"Intelligence doesn't work against a madman."

[jeanne_d_artois]

Hearts and Minds

The coalition forces in Iraq have to work to win the hearts and minds of the Iraqi people if they are going to be able to withdraw from a stable Iraq.

However there are 3 or more opposed groups in Iraq. None of them trust each other.

Those who supported Saddam and his regime know they are going to lose out and resent it.

The Kurds want a separate country for themselves and fought on the coalition's side so they expect a reward.

The majority who were oppressed by Saddam do not want to share power with those who supported Saddam.

Religious fanatics what their own version of an Islamic state which doesn't include democracy.

Few of them are keen on women's rights. None want to talk to the other groups.

Foreign but Arab groups are trying to destabilise Iraq by inciting hatred.

The average Iraqi wants a job so that he can support his family. He doesn't want freedom to be allowed to starve, nor to be killed by any of the groups.

We ask the coalition soldiers to try to sort out this mess while under attack. What Iraqi is going to see a heavily armed coalition soldier as a potential friend? If we send civilians, UN or not, they would be soft targets for anyone wanting to make a point even if those making the point don't understand the message themselves.

It is going to take time and hard work to build trust in Iraq. Pressure to transfer power early or to pull troops out soon does not help that trust building process.

Wounds have to heal. Former enemies have to work together. While Iraqis are killed every day the process isn't getting very far. Those attacking both the Iraqis and the coalition forces do not want the process to begin.

Jeanne

 

[Pure]

Hi LuckE you said, about some examples:

Scenario 1: Woohoo...love a good Clint Eastwood style shootout.
Scenario 2: Probably has happened, but gimme a break.
Scenario 3: HAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHA!

Have you ever served in the U.S. military? Just Curious, as these situations are so unlikely to occur in any of the above mentioned fashions.

It damn near takes an act of congress to arrange an extra phone call to your wife, or get an extra box of ass-wipe for your guys...let alone having the go ahead to kill folks at random simply because they saw a dark shadow run into a house.

It is very much like not being able to shoot an intruder in your own home. You are more likely to be persecuted for defending yourself than otherwise, especially if you were mistaken initially.

If you have expertise, perhaps you'll share an example of civilian deaths due-- leaving aside triggerhappiness, which I will stipulate is NOT the rule--to 'nerves', fear of unknown menace,having to decide in a hurry, being in a 'free fire' zone, etc.

No I have not been in the military, but those scenarios (2 and 3) are being reported from Occupied Areas adjoining Israel. I have read many first hand reports from Viet Nam, and if you're really saying civilian casualties were very rare, and always justified by military objectives, I suggest you listen to Kerry's, your colleague's testimony before the US Senate 1971, which I posted in the Kerry traitor thread.
In fact I shall fetch it now.

several months ago in Detroit we {Kerry and others in the antiwar mvt}had an investigation at which over150 honorably discharged, and many very highly decorated, veteranstestified to war crimes committed in Southeast Asia. These were not isolated incidents but crimes committed on a day-to-day basis with thefull awareness of officers at all levels of command. It is impossible to describe to you exactly what did happen in Detroit - the emotions in the room and the feelings of the men who were reliving their experiences in Vietnam. They relived the absolute horror of what this country, in a sense, made them do.

They told stories that at times they had personally raped, cut off ears, cut off heads, taped wires from portable telephones to human genitals and turned up the power, cut off limbs, blown up bodies,randomly shot at civilians, razed villages in fashion reminiscent of Ghengis Khan, shot cattle and dogs for fun, poisoned food stocks, and generally ravaged the countryside of South Vietnam in addition to the normal ravage of war and the normal and very particular ravaging which is done by the applied bombing power of this country.

[...]

In our opinion and from our experience, there is nothing in South Vietnam which could happen that realistically threatens the United States of America. And to attempt to justify the loss of one American life in Vietnam, Cambodia or Laos by linking such loss to the preservation of freedom, which those misfits supposedly abuse, is to us the height of criminal hypocrisy, and it is that kind of hypocrisy which we feel has torn this country apart.

 

[lucky-E-leven]

Hi LuckE you said, about some examples:
If you have expertise, perhaps you'll share an example of civilian deaths due-- leaving asided triggerhappiness, which I will agree is NOT the rule--to 'nerves', fear of unknown menace,having to decide in a hurry, etc.

