Posted on 02/07/2002 5:00:13 AM PST by billorites
????? I do not see any particular harm to us here ?????
"Of course, there would be inevitable political and military problems resulting from this, and that's one thing recommending against it. The Saudi government at least, and probably others, would fall to more aggressive, radical, probably more theocratic political parties who needn't have the oil revenues in hand, necessarily, to be troublesome."
Why should I care and why should we intervene there ? I suppose that we have to let Muslims to solve their internal problems to their own liking - our society managed to get througn walking over the same path, I suppose it is simply unfair (some would even call it racist) to assume that Muslims would not be able to do the same some time in the future.
"All they'd need for that is possession of a few nuclear weapons and somebody in control of them crazy enough to think using them would be advantageous. Are these guys that crazy? I think the events of 9/11 are a pretty good indication that the answer is yes."
They are even crazier than you think, e.g. soviet party bosses had something to loose, most of these guys simply have nothing to loose at all. However, the question is 'Will oil independence and isolation of the Muslim World make a terror attack harder or easier ?' - I suppose that answer is isolation will make this attack almost impossible - isolation would deprive them from cheap delivery means.
What I have is more questions. One thing which astonished me in the 9/11 events was the fact that the hijackers lived here among us for quite a long time, some of them lived with families! (I wonder if that reports of the families were true, I don't remember reading any follow-ups: where are that families now, disappeared?) Nevertheless, they remained undeterred.
I want to compare their brainwashing with the Soviet propaganda. It was not terribly effective, but it messed up minds well enough. It appeared to be in layers. Top layer for the most gullible, then another layer for a bit smarter ones, and so on. So many times I heard smart people saying "yes that was a lie, but in the core..., [the idea is right]". So, the propaganda machine kind of worked. Nevertheless, those who had more info and a chance, tried to escape, at least for a moment. Soviet apparatchiks, "nomenklatura", fought to put their kids into any job abroad. People coveted any trip, any glimpse outside. Does not matter how ideologically solid they were, most recognized where the "good" life is. When circumstances happened to allow a safe defection, so many decided to "choose freedom". Whole system existed not to allow the "safe" defection with "hostages" (family members) staying at home, extensive KGB background checking, which countries one can visit or not, etc.
But you can't even start to compare soviet brainwashing with the Arab/Muslim one. When small children are singing how they want to grow up and be a suicide bomber, when people are laughing and singing to celebrate another's tragedy, when one is a hero for blowing up kids in a pizzeria, its just scary. What can overcome such brainwashing and conditioning? Even when people live years in the West in the relative financial comfort, in the West with its openness and tolerance and still hate it so much. Did not they meet at least a few nice people here they would not want to kill? It's like we are from different planets. Astonishing.
The ancient Kingdom of Israel didn't have separation of church and state in the modern sense, but there was a clear cut division between secular authority (the king), and religious authority (the priests).
France relies on nuclear power for 75%+. (Nuclear Power and Global Electricity) Do we want to be more saint then French in scrutiny? Oil threat is good reason as any to get some more nuclear plants.
Disclaimer: I don't work myself, and I don't have any connections to anybody working in the Nuclear Energy industry or having anything to do with it.
Oh? Who annointed him?
What do you mean 'who annointed him'? His annointed status is self-evident on the face of it.
How is it self evident?
It is self-evident because he is the Annointed One.
Oh. I see. I think. But...
Now shut up and sit at the feet of the Annointed One and drink in his words of wisdom.
But where is he from? What was he doing before he suddenly sprang--like Athena from the head of Zeus--into our midst to inform us about these troubling current events?
What does it matter from where he sprang? How can the boring, dusty past possibly matter to the turbulent Now?
Oh, I don't know. It just seems odd somehow that here, in Our Great Bastion of Freedom, terrible events happen and--shazaaam--an Annointed One is right on the spot to tell us everything that happened and why and who, and especially, what we need to do about it.
Are you a conspiracy theorist?
no, no...please, I just wanted to....
Are you against a Secure Homeland?
Preposterous! Of course not! How dare you...
Then we will thank you to fold your hands and sit quietly while the Annointed One tells us All About It....
