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Jul. 23rd, 2007 04:22 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
somedaybitchThe Belmont Club on China's longstanding 'cultural extermination' of Muslims.
blockquote>One of the most fascinating questions -- one worthy of a book -- must be why Osama Bin Laden chose to order his suicide airplanes into Manhattan rather than say, Beijing or Moscow. Both these nations have been campaigning against Muslims for centuries. And the answer, I suspect, lies in the "excited commands and shouts of glee form the Chinese on the soundtrack". Or the veritable rain of shells that fell on Grozny in the recent past or the vicious campaign that still rages through Chechnya today. Maybe Bin Laden attacked America because he knew how it would fight. In a mode where even prisoners in Guantanamo Bay could insist upon their Korans being handled with white gloves, while a large section of America's own media would condemn this treatment as too harsh.
blockquote>One of the most fascinating questions -- one worthy of a book -- must be why Osama Bin Laden chose to order his suicide airplanes into Manhattan rather than say, Beijing or Moscow. Both these nations have been campaigning against Muslims for centuries. And the answer, I suspect, lies in the "excited commands and shouts of glee form the Chinese on the soundtrack". Or the veritable rain of shells that fell on Grozny in the recent past or the vicious campaign that still rages through Chechnya today. Maybe Bin Laden attacked America because he knew how it would fight. In a mode where even prisoners in Guantanamo Bay could insist upon their Korans being handled with white gloves, while a large section of America's own media would condemn this treatment as too harsh.
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Date: 2007-07-24 02:06 am (UTC)In the mid to late 60's there were many skyjackings all over the world. The russians let it be known that they would kill the families of any russian who skyjacked a plane. I think it happened a couple of times, and after that, no more hijackings. I absolutely don't advocate killing innocent people, BUT..Israel retaliates against the families of suicide bombers by bulldozing the family home to the ground. America wrings its hands and ponders how to get intel out of prisoners by asking "pretty please?" We want to wage war as nicely as possible, without hurting anyone's feelings, without backing up our men in the field, without pushing the Iraqis to show up for duty and take it seriously. Why should they? We do it for them. JMO now.
Argghh.
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Date: 2007-07-24 02:55 am (UTC)we *should* want to wage war as nicely as possible because war *must* be a thing of last resort - and we should wage it as cleanly and properly as possible. waterboarding doesn't bother me, but we have no moral high ground for our own troops if we torture the troops of others.
that said, i am totally frustrated by the posturing and catering internationally, and even domestically, and yet at the same time this is a globe and what fellow sovereign countries think should be taken into account.
without backing up our men in the field, without pushing the Iraqis to show up for duty and take it seriously.
there's the mainstream press again. we *do* back up our men in the field and we *do* hold the Iraqis accountable for pulling their own military weight. if you read the blogs of the embeds that are actually travelling with the military, versus posting from the safety of their cozy hotel rooms in the Green Zone, you'll get a whole different perspective on what the grunts on the ground actually think and feel.
the rub is that it's both an honorable position and curse the way we conduct ourselves, and unscrupulous enemies have no prob using that against us.