No I have not been in the military, but those scenarios are being reported from Israel. I have read many first hand reports from Viet Nam, and if you're really saying civilian casualties were very rare, and always justified by military objectives, I suggest you listen to your colleagues lestimony before the US Senate, which I posted in the Kerry traitor thread.
In fact I shall fetch it now.

Pure,

I don't need examples to know that accidents do happen. Nor do I need to read testimony that mistakes are made, but your post leads the reader to believe these accidents are the norm and that is simply not true. The trepidation a soldier feels at the rightness of pulling the trigger is something neither of us have any clue about, and the idea that helicopters drop rpg's on unidentified dwellings and their inhabitants is poppycock.

No need to fetch a piece of lit I skipped over in the first place, it will not change my mind. The movement in Iraq is fairly large scale and it is preposterous to believe that mistakes will not be made. At least I can say with a fair amount of conviction, that our boys are not seeking anyone suspicious just as an excuse to pull the trigger.

They are walking bullseyes in their uniforms and stations and we are in no way, fighting as guerilla as the locals are. The reports you may find will have no first hand accounts of the men walking the sand, fearing for their lives and praying to God they can get home soon. And, in my mind, make them a little less accurate of an account of how and why things happen.

Sorry to start this, I realize it is nothing but argumentative but it is irritating to read things like your scenarios and not think of the bigger picture. I know people are dying. It breaks my heart. And if I'm perfectly honest, I pray the people I know over there are never faced with such scenarios. But in the even that they are, I can say with certainty that whatever they are forced to do to stay alive is justifiable in my book.

It was not their idea to go and therefore not directly their fault for tragedies that occur as they fulfill their most basic need for survival.

~lucky

 

[Colleen Thomas]

I don't have any problem making the distinction. From grenada, to the gulf War to Afghanistan to Gulf war II we have used smart bombs not only for their intended battlefield role of getting the most precise chance to knock out a military target, but also to limit civilian casualties. When we kill civilians it's accidental, they are never supposed to be the intended target.

To be honest I have a strong streak of patriotism and have been accused of having a lack of empathy for our enemies.

-Colly

 

[Pure]

LuckE said,

I hear you and empathize with the plight of the fellow on the ground. In certain situations he will do certain things, and these are not 'mistakes', but not malevolent acts. The problems lie is explicit policies and 'procedures', such as setting up 'free fire' zones. Ultimately it's the general's and politicians who put fighting men into a morass, and directed them to go after 'evil' and gave them enough slack to do what Kerry describes. Secondarily it's the officers. LEAST responsible is the private who pulls the trigger in a nighmarish setting, not of his making.

I generally agree with your statement
It was not their [ground soldiers'] idea to go and therefore not directly their fault for tragedies that occur as they fulfill their most basic need for survival.

You further say:

No need to fetch a piece of lit I skipped over in the first place, it will not change my mind. The movement in Iraq is fairly large scale and it is preposterous to believe that mistakes will not be made. At least I can say with a fair amount of conviction, that our boys are not seeking anyone suspicious just as an excuse to pull the trigger.

Again, if you don't like my examples of shooting at something that's suspicious, you're invited to give 'real' examples of civilians getting killed. There were thousands you know that got killed through policies and practices that placed zero value on their lives.

With due respect "mistakes were made" does not wash for VietNam, and Kerry and even lately McNamara himself (whom I've posted) acknowledge fundamentally wrong--wrong militarily and wrong morally--policies and approaches.

The Israeli reservists refusing service in occupied lands have the same realization. It's not the occurence of individual or merely accidental 'mistakes.'



J.


PS. By the way, is the 1971 Kerry speech traitorous? Just wonder about your opinion.

 

[shereads]

To be honest I have a strong streak of patriotism and have been accused of having a lack of empathy for our enemies.

My enemies were the organizers of 9/ll. In Iraq, I don't think I had any. No friends, certainly, but nobody who needed to die so that I could retain any of my freedoms.

If you define patriotism by a willingness to accept that the enemy is whoever the commander in chief says it is, than patriotism is nothing more than a weapon of mass destruction.

Einstein used the word "nationalism," but I think it's essentially the same thing. He said it's "the measles of mankind. A child's disease."

You're too smart to let anyone else choose the people for whom you have compassion. It's not a team sport where we're cheering for our side. We've been manipulated, defrauded. I didn't buy it then and I don't now.

I felt sick watching "shock and awe." It was narrated like a sports event on every newscast except NPR and public television, where there was at least a sombre mood. I guess we liberals make poor patriots. We just didn't get what all the breast-beating and flag-waving were about when there were people under that rubble, and most of them hadn't done anything to deserve it.

