Originally Posted by dlishsguy

a little over 57 years ago, i do remember the arabs and jews living together in harmony in a place called palestine, until the colonialists came through and divided the people and religions.

the arabs would rather live with the jews and have been for many centuries, and in relative harmony at that. but for an outside power to come in, support another race though monetary and military means, no wonder the arabs turned on their cousins. its this meddling in middle east affairs that ive been saying that turn ordinary people into terrorists. all they need is an excuse, and the west provides this to them.

obviously this is also the case in iraq, where the islamists needed an excuse to start a holy war, and bush and rummy gave them the green light.

Originally Posted by martinguerre

in a very cold light, i think the best summation that can be made of that argument is that he beleives some of us have failed nationalism.

the idea that there is joy to be had in human death, is of course only possible through some sort of us/them dichotomy and nationalistic ideology. so perhaps a lack of enthusiasm for america's death dealing is processed as rooting for the other team, since to the national...it is "obvious" that one would cheer for death, one side or the other.

Originally Posted by guy44

Uh, no. Palestine was controlled by Britain for many years before Israel came into existence. Relations between Jews and Palestinians and the British weren't great, all the way around. In fact, they were downright awful.

And I find it difficult to believe that West + "meddling in middle eastern affairs" = terrorists. Islamic terrorism is vastly more complicated than that. Believe me - I think that pretty much everything Bush has done has worsened the situation - but Osama and many Islamic terrorists are just as interested in overthrowing what they perceive as illegitimate regimes in the Middle East, such as the Saudi regime.

Originally Posted by dlishsguy

alansmithee



its not about giving gratitude for doing away with a tyrant that they help put it. its the misery and suffering of a nation you help and continue to help plunder. regardless of whether you help take someone out of power, the us is still responsible for the political upheaval it has caused..pre-saddam, during the saddam era, and post saddam.

Originally Posted by alansmithee

No, the US is just a big, easy target. That's why the rest of the Western world is carefully left out of blame for situations like this.

Originally Posted by dlishsguy

if you dont see the death and suffering of thousands in iraq as the fault of the US, i really dont think its worth my time. more people have died after the invasion and at a higher rate than during the saddam regime. yes, the political upheaval caused by this illegal invasion IS the fault of the US. anything after that is collaterally the fault of the invading army. there were no roadside bombs prior to the invasion. so ok, saddam ruled with an iron fist, but there wasnt the anarchy that exists today. how can the US not be to blame? and yes, the iraqis are partly to blame for those deaths through roadside bombs, but to wash the US's hands clean and call it collateral damage and blame it on the iraqis themselves is unequivocally wrong.

p.s. and its not just people dying caused by roadside bombs. how many innocents have been slain by indiscriminate US bombing or carelessness.

Originally Posted by joecool

I just think its sad that the terrorist win... every time this happens, they blow up a couple of bombs and ruin the lives of some many people, and what’s the first thing we do.... blame each other, not morn, not sympathize, not even revenge which I wont condone but would at least see as a rational response, we bicker amongst ourselves, who are all in some small parts victims and in a greater part targets to these people. Don’t think pre George Bush, pre Clinton, pre 9/11 anybody that had anything to do with the London bombings wouldn’t gladly place a bomb in anyone of your houses and watch you and your family die. We should be sad for those you were effected and glad it wasn't us.... instead we let there rage and hatred spark ours.... and if you don’t think that’s part of there big plan your dead wrong.

Originally Posted by dlishsguy

i quite clearly do remember saying that insurgents were NOT free of blame, but also that we cannot make the US free of guilt.

this nonesense about killing sprees is an overkill. but if you want to play that game......if the GM went into your office, slapped you round a bit, gave you a bit of a beating and told you u were fired for no apparent reason except that one of ure superiors was a total dick, and because of that you went home and went a killing spree, i'd say that the GM would have some onus of responsibility..yes

Originally Posted by roachboy

pan:

i marvel at your busby berekeley argument each time you make it.
come on everyone, let's put on a musical. pull together as a team, etc.
in the interest of national unity....

but what are you really asking us to do?

the fact is that folk who are not conservative are listening to the conservative arguments--they simply do not accept them. what you find is almost no reciprocity--conservatives do not appear to take critiques of their positions seriously. ever. particularly not on this matter.

Originally Posted by alansmithee

You can't seriously believe this. You don't take any critique as serious. If someone disagrees, they are labeled conservative, and anything they say is quicky dismissed. This is shown by your obvious disbelief that anyone could actually not accept your arguments-anyone who doesn't accept them is clearly not listening. There is no room in that reasoning for accepting criticism.