Alternative view-itis:
Bernard Lewis, Zbigniew Brzezinski , Muslim Fundamentalist And The Soviet Union
PROFILE: BERNARD LEWIS
"....Bernard Lewis Plan, Take II
....Since the attacks on the World Trade Center and the Pentagon, Lewis has, not surprisingly, resurfaced in numerous locations. After all, the 85-year old British Arab Bureau mandarin has been London's point-man in the United States since 1974, when he was posted to H.G. Wells' outpost at Princeton University's Center for Advanced Studies, to secure American compliance with British geopolitical manipulations in the Middle East, the Caucasus, the Caspian Basin, and Central Asia.
To put it bluntly: British intelligence senior operator Lewis is the guiding hand behind the ongoing U.S. neo-conservative drive for a new "Thirty Years War" in Eurasia....
Lewis' arrival at Princeton, after serving on the faculty of the University of London's Middle East and Africa faculty (the repository of the original India House files, long officially referred to as the Colonial Department), coincided with then-Secretary of State Henry A. Kissinger's fomenting of the civil war in Lebanon. That persists to the present day, and served as a laboratory for the later "Islamic revolution" in Iran.
Lewis is no mere British quackademic. After obtaining his doctorate in the history of Islam from the University of London School of Oriental and African Studies, he joined the university faculty in 1938. From 1940-45, Lewis was, in his own understated words, "otherwise engaged," as a wartime British Military Intelligence officer, later seconded to the British Foreign Office. To this day, Lewis remains mum about his wartime "engagements."
Since arriving at Princeton, Lewis has been demonstrably responsible for every piece of strategic folly and insanity into which the United States has been suckered in Asia Minor. The Wellsian "method to his madness" has been the persistent push to eliminate the nation-state system, and launch murderous wars stretching across the Eurasian region.
* During the Carter Administration, Lewis was the architect of Zbigniew Brzezinski's "Arc of Crisis" policy of fomenting Muslim Brotherhood fundamentalist insurrections all along the southern tier of the Soviet Union. The planned fostering of radical Islamist war provocations was known, at the time, as "the Bernard Lewis Plan." Among the fruits of this Lewis-Brzezinski collusion: the February 1979 Ayatollah Khomeini "Islamic Revolution" in Iran, which overthrew the Shah, and sent the once-proud center of the Islamic Renaissance back into a 20-year dark age; and the 1979-1988 Afghanistan War, provoked by Brzezinski's July 1979 launching of covert support for Afghan mujahideen "Contras" inside Afghanistan - six months prior to the Soviet Red Army's Christmas Eve invasion.
As early as 1960, in a book-length study he prepared for the Royal Institute for International Affairs, under the title The Emergence of Modern Turkey, Lewis polemicized against the modernizing, nation-building legacy of Turkey's Mustafa Kemal Ataturk. He argued instead for the revival of an Ottoman Empire that could be used as a British geopolitical battering ram against Russia and against the Arab states of the Persian Gulf - in alliance with Israel.
* It was Bernard Lewis who launched the hoax of the "Clash of Civilizations" - in a September 1990 Atlantic Monthly article on "The Roots of Muslim Rage," which appeared three years before Brzezinski clone Samuel Huntington's publication of his Foreign Affairs diatribe, "The Clash Of Civilizations." Huntington's article, and his subsequent book-length treatment of the same subject, were caricatures of Lewis' more sophisticated British Orientalist historical fraud, which painted Islam as engaged in a 14-century-long war against Christianity. Huntington acknowledged that Lewis' 1990 piece coined the term "Clash of Civilizations."
* In 1992, in the aftermath of the Persian Gulf War, Lewis celebrated in the pages of the New York Council on Foreign Relations' Foreign Affairs that the era of the nation-state in the Middle East had come to an inglorious end, and the entire region should expect to go through a prolonged period of "Lebanonization" - i.e., degeneration into fratricidal, parochialist violence and chaos. "The eclipse of pan-Arabism," he wrote, "has left Islamic fundamentalism as the most attractive alternative to all those who feel that there has to be something better, truer, and more hopeful than the inept tyrannies of their rulers and the bankrupt ideologies foisted on them from outside." The Islamists represent "a network outside the control of the state.... The more oppressive the regime, the greater the help it gives to fundamentalists by eliminating competing oppositionists." He concluded the Foreign Affairs piece by forecasting the "Lebanonization" of the entire region, save Israel: "Most of the states of the Middle East ... are of recent and artificial construction and are vulnerable to such a process. If the central power is sufficiently weakened, there is no real civil society to hold the polity together, no real sense of common national identity or overriding allegiance to the nation-state. The state then disintegrates - as happened in Lebanon - into a chaos of squabbling, feuding, fighting sects, tribes, regions and parties."