Listening to one reporter that first night using football terminology to describe what was happening militarily - "Tommy Franks will huddle with blahblah now and they'll decide whether to call a time out at this point or blahblah" - I kept imagining a football game where the players all pile onto the one with the ball, and the crowd goes wild....and when the pile-up is cleared and they line up for the next play, there are dead people under there. We clear them off the field and keep playing.

Colly, I know you to be a compassionate person. I know that if you were faced with any one of the civilians who destined to die at our hand in Baghdad - met them, face to face - you'd be sickened at the thought of their deaths.

 

[Colleen Thomas]

My enemies were the organizers of 9/ll. In Iraq, I don't think I had any. No friends, certainly, but nobody who needed to die so that I could retain any of my freedoms.

If you define patriotism by a willingness to accept that the enemy is whoever the commander in chief says it is, than patriotism is nothing more than a weapon of mass destruction.

Einstein used the word "nationalism," but I think it's essentially the same thing. He said it's "the measles of mankind. A child's disease."

You're too smart to let anyone else choose the people for whom you have compassion. It's not a team sport where we're cheering for our side. We've been manipulated, defrauded. I didn't buy it then and I don't now.

I felt sick watching "shock and awe." It was narrated like a sports event on every newscast except NPR and public television, where there was at least a sombre mood. I guess we liberals make poor patriots. We just didn't get what all the breast-beating and flag-waving were about when there were people under that rubble, and most of them hadn't done anything to deserve it.

Listening to one reporter that first night using football terminology to describe what was happening militarily - "Tommy Franks will huddle with blahblah now and they'll decide whether to call a time out at this point or blahblah" - I kept imagining a football game where the players all pile onto the one with the ball, and the crowd goes wild....and when the pile-up is cleared and they line up for the next play, there are dead people under there. We clear them off the field and keep playing.

Colly, I know you to be a compassionate person. I know that if you were faced with any one of the civilians who destined to die at our hand in Baghdad - met them, face to face - you'd be sickened at the thought of their deaths.

If I met them, if I knew them, then you are probably right, I would be sickened and upset. But to use your sports analogy, you can't tell the players without a program and I don't have one.

Unlike you in this case, I saw a very real need to remove Saddam Hussien that had nothing to do with WMD's, threats to Saudia Arabia, or even to the neculous idea of peace in the middle east. While it dosen't make the civilian deaths any less real, it does at least allow me to aceept that people die in war. For you we shouldn't have been there and thus anyone dying is much worse as you feel it was an unjust war to start with. It colors your thinking and feeling as surely as my belief that we needed to be there colors mine.

Patriotism is not blind faith. It is a belief in and support for your country. I believe in America. I want my fellow citizens to be happy and safe and free. I think you feel the same way. I think however your compassion, generosity and magnonimity extend to the world where mine stay at home unless some tragedy strikes somewhere that grabs my attention and forces me to remember we are part of a larger community.

People starve to death in Africa everyday and I think that bothers you, in a very real and personal way. It does not touch my life in any real sense and thus it is as far from my conciousness as the spirit rover or opportunity on cold red Mars. They only return to my conciousness when they do something and I become aware of them agains for a short while. If someone I knew were starving in Africa, if it were brought home to me in way like that I would probably scrape together my very meager resourses and send a 20 pound bag of rice, even if meant me eating nothing but rice myself for the month.

I think it comes down to perspective. You live in a very broad world, mine is very narrow. My own day to day trials and tribulations, along with those of my small number of freinds and family is about the extent of my "world" most days. When my country goes to war it is pretty easy for me to broaden my concern to include my fellow countrymen. I think for you, concern for just your fellow countrymen would be a contraction of your concerns rather than an expansion of them.

So when Americans were killing Iraqi's you felt compassion for them all, where I only worried about the Americans. Every Iraqi soldier killed by bombs or missiles, was one less enemy pointing a gun at my service men and women, those brave souls who risk life and limb to keep me free and safe. If, to get a target that threatened thier life some civilians died, it was a sacrifice I felt worth it.

You would make a horrible General, but a great humanitarian. I would make a horrible humanitarian and probably a horrible general, but luckily I have never been called upon to be either.