Where did I say that lifestyle has nothing to do with economics? Again, by dismissing what I say as a conservative argument, you save yourself the trouble of having to actually listen and try to understand what I am saying. Maybe if I were to fly a plane into your house you would sympathise and try to understand better.

As to the rest, you don't look into the cause of cancer when you have cancer, you just eliminate it. Afterwards is the time for looking into reasons and assigning blame, and working on prevention if it was your actions at fault. But it doesn't do any good to know that your smoking was to blame while you lay dying of lung cancer.



You could replace liberal, and that section is just as valid. You are just using conservative as a label for those who don't agree with you. And obviously, if someone doesn't agree with you, it's because of a personal failing of theirs and not the ridiculousness of your argument, right?



Your whole viewpoint boils down to this:

I have discovered everything living in my ivory tower, and any intellectual inferior (aka conservative) who disagrees with me is obviously wrong, so why should I try to understand anything they might say?

Why are they wrong? Because they're conservative and don't agree with me.

And why should I compromise when I'm obviously so right and they're obviously so wrong?

Originally Posted by roachboy

alansmithee:
here is your post from a couple days ago:



i dont know, maybe you write in some code that i cant decipher--but all the appearances that your actual writing gives would lead me to think that you do, in fact, assume that the motive for "terrorism" is jealousy over lifestyle.

when i responded with what i assumed was obvious irony (maybe not--my apologies if i was obscure) that you were making a ridiculous seperation between "lifestyle" and what that "lifestyle" requires for support, you simply reiterated your argument that things were as you said they were.

the only way i would know whether you in fact think this way would be if we were to be able to sit around having a few beers in 3-d life and talk.
which would be fine...i hope that i do not give the impression that i would treat you as a human being the way i treat the arguments you make here.
we are on a messageboard...what is written is what i react to.

as for my inability to take your arguments seriously: well, i dont.
this has nothing to do with "hatred" or any of the other cliches that you might toss about to rationalize the fact that people simply do not agree with you. if anything, i assume that you--and most of the folk with whom i argue here who position themselves on the right--are more intelligent and flexible in your thinking than the arguments you run out let you appear to be.

i have assumptions about politics and its relation to trying to understand why the world in which we live is as it is--so do you. we disagree--and fundamentally disagree--about what constitutes basic data. what you tend to rule out seems to me important more often than not.

this is important because i do not think that politics is a simple question of opinion--i do not think that all positions are equivalent because folk happen to believe them.
this is not a question of religious committment--on those grounds, you would be right in your assumptions that there is a requirement that one simply allow others to believe as they like simply because they do so.

but if you conflate the two registers, debate is pointless. and maybe it is.
but if this is an index of how the political climate in the states is moving--then, brother, we are all fucked.
and whether we do or do not pay attention to exhortations to pull together as a team will make no difference whatsoever.

i do not see debate like arm wrestling--i am not interested in the illusion of winnning or losing arguments, really. what i am interested in is trying to argue that there is a wealth of material--of data--information--available that enables you to see the question of "terrorism" in different ways---what i am interested in, on this score, is trying to force a different set of assumptions about what is and is not relevant into the conversation. in the end, it may well be that you see this as an attempt to win some match with you--and while i do think that your politics would collapse if you looked at things differently, whether you as a name that tracks across the green box that is any given post agree or do not is not really that big a deal to me.

and no, alansmithee, i have not figured everything out. and i am not a particularly "ivory tower" sort--if i was, what would i be doing here? if what you say was true, why would i talk with you? what would be the point? i would simply assume that you and everyone else here was probably an idiot and go do something else. and so i find your argument on this count to not only be wrong but personally offensive. because, at bottom, you do not know me and so do not know what you are talking about.

i do see conservative ideology as dangerous. dangerous for anything approaching a democratic polity, dangerous as a logic for thinking about the world, dangerous as a politics for thinking about domestic issues.

if you want to have an actual debate about the types of assumptions that shapes how you or i might view the question of terrorism, then let's do it: all assumptions on the table..let's go. i would enjoy it coming from someone on the right for once--but i doubt you'll take me up on it. in the end, you find yourself backed into an uncomfortable place and you cop out by trying to present yourself as some kind of victim. your choice: just dont expect that it will have much in the way of positive impact on how seriously i take you. which does not, i suppose matter much.

there are perfectly legitimate reasons for anyone to not accept conservative ideology. this whole discourse within rightwingland that characterizes anyone who disagrees with you as motivated by hatred is a declaration of intellectual vanity that far outstrips anything you impute to me. yours is the position that works from the assumption that your arguments are above reproach. if you did not assume was much, why would the only recourse you have to explain differences of views is the empty dicourse of "hatred"? there are no rational grounds for not agreeing with conservative ideology: all dissent is equally irrational. how much more vain could you possibly be? seriously...i dont see how you could go any further in that direction. but in this case, the problem is not yours--it is the ideolgical structure you adhere to--these arguments circulate endlessly in conservative media orf all types. but it is vanity, alansmithee.