* In 1998, it was Lewis who catapulted Osama bin Laden into prominence with a November/December Foreign Affairs article, legitimizing the Saudi black sheep as a serious proponent of mainstream, militant Islam. Lewis' piece, "License To Kill: Osama bin Laden's Declaration Of Jihad," showered praise on bin Laden, pronouncing his "Declaration of Jihad Versus Jews and Crusaders" "a magnificent piece of eloquent, at times even poetic Arabic prose ... which reveals a version of history that most Westerners will find unfamiliar."
Caught In The Act
Osama bin Laden released his 1998 jihad call on Feb. 23, 1998, six months before the truck bombing attacks against the U.S. embassies in Tanzania and Kenya. The very next day, Bernard Lewis' signature appeared on a widely circulated Open Letter To President Bill Clinton, released by a previously unheard-of entity called the Committee for Peace and Security in the Gulf, demanding that the U.S. government throw its full support behind a military campaign to overthrow Saddam Hussein. The Open Letter called for carpet bombing Iraq, and for the United States to aggressively give financial and military support for the Iraqi National Congress, yet another corrupt and inept "Contra" pseudo-gang, created by U.S. and British intelligence elements, and based in London......"
(Verily--a "wilderness of mirrors"....)
But I don't blame you for dropping the source - I know what it's like to be rushed because you have a lot to say...
Either within the Muslim world or Islam itself. Anybody that wants to possess this mudball, earth, to the exclusion of those who don't want to say God is Great several times a day --religion for a man on the go-- is welcome to it.
Kick the space program into high gear, and do it today. The universe is vast and it will be a very long time before man can conquer a significant part of it. You go that way or stay behind, we'll go the other, and we'll never have to think about each other again.
My purpose in doing so was to provoke thought about the role of the Annointed Class in the United States--so-called bastion of free-wheeling freedom and thinking. (Anyone who has ever lived abroad knows this to be false. There are fewer things that can be debated in The Land Of The Free than in many places on earth--FreeRepublic notwithstanding.)
For example, do you remember when you first heard (from one of the Annointed) that the--now absolutely undeniable---"Gobal Economy" was , well, absolutely undeniable?You see what I mean?
A quotation from Milan Rai:
"..."We can no longer perceive the ideas that are shaping our thoughts, as the fish cannot perceive the sea."...
Are you at all nervous that no one on this thread gave any consideration to Dr. Lewis' history except a crackpotsource? Perhaps not, since the undeniable goal of modern conservatism seems to be to protect and defend the globalist status quo.
Are any of the facts in the crackpot article incorrect? Or simply unacceptaby sourced? The Annointed have much work to do in the world and will not brook being questioned as to their sources.
Perhaps that is why so few Americans bother themselves to do so.
OK. Roll over and go back to sleep. God is in his heaven, the annointed are telling us everything we need to know and all is right with the world.
Let's roll, clash of civilizations, expert testimony, islamic fundamentalism, progress, freedom, experts, prosperity, clash, backwards, freedom, barbaric, experts, progressive, experts, terrorist, civilization....zzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzz
Clearly, as I meant to state, the "clash of civilizations" model suffers from its treatment of both sides as monolithic and the model itself from excessive bipolarism. But the root of the dispute is, I think, something along that line, whether it's stated by Lewis, Huntington, Kissinger, or even LaRouche. Do you agree?
"The root of the dispute". Thank you. I've been waiting for someone to tell me what the "dispute" is. When did it start? Who is a terrorist?
And then, I would be interested to read your opinion of an entrepenurial dentist who pulls teeth in order to prevent tooth decay; or a surgeon who cuts off breasts in order to spare women the possibility of developing breast cancer.
I believe a "clash of civilizations" is, in fact occuring. But I also happen to perceive it as a three-way clash. Or, in the sentiments of Gereal Patton, I would attack in both directions.....