When I lie in bed at night, just before I go to sleep my worries are about whether I will be in pain when I wake, or if my Aunt is recovering from her operation, of if my brother will get his promotion. I think your concerns are a lot broader. It probably makes you a much better person, but I don't envy you the inability to make distinctions that come naturally to me. I don't think I could function if my concern for humanity was a broad as yours.

-Colly

 

[Pure]

Colly said to sher,

//I think however your compassion, generosity and magnonimity extend to the world where mine stay at home unless some tragedy strikes somewhere that grabs my attention and forces me to remember we are part of a larger community.//

I only partly 'buy' this. *TO the extent you Colly are a 'classic conservative' you would be against foreign adventures and 'empire'. You'd follow such old guidelines, as 'no ground war in Asia.' You'd be against having a huge military/industrial apparatus. This is partly you, in my opinion

I love you for it.



However, part of you is this neo-con 'fight evil where you see it.'
America as a moral force in the world, of course, pre dates the neo cons, and goes back to Puritan writings.

A 'true con' imo would want out of Iraq asap. There would be no talk of-- making democracy for our brown brothers and sisters, OR
creating an example for the slamic world, and scaring the Saudis and others into reform. To some appreciable extent you buy this 'messianic mission' idea, and it takes you beyond 'classic conservatism.'

You like the spending habits of Reagan and GWB. The trillions added to the biggest 'defense' budget in the history of the world, probably greater than the sum of total spending of most of the world's countries. You also buy into the 'security' theme. (You ignore that homeland security is being bungled and de-funded; remember that little Republican effort to privatize or allow privatization of airport security?).

May I ask, what grabbed your attention? Are you saying it was 9-11. That brings up the whole 9-11 and Iraq alleged connection.

Perhaps not. We know the neo cons had targeted Iraq prior to 9-11. What drew their attention? I'm not sure. What do you think? Perhaps its enmity with Israel, and vast oil supplies. Surely it was not the human rights and women's rights problems... Do you think they picked Iraq because the suffering of Kurds, or women, tugged at their heartstrings.

In conclusion, liberals like Kennedy have indeed tried to 'do good' and spread themselves thin--Kennedy aided Vietnam in the name of 'freedom'; Johnson upped the ante to 'stop communism'. But you as something more than 'classic conservatiive' are clearly also into the 'world mission' idea with the concommitant tendency to foreign meddling.

But as a package we love you, notwithstanding these minor crotchets!

;

 

[oggbashan]

Colly ... as a package we love you, notwithstanding these minor crotchets!

;

I second that emotion.

Og

 

[oggbashan]

Patriotism is not blind faith. It is a belief in and support for your country. I believe in America. I want my fellow citizens to be happy and safe and free. I think you feel the same way. I think however your compassion, generosity and magnonimity extend to the world where mine stay at home unless some tragedy strikes somewhere that grabs my attention and forces me to remember we are part of a larger community.

I think it comes down to perspective. You live in a very broad world, mine is very narrow. My own day to day trials and tribulations, along with those of my small number of freinds and family is about the extent of my "world" most days. When my country goes to war it is pretty easy for me to broaden my concern to include my fellow countrymen. I think for you, concern for just your fellow countrymen would be a contraction of your concerns rather than an expansion of them.

So when Americans were killing Iraqi's you felt compassion for them all, where I only worried about the Americans. Every Iraqi soldier killed by bombs or missiles, was one less enemy pointing a gun at my service men and women, those brave souls who risk life and limb to keep me free and safe. If, to get a target that threatened thier life some civilians died, it was a sacrifice I felt worth it.

You would make a horrible General, but a great humanitarian. I would make a horrible humanitarian and probably a horrible general, but luckily I have never been called upon to be either.

When I lie in bed at night, just before I go to sleep my worries are about whether I will be in pain when I wake, or if my Aunt is recovering from her operation, of if my brother will get his promotion. I think your concerns are a lot broader. It probably makes you a much better person, but I don't envy you the inability to make distinctions that come naturally to me. I don't think I could function if my concern for humanity was a broad as yours.

-Colly

Colly,

Part of the world's problem with the US is that many US citizens have a limited view.

In Europe we are very clear that there are different peoples, different cultures, different values. We can't avoid knowing that. Even if I don't travel outside my own community I meet people with different languages, different faiths or belief systems.

Travel is so easy. I can be in France in less time than it takes me to drive to central London. My neighbours do much of their shopping in France and Belgium because of sales tax differences. We have refugees from the Balkans, from Africa, from China walking our streets.

