lifted out of the debris of war by the Americans who poured in billions of dollars and
forgave other billions in debts. None of these countries is today paying even the interest on its
remaining debts to the United States. When France was in danger of collapsing in 1956, it was the
Americans who propped it up, and their reward was to be insulted and swindled on the streets of
Paris. I was there. I saw it.

When earthquakes hit distant cities, it is the United States that hurries in to help. This spring,
59 American communities were flattened by tornadoes. Nobody helped. The Marshall Plan and the
Truman Policy pumped billions of dollars into discouraged countries. Now newspapers in those
countries are writing about the decadent, warmongering Americans. I'd like to see just one of
those countries that is gloating over the erosion of the United States dollar build its own
airplane.

Does any other country in the world have a plane to equal the Boeing Jumbo Jet, the Lockheed
Tri-Star, or the Douglas DC10? If so, why don't they fly them? Why do all the International lines
except Russia fly American planes? Why does no other land on earth even consider putting a man or
woman on the moon? You talk about Japanese echnocracy, and you get radios. You talk about German
technocracy, and you get automobiles. You talk about American technocracy, and you find men on the
moon -not once, but several times -and safely home again. You talk about scandals, and the
Americans put theirs right in the store window for everybody to look at. Even their draft-dodgers
are not pursued and hounded. They are here on our streets, and most of them, unless they are
breaking Canadian laws, are getting American dollars from ma and pa at home to spend here.

When the railways of France, Germany and India were breaking down through age, it was the
Americans who rebuilt them. When the Pennsylvania Railroad and the New York Central went broke,
nobody loaned them an old caboose. Both are still broke. I can name you 5000 times when the
Americans raced to the help of other people in trouble. Can you name me even one time when
someone else raced to the Americans in trouble? I don't think there was outside help even during
the San Francisco earthquake. Our neighbors have faced it alone, and I'm one Canadian who is
damned tired of hearing them get kicked around.

They will come out of this thing with their flag high. And when they do, they are entitled to
thumb their nose at the lands that are gloating over their present troubles. I hope Canada is not
one of those."

Stand proud, America!