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Sep. 16th, 2001 08:49 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
sanpaku_backupMy thoughts on international politics, not very exciting...
Past couple of days have seen things begin to sink in. People are Moving On, which in the current context means contemplating military action and war and so on, and so this is beginning to affect me. It is rapidly becoming time to turn off the god damn cable TV. I had thought for a couple of days about writing something intelligible about this, but I am not sure I have it just yet.
Much of it comes down to the fact that there is a disconnect between what people think we can do and what can probably be actually done. Most political leaders have been fairly circumspect-- except for Bush, who seems to be using every public appearance to take things up a notch. When I listen to Powell or even Cheney I don't feel as bad; at least it's the grownups talking. McCain was on and seemed to make a point of saying from the outset that we couldn't lump all Arabs together, etc., and I thought, why isn't Bush able to say things like this? For all that I disagree with McCain I always thought there was something fundamentally decent about him that was lacking in Bush.
Anyway, the implication of this escalating rhetoric is not just a campaign against Afghanistan-- which, it should be noted, neither the British nor the Soviets ever managed to conquer-- but against a whole lot of other countries in the region. Several things to recall here. First, this administration has spent the past 8 months blowing off the rest of the world on missile defense, global warming, etc., etc., and now we need these countries-- we can't do anything like this alone. Good luck.
Second-- well, this is a much broader thing I've been thinking about:
There has been a lot of talk on the airwaves, well-meaning to be sure, calling for Americans to be introspective. It goes something like, "We should think about why people in this part of the world hate us so much." While I think it would be good for Americans to learn about our policies, I think this sentiment is actually somewhat misguided. Policies are not the core of the issue here. Sure, backing the Shah of Iran, overthrowing Mussadigh, and a litany of other things didn't help matters. But there are parts of the world much more beaten down by colonialism and imperialism, even American imperialism, without causing people to become suicide bombers.
So while specific policies have some relevance here, culture and religion count for a lot more with the specific individuals we are dealing with. The big thing with Bin Laden was that US troops were stationed in Saudi Arabia, a holy land. And to a fundamentalist religious sensibility, the fact that "Baywatch" is the most popular TV show in the Arab world is more than an affront, it's an attack on a way of life. To slip into anecdote for a second, I think anyone who has been overseas has been kind of amazed to see the hold American culture has in the rest of the world. I was in Moravia in 1991 and saw grizzled farmers sitting at a bar for hours watching Disney's Duck Tales. This culture of ours is a powerful, and, truthfully, godless thing. Enough Americans feel that way. My mother-in-law (sorry to use her as a foil so often, but when you're quotable, your quotable) is fond of describing our society as "a culture that deserves to die." You have to wonder about these "Muslim" terrorists spending their last nights in the US at a strip club drinking vodka. The paradoxes are overwhelming. The simple fact is that we are the most powerful country in the world, and even if we abandoned our entire military tomorrow our culture would still be the most powerful culture in the world, and people would hate us. It's a horrible thing to say, but there really is little to be done about that. A little more goodwill toward the world community-- signing a land mine treaty, for example, now that we are about to invade a country filled with landmines-- would be a good start, but that will take a long time to pay dividends.
Anyway, my point is that this is not something that will change as a result of a land invasion, and it is probably not something that would even change if US policies became much better, like supporting democracy and human rights in these places, I'm sad to say. There are people who put cultural and political questions together and decide this is God's way. Even if it was only .00001% of people in that society who felt that way, you'd have a fair number of terrorists. If we're talking about a place like Pakistan, this is how at least a few people feel even before American troops arrive to build bases and airfields there.
So my gut reaction is that this talk of a 10-year-long war is going to bring home a lot of unpleasant realities of how these things actually work. It may not be impossible to root out one particular terrorist leader and a few of his followers, but because in fact there is a comprehensive intertwining of terrorism in the normal life of a lot of parts of the world, to really take out the phenomenon root and branch seems like a fool's errand.
Which brings me back to all this talk. I wish our leaders would speak of finding and destroying terrorists rather than how to "whip" terrorism. People expect results, but after people realize there are not a lot of "victories" in any normal sense in this kind of war, I fear that something ugly will happen. Let's say we capture Kabul, but bin Laden remains at large, and there is another terrorist strike. Not an unlikely scenario by any means. Then you see a broad panic grip the country, a search for fifth columnists, an indefinite state of paralysis and paranoia. This language of destroying terrorism is dangerous because it sets the bar high in peoples' minds, and if it doesn't "work" a hunt for internal enemies sweeps everything else away.
I feel particularly depressed because as this sets in I felt that it's bad enough to live in fear, but to live in a prolonged, 10-year-long period of witchhunting paranoia is awful to contemplate.
We went walking at Jamaica Pond today-- a beautiful, perfectly temperate day, people out walking their dogs. It felt surreal-- I had Radiohead's "Pyramid Song" stuck in my head. "Jumped in the river, what did I see? / Black-eyed angels swam with me... we all went to heaven in a little rowboat... There was nothing to fear, nothing to doubt." I felt like life now is tinged in sepia. All the silly fads and scandals and obsessions of our lives before. How we will wish we had them back again.
Past couple of days have seen things begin to sink in. People are Moving On, which in the current context means contemplating military action and war and so on, and so this is beginning to affect me. It is rapidly becoming time to turn off the god damn cable TV. I had thought for a couple of days about writing something intelligible about this, but I am not sure I have it just yet.