Originally Posted by alansmithee

This is a very well-written post that says nothing more than what I said before: Anyone who you disagree with is wrong, and not to be taken seriously. These people are considered conservatives. Conservatives are wrong, because they don't agree with me.

And somehow you don't see yourself doing the same thing that these shadowy conservatives are considered doing? You have described conservatives as people who force an us vs. them mentality, yet you do the very same thing. You believe your assumptions are right, and there's no other way of seeing the world. And anyone who doesn't fall into lockstep with your beliefs is inherently dangerous. You don't give any reasons why, you just constantly trot out conservative, because it's easier to deal with as a monolithic block. It requires less questioning from you-instead of trying to understand and deal with how you might be wrong, or at least re-examine your beliefs, labelling someone a conservative easily gets them out of the way. Because everyone knows that conservatives, are dangerous, divisive, illogical people, right? You don't even bother to say why conservative arguments aren't to be taken seriously, or why they are dangerous, or any other reason for what you claim.


I would take you up on your challenge about assumptions. I would be more than willing to. Because I AM willing to listen to a valid argument. I think you would be more likely to be "backed into a corner" simply because your dogmatism. I am more willing to be right, even if that means I have to change an opinion. You seem most worried about YOUR views being right, and protecting your world view from anything that might challenge it. That's why any compromise is so odious to you-it implies that there might be something wrong with how you see the world.

I only hope that the Republicans (or whoever is in power) are as right as most seem to believe they are, because I see more and more people like the above gaining voices in politics-people who aren't open to any new or differing ideas, and dogmatically follow whatever side they've allied themselves with, without examining WHY they believe the way they do.

Originally Posted by host

alansmithee, I hope that you, Pan, and roachboy will forgive me for "barging" in on your "back and forth", but I would like to satisfy my curiousity, and maybe reach a greater understanding about my inability to understand how you, and say... Marvelous Mary, gain and hold your convictions.

The following is a post from Marvelous Mary, which is a response to zen_tom:
http://www.tfproject.org/tfp/showthr...t=91489&page=2
(Near bottom of page)

zen_tom makes (IMO, anway) the easily defended statement that ,"Iraq didn't have any weapons of mass destruction and the US waging a war based on that issue", and Marvelous Mary countered with a reference to "UN SCR 687", and an article from a consrvative Harvard student periodical that offers it's own analysis of Charles Duelfer's 10/2004 WMD report, that is intended to persuade that the U.S. was justified in invading Iraq, and that Bush did not mislead, because.....only the U.S. administrations reaction to 9/11 intervened to blunt Saddam's "waiting game", whereby, when the U.N. sanctions ended, he would have put his dormant WMD programs in high gear, and emerged as a
menace to the world.. ... (my comments continue below MM's post....)


Marvelous Mary ended her response to zen_tom with:

alansmithee, as the self appointed, repetitive poster of the overwhelming evidence that Saddam did not possess WMD, and that key members of the Bush administration were either reported, in 2001 and 2002, to either agree
that he had not reconsituted his WMD programs, or are directly quoted as saying that, along with WH press secretary McClellan's Jan. 12, 2005 admission to the press that Bush agreed that no WMD were found, or were likely to be found, based on the Duelfer report, in areas outside of Iraq, such as Syria, and my recently posted quotes from Bush and Rice that:



and that Bush had claimed that:
In late January 2003, in his SOTU address, more than a month after Iraq had presented it's data and inventory of WMD and WMD programs to the U.N.,
Bush claimed that Iraq's WMD inventory, as a justification for war, included:

.....I am confident that it diminishes the credibility of any individual of any ideology to disagree that Bush misled and exaggerated to the point that he either could be called a liar, or incredibly misinformed to the degree that he was incompetent or inept.

Even with this body of formidible evidence, I still find myself having to post it again and again on these threads. The trend is that resistance to the evidence is shrinking.

My question to you is, in the face of this evidence, why do people still defend Bush with such anger, as MM did, and what do you think that it will take, as
far as evidence, if an admission from Bush himself is not sufficient enough for posts such as MM's to cease here? Why is is so difficult to process such straightforward, well documented arguments?