'cuz she couldn't type "Jack Daniels".
Crackpots love to throw out indisputable facts and juxtapose them to arrive at crackpot conclusions.
This is how it works: The existence of satellites and my dog biting me yesterday are facts. If anyone disputes the crackpot's conclusion--that the satellites told my dog to bite me--he is asked, well, are any of my facts incorrect? Are they? Huh, huh?
Our lady of little sense does the same thing here: Lewis was unaccounted for during WW2 + Lewis is an authority on Islam = Lewis is the mastermind of all policy toward the Islamic world in the last 55 years. Hey, are you disputing my facts?
Well, actually, anyone who would call Lewis's The Emergence of Modern Turkey "an attack on Kemalism" or who thinks Lewis is an admirer of Osama Bin Laden is wrong on the facts. But the facts don't matter. Prove a crackpot wrong on the facts, and he'll run along and collect new and different facts which "prove" his original conclusion.
This is why it's impossible to argue with any crackpot, lucid or otherwise.
Why, such statements you make, Belle. As I said, I've observed you in the past to be reasonably rigorous in documenting your sources. I simply attempted to assist you in making your case - any objection in my post to the source was simply an objection to the apparent lack of a source. Surely no more than simple administrivia, I think.
Although you say you documented this post to which we are referring, I must admit that your citation was far too subtle for me. What can I say - if you'll direct me to said reference, I'll be more than happy to make all the appropriate mea culpas.
My purpose in doing so was to provoke thought about the role of the Annointed Class in the United States--so-called bastion of free-wheeling freedom and thinking.
Why, Belle, such things you say. Were this one of my logic classes, I might have to call you out for petitio principii in the first degree.
Are you at all nervous that no one on this thread gave any consideration to Dr. Lewis' history except a crackpotsource? Perhaps not, since the undeniable goal of modern conservatism seems to be to protect and defend the globalist status quo.
I wonder. I wonder if, perhaps, at least some on this thread, and lurking in the shadows, gave due consideration to Dr. Lewis's history, and simply failed to reach the "correct" conclusion. To eliminate that possibility seems somehow...arrogant, doesn't it? As satisfying as it is to decide that those who disagree are simply deluded, or not in full possession of all the facts, it's really not entirely intellectually honest, is it?
And to be naturally suspicious of radical change - that seems to me to be the very essence of conservatism, does it not?
Are any of the facts in the crackpot article incorrect? Or simply unacceptaby sourced? The Annointed have much work to do in the world and will not brook being questioned as to their sources.
Yes, I admit - I'm a sucker for those sources. It helps me to establish the factual accuracy of assertions made therein, true. But, of course, the really important thing the sources do is to allow me to make judgements about the interpretations contained within. And that's really the crux of all this, isn't it - differing interpretations?
I'm the sort of person who likes to know if my interlocutors are the sorts who tend to look at events and facts with an open mind about their interpretation, or whether they are the sorts who tend to cast about for evidence to support whatever theory it is they hold near and dear, retrofitting and force-fitting the facts into the theory whenever necessary, or dropping inconvenient facts when necessary, or inventing facts when necessary. Surely this is not unreasonable of me, is it?
Perhaps that is why so few Americans bother themselves to do so.
Which is exactly why it is important for you to be the bellest dame you possibly can be. Critical views are necessary, but they do not hold the field exclusively...
Or, if you prefer, a celebrity-driven culture's belief that there is no such thing as bad publicity.
Or, the belief of some good-hearted American citizens in WWI that they were really "making the world safe for democracy"...
What about this? Is it part of the conservative agenda to protect and nourish the status of this quo? How Jimmy and I Did It:
"..Interview of Zbigniew Brzezinski (France)
Q: The former director of the CIA, Robert Gates, stated in his memoirs ["From the Shadows"], that American intelligence services began to aid the Mujahadeen in Afghanistan 6 months before the Soviet intervention. In this period you were the national security adviser to President Carter. You therefore played a role in this affair. Is that correct?
