Intern_8033 wrote:Those people have some grievances that wouldn't have hurt us to have tried listening to.
if i'm understanding you right, i agree with you 100%ly. i don't think anybody truly knows the way people come together to hate the US and put together plans like 9/11. i don't believe for one second the reasons i've heard put forth, such as "they're jealous of us because we have freedom that they don't have". to me that sounds like a US-centric political spinning of it to make us look even better and make them look even worse. but the thing is, regardless of what we think their reasons are ("we", i don't even know what i mean by that) and regardless of what the admin or media tells us the reasons are, as long as the US is focused on fighting the symptoms rather than addressing the root causes, this thing is never going to end. in fact, i can't see it doing anything but escallating. keeping bush in office keeps the terrorists strong, as far as recruitment anyways, since it seems generally accepted that just about everybody out there hates the W. waging this War On Terror keeps the terrorists strong, again, recruitment, it's much easier to rally people behind their cause when it's "we're being oppressed by the US, the US wants to kill you". from what i've heard from this admin, there's no point in trying to talk or reason about it. this conflict must be resolved with bombs and bullets. i tend to think the only way to resolve the issue is to genuinely give a shit what the bad guys hate so much about us, really get to the heart of it, and see if they have any valid points. while i don't agree with their means of expression at all, the taking of innocent lives to voice opposition, i do expect that at least one or two of the greivances held by these "terrorists" are probably valid. i also think the likelihood of anyone in the US power structure geniunely giving a shit what these greivances are is probably quite slim. and the chances of us doing anything to address the root causes, rather than the manifestations/responses, is probably right around 0.
i think a classic illustration of this would be bush stating, accidentally speaking the truth one day recently, that the war on terror could not be won. i think that's a fact. i think the more we go all bully/retribution the more it strengthens the opposition, at least in their recruitment. as long as they can recruit people, *especially* if they can recruit people *already inside the US*, then we are in grave danger of another 9/11-like event. i think it's essentially unavoidable, based on our current course. stay the course. ugh.
sep 11th fucking sucked. outside of the loss of life, basically acknowledging that it sucked, but it happened, and it can't be reversed, there is one positive spin i could think to put on it, which is that it opened the eyes of a lot of ignorant people in the US. people who, prior to 9/11, thought that the US was safe as houses, was untouchable, essentially the ruling country of the world, and immortal at that. a lot of people had their eyes opened to the fact that complacency like that is a potential downfall of a nation like ours. the more chill we get, the more in control we feel, the more we let our guard down. that opens the door to a lot of nasty shit. the fact that 9/11 initiated the implementation of somewhat reasonable security measures in our airports, that's a positive spin. the fact that so many people had to die for folks to get their eyes opened is pretty shitty. i can offend a lot of people by saying that more life is lost each year to earthquakes than was lost to sep 11th. i think it sucks that so many people died that way, but i think it's much much worse that sep 11th acted as a catalyst for the war on terror. not a catalyst even, more of an actual causal event. though in all honesty, i don't think the bush admin would've stood the slightest chance of success without it. they needed exactly an event of that type, an attack on US soil that actually shook people up, actually got people scared, to get folks behind the launching of a war that stands to rival the cold war in terms of duration and money invested in the war sector. as far as loss of life, i would expect it will end up being much more, since it will be a very active war.
sep 11th is extremely complex, and plays into so many political threads on many different levels. to try and narrow it down to "crap" or "not crap" is, i would say, pretty much impossible. to even begin to think about all the scenarios it plays into, past events, current events, the future of the world, is way too complex to pull off. entire think-tanks are trying to think it all through. new branches of government are (in theory) being put together to try and get a grip on shit like this. i tend to think it's impossible to answer the question without picking a specific thing and focusing on it. the loss of life is a very easy one. the back and forth, israel v palestine type scenario we're now thoroughly locked into, that's another easy one. the US's stated-or-unstated goals of maintaining global dominance in economic and military respects? much harder. in that sense, *especially* the military might sense, 9/11 is surely not crap. it put the balls back in our military and (trying) intelligence, at the expense of the taxpayers. in the name of our safety. would that have been allowed to happen without 9/11? would GW have been able to topple saddam against the behest of the UN without 9/11? i tend to think no.
did anybody actually read all that? eesh.
stopping talking about 9/11 is fucking retarded. so is folks using 9/11 as a political/military device. but we (meaning us, the US, the people) we've not even begun to get to what it really represents, what it tells us about our past and future. to ignore it now would be akin to the bald jackass in the matrix, where he's all, "yeah, gimmie some steak and a blue pill, i don't wanna know what the fuck reality is all about."
LVP wrote:If, say, 10% of lions tried to kill gazelles, compared with 10% of savannah animals in general, I think that gazelle would be a lousy racist jerk.