Originally Posted by roachboy

but pan--there are fundamental diagreements between positions.
i dont now what you have in mind when you complain about fragmentation--that is the nature of the democratic beast, even in its watered down american form. the only problem with fragmentation is when it reaches the point of impasse--and even that would only be a problem in a direct democratic system. right now, you have an extreme rightwing administration. you have supporters of that administration. you have lots of people who oppose both, and quite strongly.

fact is that i think, and will continue to think, that within this the problem is that the right is trying to shift the basis for political committment away from anything approaching a conventional standard for politics, toward a type of religious committment. bitch all you want about the result of that, but let's not pretend that the cause is other than it is. i do not know why you prefer to see the problem as being generated by all sides of the debate, when it is pretty obvious that there is one side whose positions are routinely floated as nonfalsifiable, and that side is the right.

Originally Posted by Elphaba

I chose this topic to share conversations between myself and a friend in London. We have shared political opinions for approximately three years. I consider him my mentor in getting me involved in politics, but we have disagreed often. (He was correct 9 out of 10 times). He offered this article in describing the differences between our press and his.

http:www.thenation.com/blogs/thebeat?bid=1&pid=5323

BLOG | Posted 07/11/2005 @ 2:52pm
Bugged by the Brits

Conservative radio and television personalities in the United States were unsettled after last week's bombings in London -- not because of the terrorist attack on a major western city, but because too few Londoners were willing to serve as props to support the right-wing ranting of the Americans. After one stoic Brit, who had blood on the side of his face, calmly described climbing out of a smoke-filled subway station, a Fox anchor exclaimed, "That man's obviously in shock."

Actually, the man appeared to be completely in control of his faculties, as did the British journalists who appeared that evening on Fox's "The O'Reilly Factor." Host Bill O'Reilly, the king of the hysterics, had a hard time with the Brits, who simply were not as feverish as he had hoped -- and who were genuinely bemused when he started ranting about how much he hated Britain's highly regarded Guardian newspaper.

O'Reilly, like too many other American radio and television commentators, expected the British attacks to provide a new opportunity to hype support for the war in Iraq, gripe about "open borders" and generally spin sorrow and fear into political gold for the conservative cause.

It didn't happen, though not for lack of trying by the folks at Fox.

The Fox commentary following the London bombings was surreal. Brit Hume babbled about how the dip in stock values after the attacks meant it was "time to buy," Brian Kilmeade suggested that a deadly terrorist attack on a country where the G8 leaders were meeting "works to our advantage," and John Gibson bemoaned the fact that the bombs hit London and not Paris. "They'd blow up Paris, and who cares?" chuckled Gibson, the host of one of the network's "news" shows.

But the Fox personalities and their allies in right-wing talk radio found few takers among the British for their efforts to politicize the gruesome developments in the British capital.

Try as American conservative commentators did to get Londoners to echo their pro-Bush, pro-war line, the British generally refused to play along.

This does not mean that most Brits who were interviewed embraced calls for the immediate withdrawal of troops from Iraq or other alternatives to the Bush administration's misguided approach to the so-called "war on terror." But it does mean that, instead of parroting propaganda, the Brits preferred to engage in thoughtful discussions about what had happened, why the terrorists targeted London and what ought to be done to prevent future attacks. Few topics were off limits.

Veteran journalist Gary Younge suggested that the attacks were "Blair's blowback" -- the bloody wages of British Prime Minister Tony Blair's decision to back President Bush's disastrous decision to invade Iraq. Some members of parliament called for Britain to quickly withdraw its troops from the quagmire. Others suggested that Britain needs to get more engaged in promoting the Middle East peace process. There was no single response, no lockstep approach, because the Brits were angry enough -- and determined enough -- to put everything on the table.

Unfortunately, a thoughtful, nuanced discussion that was focused on finding solutions -- rather than merely venting or promoting a particular political agenda -- didn't fit into the Fox format.

The inability of American right-wing media to recognize honest discourse prevented most U.S. media outlets from recognizing that which was genuinely meaningful and moving about the British reaction.

For instance, U.S. media pretty much missed the one truly Churchillian response to the attacks -- that of London Mayor Ken Livingstone, a committed socialist and anti-war activist, who issued the following statement on the day of the attacks.

Snip: The mayors statement has been submitted to tfp before; see link.

Originally Posted by alansmithee

The bolded section is mine. In essence, what you are saying here is that if someone designated as "right" says something, it's "merely venting or promoting a particular political agenda". But when a "veteran" journalist said the bolded section, it's "a thoughtful, nuanced discussion that was focused on finding solutions".