Brzezinski: Yes. According to the official version of history, CIA aid to the Mujahadeen began during 1980, that is to say, after the Soviet army invaded Afghanistan, 24 Dec 1979. But the reality, secretly guarded until now, is completely otherwise: Indeed, it was July 3, 1979 that President Carter signed the first directive for secret aid to the opponents of the pro-Soviet regime in Kabul. And that very day, I wrote a note to the president in which I explained to him that in my opinion this aid was going to induce a Soviet military intervention.
Q: Despite this risk, you were an advocate of this covert action. But perhaps you yourself desired this Soviet entry into war and looked to provoke it?
Brzezinski: It isn't quite that. We didn't push the Russians to intervene, but we knowingly increased the probability that they would.
Q: When the Soviets justified their intervention by asserting that they intended to fight against a secret involvement of the United States in Afghanistan, people didn't believe them. However, there was a basis of truth. You don't regret anything today?
Brzezinski: Regret what? That secret operation was an excellent idea. It had the effect of drawing the Russians into the Afghan trap and you want me to regret it? The day that the Soviets officially crossed the border, I wrote to President Carter: We now have the opportunity of giving to the USSR its Vietnam war. Indeed, for almost 10 years, Moscow had to carry on a war unsupportable by the government, a conflict that brought about the demoralization and finally the breakup of the Soviet empire.
Q: And neither do you regret having supported the Islamic [integrisme], having given arms and advice to future terrorists?
Brzezinski: What is most important to the history of the world? The Taliban or the collapse of the Soviet empire? Some stirred-up Moslems or the liberation of Central Europe and the end of the cold war?
Q: Some stirred-up Moslems? But it has been said and repeated: Islamic fundamentalism represents a world menace today.
Brzezinski: Nonsense! It is said that the West had a global policy in regard to Islam. That is stupid. There isn't a global Islam. Look at Islam in a rational manner and without demagoguery or emotion. It is the leading religion of the world with 1.5 billion followers. But what is there in common among Saudi Arabian fundamentalism, moderate Morocco, Pakistan militarism, Egyptian pro-Western or Central Asian secularism? Nothing more than what unites the Christian countries.
* There are at least two editions of this magazine; with the perhaps sole exception of the Library of Congress, the version sent to the United States is shorter than the French version, and the Brzezinski interview was not included in the shorter version...."
How can Washington DC not literally be on fire to discover the roots of the attack on New York City and Washington? Almost the first official action by President Bush in the wake of the September 11th attacks, was to trot over to the CIA and give the institution the kiss of peace. (We won't even get into the Bush administration's blanket refusal to consider any investigation of corruption on the part of the previous administration--let alone the national security questions raised. We all know there is a seamless connection between "far left" and "radical right wing" administrations. As conservatives in good standing we wouldn't want to do anything to rip the veil off THAT burkha. We'll stick to liberating Afghani women.) Why were no Senators prepared, or willing, to ask pointedquestions of the Director of the CIA? Senator Shelby's (I believe it was him) pathetic, soggy softball of "What happened?" doesn't qualify, in my un-expert opinion.
How did that Shiek-whatever-his-name-was get clearance to immigrate to our country after he went on trial for the attempted assasination of Mubarek? Only to "inspire" those frisky lads who committed the first attack on the World Tade Center?
What really happened in the Former Yugoslavia? How did that "Former" come about? And how about Lebanon? Why is it that any Arab moslem State that shows the fainest sign of modernism--like Lebanon or Iraq--suddenly finds itself "balkanized"?
Who does it benefit the most to have the so-called "moslem world" appear to be solely the sum total of its historic fanaticisms? Who does it benefit to have the flock in America all riled up believing that a "clash of civilizations" is occuring?
Everything seems upside down to me. Casual assertions in a crackpot-sourced article appear to have more foundation than the received wisdom of a Sage with the "good housekeeping seal of approval".
In the Hague, right now, we may be witnessing a court ritual in which the accused "mass-murdering, genocidal monster" is the only one telling the truth--or even a particle of the truth.
However, as you point out, one definition of conservatism is a distaste for radical change. And a sudden bout of truth-telling would certainly represent a "radical change"--wouldn't it? No country in history has ever been as fond of received dogma as we are. So, if I want to protect my conservative credentials I had better fold my hands and sit up straight and behave myself. Sort of what Tenent instructed the Senate to do.
We are all conservatives under the skin now.
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