Marriage and relationships between races are common. Why not? The colour of a person's skin doesn't indicate anything about the person.

One of my friends (and a member of the Chamber of Commerce) was Lebanese. Another member of the committee has close relations in Israel. I have worked with people whose countries were at war with each other (India/Pakistan; Nigeria/Biafra and so on).

It is very difficult to see another country's people as being of less worth than your own when you may know someone from that country.

Generalship is about achieving the object with the minimum expenditure of resources, particularly lives of your troops - or the enemy's. "Shock and Awe" was a way of doing that. It demonstrated the coalition's firepower and the pointlessness of set piece battles by the Iraqi forces. It could be said to have saved lives - US, British etc. AND Iraqi.

It is difficult to realise that all human beings should be your concern and responsibility but it is also difficult not to when you have travelled the world and met so many people who may be different but are just as good "folks" as the family next door.

Og

 

[shereads]

It's the "ripples of community" theory. The extent to which we empathise with others diminishes for each of us to a different degree with how far from our center they are - and whether we make these distinctions geographically, racially, or culturally, varies from one person to the next.

The community of one, the self, is at the center, and at its farthest edges each of us has a "them," the ones who aren't worth our compassion, at least not when we're under stress.

Maybe we define who is like us and who is not like us in ways that are determined by our upbringing.

I come from a family as conservative as Colly's, but unlike my parents who grew up in small Southern towns and didn't see the wider world until they were well into their adulthood, I spent my childhood and early adolesence as a military brat.

We never lived in the same place for more than two or three years, and I learned early on that the people who were my friends in one place would be replaced with different people in the next school, the next neighborhood. I never thought of the South as home, or identified with its conservatism. I went to school with kids of all races and attended non-denomenational church services (when forced) until my dad retired in South Carolina and I attended my first segretated public school.

That's where I met the world my parents grew up with: inner-directed, hostile to the outside world. I was 11 or 12 by that time, though, and I found the fear and dislike of outsiders simply bewildering. I had lived outside the U.S. and hoped - still hope - to return to Europe as an adult, and to see the world beyond Europe. I was surprised to learn that a lot of people were contemptuous of life outside the U.S.; hell, they were contemptuous of life outside the South.

I've always felt "American," but always a citizen of the world, as well. That's why my father's ultra-conservative politics were mine only until I was old enough to feel free to reject them. I voted for Nixon when I was 18, because all of my peers were conservative Southern white teenagers. We had desegregated by then, but the divide between black and white was so deep that I never remember having a single conversation with a black student at my high school. I had absorbed the cultural values of my peers, to survive adolesence. We weren't rascist in the way our parents were - they had been genuinely afraid for us when they found out their white sons and daughters were going to be "forced" to mingle with black students, who were the ultimate "not us." We saw that they weren't so different, but neither side was comfortable speaking with the other.

After a year or two at a state university, living in an environment that was still Southern but mingled with other influences, I made the first African American friend I had had since I was a child attending Air Force schools. I felt the influence of my middle school and high school years falling away like a burden, and was back to being a citizen of the wider world.

The people who are so alien to me that I don't hurt for them when their children are shot or blown up, might exist on Mars. I don't know.

 

[Pure]

I'm posting here, instead of the 'poll' thread, since it's relevant.
Perl and Frum's "End to Evil" is an important book. It says:

Democrats slumbered in the 1990s, as terrorism grew; now, after briefly supporting the activist President, they grow faint of heart, and support a 'weak' approach to terrorism.
====

Perl and Frum, An End to Evil
[excerpts, ch 1]
Throughout the 1990s, thousands of terrorists received training in the al-Qaeda camps of Afghanistan-and our government passively monitored the situation. Terrorists attacked and murdered Americans in East Africa, in Yemen, in Saudi Arabia-and America responded to these acts of war as if they were ordinary crimes. Iraq flagrantly violated the terms of its 1991 armistice-and our government from time to time fired a cruise missile into Baghdad but otherwise did little.

Iran defied the Monroe Doctrine and sponsored murder in our own hemisphere, killing eighty-six people and wounding some three hundred at a Jewish Community Center in Buenos Aires-and our government did worse than nothing: It opened negotiations with the murderers. Mullahs and imams incited violence and slaughter against Christians and Jews-and our government failed to acknowledge that anything important was occurring.