And after doing a search and perusal of some of Mr. Younge's previous articles, it's obvious he would be the last one to vent or promote a particular political agenda [/sarcasm].

But hey, why let a perfectly good tragedy go to waste when political capital can be mined from it?

Originally Posted by alansmithee

.......You talk repeatedly about the conservative us vs. them menality, yet someone hardly conservative above just said that pan somehow supported the war. Because pan dared to disagree (that dissent thing you seem to find so great), he/she was instantly able to be labelled a war supporter (and probably also the dreaded conservative).

Again, if you fail to see the opperation of a liberal bloc in opposition to the neocon bloc, it is because you are purposely keeping your eyes closed.

(and btw, if asked for proof, I can actually provide this).

Originally Posted by host

<h3>alansmithee,</h3> I hope that you, Pan, and roachboy will forgive me for "barging" in on your "back and forth", but I would like to satisfy my curiousity, and maybe reach a greater understanding about my inability to understand how you, and say... Marvelous Mary, gain and hold your convictions.

The following is a post from Marvelous Mary, which is a response to zen_tom:
http://www.tfproject.org/tfp/showthr...t=91489&page=2
(Near bottom of page)

zen_tom makes (IMO, anway) the easily defended statement that ,"Iraq didn't have any weapons of mass destruction and the US waging a war based on that issue", and Marvelous Mary countered with a reference to "UN SCR 687", and an article from a consrvative Harvard student periodical that offers it's own analysis of Charles Duelfer's 10/2004 WMD report, that is intended to persuade that the U.S. was justified in invading Iraq, and that Bush did not mislead, because.....only the U.S. administrations reaction to 9/11 intervened to blunt Saddam's "waiting game", whereby, when the U.N. sanctions ended, he would have put his dormant WMD programs in high gear, and emerged as a
menace to the world.. ... (my comments continue below MM's post....)


Marvelous Mary ended her response to zen_tom with:

<h3>alansmithee,</h3> as the self appointed, repetitive poster of the overwhelming evidence that Saddam did not possess WMD, and that key members of the Bush administration were either reported, in 2001 and 2002, to either agree
that he had not reconsituted his WMD programs, or are directly quoted as saying that, along with WH press secretary McClellan's Jan. 12, 2005 admission to the press that Bush agreed that no WMD were found, or were likely to be found, based on the Duelfer report, in areas outside of Iraq, such as Syria, and my recently posted quotes from Bush and Rice that:



and that Bush had claimed that:
In late January 2003, in his SOTU address, more than a month after Iraq had presented it's data and inventory of WMD and WMD programs to the U.N.,
Bush claimed that Iraq's WMD inventory, as a justification for war, included:

.....I am confident that it diminishes the credibility of any individual of any ideology to disagree that Bush misled and exaggerated to the point that he either could be called a liar, or incredibly misinformed to the degree that he was incompetent or inept.

Even with this body of formidible evidence, I still find myself having to post it again and again on these threads. The trend is that resistance to the evidence is shrinking.

My question to you is, in the face of this evidence, why do people still defend Bush with such anger, as MM did, and what do you think that it will take, as
far as evidence, if an admission from Bush himself is not sufficient enough for posts such as MM's to cease here? Why is is so difficult to process such straightforward, well docum
ented arguments?

Originally Posted by Elphaba

The article is presented as a different view of the media between the US and Britain.

Originally Posted by alansmithee

You just proved exactly what I was saying. Civilized nations/people aren't debating if killing innocents is fine. This isn't something that any rational person needs to debate about.

And also, I checked al jazeera, and there was no mention of any arab nation condemning the London attacks.

Originally Posted by dlishsguy

issues are discussed and conclusions are based. most muslims (99.5%) disagree with the killing of innocents. just because a few crazy fundo's think its ok does not mean that the majority condones it. debate is also used to try and change and convince them to think otherwise. its not healthy to have a shoot 'em down attitude like yourself..but each to his own.

Originally Posted by Elphaba

Alan, this is the view of a Londoner I know that shared this article. Respectfully, we of the US with only two parties (that don't have a dime's worth of difference) really don't understand what is right or left in British politics. We are somewhat slightly right (centrist by British standards), and you have no idea about "left" if you haven't studied politics outside of the US.

The article is presented as a different view of the media between the US and Britain. But, once again... dialogue about the content is not possible. You attack the source, without offering a reasonable discussion.

Shall we just dispense with further comment? You will always be right, anyone that doesn't agree with you is wrong, in any possible way you wish to choose. You have chosen sarcasm, and cherry picked a single comment in the entire article and twisted it to suit your politics.

I continue to hope that reasoned discussion can occur in this forum.