Much of it comes down to the fact that there is a disconnect between what people think we can do and what can probably be actually done. Most political leaders have been fairly circumspect-- except for Bush, who seems to be using every public appearance to take things up a notch. When I listen to Powell or even Cheney I don't feel as bad; at least it's the grownups talking. McCain was on and seemed to make a point of saying from the outset that we couldn't lump all Arabs together, etc., and I thought, why isn't Bush able to say things like this? For all that I disagree with McCain I always thought there was something fundamentally decent about him that was lacking in Bush.
Anyway, the implication of this escalating rhetoric is not just a campaign against Afghanistan-- which, it should be noted, neither the British nor the Soviets ever managed to conquer-- but against a whole lot of other countries in the region. Several things to recall here. First, this administration has spent the past 8 months blowing off the rest of the world on missile defense, global warming, etc., etc., and now we need these countries-- we can't do anything like this alone. Good luck.
Second-- well, this is a much broader thing I've been thinking about:
There has been a lot of talk on the airwaves, well-meaning to be sure, calling for Americans to be introspective. It goes something like, "We should think about why people in this part of the world hate us so much." While I think it would be good for Americans to learn about our policies, I think this sentiment is actually somewhat misguided. Policies are not the core of the issue here. Sure, backing the Shah of Iran, overthrowing Mussadigh, and a litany of other things didn't help matters. But there are parts of the world much more beaten down by colonialism and imperialism, even American imperialism, without causing people to become suicide bombers.
So while specific policies have some relevance here, culture and religion count for a lot more with the specific individuals we are dealing with. The big thing with Bin Laden was that US troops were stationed in Saudi Arabia, a holy land. And to a fundamentalist religious sensibility, the fact that "Baywatch" is the most popular TV show in the Arab world is more than an affront, it's an attack on a way of life. To slip into anecdote for a second, I think anyone who has been overseas has been kind of amazed to see the hold American culture has in the rest of the world. I was in Moravia in 1991 and saw grizzled farmers sitting at a bar for hours watching Disney's Duck Tales. This culture of ours is a powerful, and, truthfully, godless thing. Enough Americans feel that way. My mother-in-law (sorry to use her as a foil so often, but when you're quotable, your quotable) is fond of describing our society as "a culture that deserves to die." You have to wonder about these "Muslim" terrorists spending their last nights in the US at a strip club drinking vodka. The paradoxes are overwhelming. The simple fact is that we are the most powerful country in the world, and even if we abandoned our entire military tomorrow our culture would still be the most powerful culture in the world, and people would hate us. It's a horrible thing to say, but there really is little to be done about that. A little more goodwill toward the world community-- signing a land mine treaty, for example, now that we are about to invade a country filled with landmines-- would be a good start, but that will take a long time to pay dividends.
Anyway, my point is that this is not something that will change as a result of a land invasion, and it is probably not something that would even change if US policies became much better, like supporting democracy and human rights in these places, I'm sad to say. There are people who put cultural and political questions together and decide this is God's way. Even if it was only .00001% of people in that society who felt that way, you'd have a fair number of terrorists. If we're talking about a place like Pakistan, this is how at least a few people feel even before American troops arrive to build bases and airfields there.
So my gut reaction is that this talk of a 10-year-long war is going to bring home a lot of unpleasant realities of how these things actually work. It may not be impossible to root out one particular terrorist leader and a few of his followers, but because in fact there is a comprehensive intertwining of terrorism in the normal life of a lot of parts of the world, to really take out the phenomenon root and branch seems like a fool's errand.
Which brings me back to all this talk. I wish our leaders would speak of finding and destroying terrorists rather than how to "whip" terrorism. People expect results, but after people realize there are not a lot of "victories" in any normal sense in this kind of war, I fear that something ugly will happen. Let's say we capture Kabul, but bin Laden remains at large, and there is another terrorist strike. Not an unlikely scenario by any means. Then you see a broad panic grip the country, a search for fifth columnists, an indefinite state of paralysis and paranoia. This language of destroying terrorism is dangerous because it sets the bar high in peoples' minds, and if it doesn't "work" a hunt for internal enemies sweeps everything else away.
I feel particularly depressed because as this sets in I felt that it's bad enough to live in fear, but to live in a prolonged, 10-year-long period of witchhunting paranoia is awful to contemplate.
We went walking at Jamaica Pond today-- a beautiful, perfectly temperate day, people out walking their dogs. It felt surreal-- I had Radiohead's "Pyramid Song" stuck in my head. "Jumped in the river, what did I see? / Black-eyed angels swam with me... we all went to heaven in a little rowboat... There was nothing to fear, nothing to doubt." I felt like life now is tinged in sepia. All the silly fads and scandals and obsessions of our lives before. How we will wish we had them back again.
![[identity profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/openid.png){kind=small}
thank you
Date: 2001-09-17 08:20 pm (UTC)there's so much i don't know about all this, and a helluva lot that I could probably never know.
i refuse to live in a state of fear or repression. I don't think this country, albiet still immature, will swallow the 'syndrome' of hating internal enemies. Our country has an attitude of un-patriotism because most of us yearn for elders that aren't corporations, or for more help adjusting to the information avalanche, and from immaturity i suppose. But I don't think that we would trade our 'civilized' mindsets, for shooting in the dark.
-lucidlife
Re: thank you
Date: 2001-09-19 06:06 pm (UTC)