September 11 is supposed to have changed all that. Since the attacks on the World Trade Center and the Pentagon, terrorism has become the first priority of our government. Or so it is said-but is it true? The forces and the people who lulled the United States into complacency in the 1990s remain potent today, and in the wake of the victories in Afghanistan and Iraq, they are exerting themselves ever more boldly.

With a few stalwart exceptions, such as Senator Joe Lieberman, the administration's Democratic opponents seem ready to give up the fight altogether. They want to give up on Iraq. They denounce the Patriot Act. They condemn President Bush's policies (in the words of Richard Gephardt) as a "miserable failure."

Traveling to France in October 2003 to criticize her country, former secretary of state Madeleine Albright declared, "Bush and the people under him have a foreign policy that is not good for America, not good for the world." But as to what to do instead, they say nothing, leaving the impression that they wish to do nothing.

Nor is it only the president's political opponents who seem bereft of ideas. At the State Department, there is constant pressure to return to business as usual, beginning by placating offended allies and returning to the exaggerated multilateral conceit of the Clinton administration. Generals, diplomats, and lawmakers who retired and now work for the Saudi government or Saudi companies huff and puff at the damage the war on terror is doing to the U.S.-Saudi relationship. Members of Congress complain about the cost of fighting terror. On television, respected commentators intone about quagmires and overstretch. Leading journalists deplore Muslim and European anti-Americanism in a way that implies we are its cause.

If you ask them, many of these respectable characters will insist that they remain keen to wage war on terrorism. But press them a little, and it quickly becomes clear that they define "terror" very narrowly. They are eager to arrest the misfits and thugs who plant bombs and carry guns. But as for the larger networks that recruit the misfits and thugs, as for the wealthy donors who pay the terrorists' bills, as for the governments that give terrorists aid and sanctuary, as for the larger culture of incitement and hatred that justifies and supports terror: All of that they wish to leave alone.

As the inevitable disappointments and difficulties of war accumulate, as weariness with war's costs and rigors spreads, as memories of 9/11 fade, the advocates of a weaker line against terror have pressed their timid case. Like rust and mildew, they make the most progress when they receive the least attention, for their desired policy coincides with the natural predilections of government.

President Bush's war on terror jerked our national security bureaucracy out of its comfortable routines. He demanded that the military fight new wars in new ways. He demanded that our intelligence services second-guess their familiar assumptions. He demanded that the State Department speak firmly and forcefully to those who claim to be our friends. He demanded that our public diplomacy make the case for America without apology. He demanded fresh thought and strong measures and clear language-none of which comes naturally to any part of the vast bureaucracy that Americans employ to protect the nation.

All of this departure from the ordinary has generated resentment and resistance. The resisters are supported by the heavy weight of inertia, by every governmental instinct toward regularity and predictability and caution, by the bureaucracy's profound aversion to innovation, controversy, and confrontation.

[...]
Throughout the war, the advocates of a strong policy against terror have had one great advantage over those who prefer the weaker line: We have offered concrete recommendations equal to the seriousness of the threat, and the soft-liners have not, because we have wanted to fight, and they have not. For us, terrorism remains the great evil of our time, and the war against this evil our generation's great cause.

We do not believe that Americans are fighting this evil to minimize it or to manage it. We believe they are fighting to win-to end this evil before it kills again and on a genocidal scale. There is no middle way for Americans: It is victory or holocaust. This book is a manual for victory.

[end Perl and Frum excerpts]

======

NY Times reviewer, Fareeh Zakaria, 2-08 comments:

...the central stylistic pose of their book is angry radicalism. The war on terror has reached a ''crisis point,'' they declare. ''We can feel the will to win ebbing in Washington. . . . The ranks of the faint hearts are growing and their voices are echoing ever more loudly in our media and our politics.'' [...]

Nowhere is this kind of trumped-up radicalism clearer than in the book's references to the 1990's. While terror mounted, Frum and Perle say, the Clinton administration did nothing. They remind us that in one case (an anti-Semitic attack in Argentina) ''it opened negotiations with the murderers.'' Now one can make the case that America's halfhearted responses have egged on Middle Eastern terrorists. But one should surely begin this story where the terrorists do themselves, with their huge attack on the Marine barracks in Lebanon in 1983 and America's disastrous decision to pull out immediately.

Nor do the authors mention the most important instance of the United States ''negotiating with murderers,'' which was, of course, the decision to trade arms for hostages in the mid-1980's. Both events took place during the Reagan administration, when Perle was in high office. Moreover, the impression the authors give is that they and their confederates were outraged by Clinton's (weak-kneed) efforts against Al Qaeda.

In fact neoconservatives were silent about Al Qaeda during the 1990's. One searches vainly through the archives of the Project for the New American Century, the main neoconservative advocacy group, for a single report on Al Qaeda or a letter urging action against it before 9/11. (There are dozens on the China threat, national missile defenses and Saddam Hussein's weapons.) Clinton may merely have lobbed missiles at terrorists, but the neoconservatives did not even launch a blast fax.

[end Zakaria review]

 

[oggbashan]

I too was a kind of military brat but travelled widely outside my own country before I was 18 so Literotica type adventures 'didn't happen.

I saw the after-effects of the Civil War in Spain and post World War II Fascism at first hand.

I saw poverty in Africa, in Sri Lanka, in SE Asia. I saw "white" Australia which has now changed to a multicultural society.

I visited communist Yugoslavia.

I found friends everywhere even among people who I should have been at odds with like the Spanish Guarda Civil. Their uniforms were picturesque but their reputation was as bad as Germany's Gestapo. Two of them shot a few rounds from a jeep mounted machine gun above my head when I was skinny dipping age 10. It was their way of saying "Out of the water - NOW!" That got my attention. Yet - other Guarda Civil helped my parents when our car was mired down in the 'wonderful' Spanish roads. All they would accept was our thanks.

It is difficult to hate a nation when you have met some of them because you know that there is no such person as a typical American, Iraqi etc. There are good people - there are bad people - just like your home town.

What you can hate are the fanatics of any kind, and the oppressive governments, and the unscrupulous leaders - because they make their own people suffer.

Og

 

[Pure]

The idea of concentric communities is voiced by Colly

]i]My own day to day trials and tribulations, along with those of my small number of freinds and family is about the extent of my "world" most days. When my country goes to war it is pretty easy for me to broaden my concern to include my fellow countrymen. I think for you, concern for just your fellow countrymen would be a contraction of your concerns rather than an expansion of them.
[/i]

This classic conservatism is, however, in the US, quite caught up in tendencies to be obsessed with domestic and foreign security, or in Frum and Perl's words EVIL.

In this peril, the original 'small government' person starts looking for big governments that "protect." Small c conservatives turn into big hawks like Frum and Perl, and much of the Republican party; and they begin talking of surveillance, secret trials etc.

 

[Pure]

War is Hell

My War
By LARRY DAVID

Published: February 15, 2004



LOS ANGELES

I couldn't be happier that President Bush has stood up for having served in the National Guard, because I can finally put an end to all those who questioned my motives for enlisting in the Army Reserve at the height of the Vietnam War. I can't tell you how many people thought I had signed up just to avoid going to Vietnam.

Nothing could be further from the truth. If anything, I was itching to go over there. I was just out of college and, let's face it, you can't buy that kind of adventure. More important, I wanted to do my part in saving that tiny country from the scourge of Communism. We had to draw the line somewhere, and if not me, then who?

But I also knew that our country was being torn asunder by opposition to the war. Who would be here to defend the homeland against civil unrest? [...]Sure, being a reservist wasn't as glamorous, but I was the one who had to look at myself in the mirror.

Even though the National Guard and Army Reserve see combat today, it rankles me that people assume it was some kind of waltz in the park back then. If only. Once a month, for an entire weekend — I'm talking eight hours Saturday and Sunday — we would meet in a dank, cold airplane hangar. The temperature in that hangar would sometimes get down to 40 degrees, and very often I had to put on long underwear, which was so restrictive I suffered from an acute vascular disorder for days afterward.

Our captain was a strict disciplinarian who wouldn't think twice about not letting us wear sneakers or breaking up a poker game if he was in ill humor. Once, they took us into the woods and dropped us off with nothing but compasses and our wits.

One wrong move and I could've wound up on Queens Boulevard. Fortunately, I had the presence of mind to find my way out of there and back to the hangar. Some of my buddies did not fare as well and had to call their parents to come and get them.

Then in the summer we would go away to camp for two weeks. It felt more like three. I wondered if I'd ever see my parakeet again. We slept on cots and ate in the International House of Pancakes. I learned the first night that IHOP's not the place to order fish.

When the two weeks were up, I came home a changed man. I would often burst into tears for no apparent reason and suffered recurring nightmares about drowning in blueberry syrup. If I hadn't been so strapped for cash, I would've sought the aid of a psychiatrist.