Just thought there should be a counter thread to the one about peace protesters. Personally I am, in many ways, tired of both. I feel more sympathy for the peace protesters though…
I don’t mean to sound apathetic, I’m not, but it is tiresome to see this polarization of our society. I have heard plenty of people who have a balanced and positive view of this whole America Strikes Back deelybob*, so I think things are going OK, but people getting too strident worry me.
*Has anyone else noticed that this sounds an aweful lot like ther title of a certain George Lucas film? And while we’re on the topic, I saw a headline a while ago that had the term “Fortress America”. Isn’t “Fortress Europe” the term for Nazi Europe? And Homeland Defense also conjures up a feeling of fascism. As in the fatherland. All of this is sort of a personal sense of the words, so I hope no one is offended. When you get down to it these words are only mildly disturbing to me.
“America strikes back” does sound like “The Empire Strikes Back”. I had thought that yesterday morning when reading the paper. Not a good association.
I understand and empathise with hawkish attitudes in respect of this. But I also have a lot of empathy for the poor bastards who have been living under the rule of a buch of nutters for the past decade or so. Life is cruel for them: live under bizarre and savage laws for years, and then have your potential liberators bomb the crap out of your cities.
Having some empathy for the average Afghan on the street would go a long way should counter-balance a desire to see justice done, and the understandable lust for vengeance.
“Fortress America” just sounds so wrong. A fort is not a place for the exercise of freedoms. Its a place to hole up. I hope that the American enjoyment of liberties is not replaced by a siege mentality.
AFAICT, neither American society nor the world is “polarized” at the time. There are small sections of our society and world society that disagree with what is being done, but nevertheless the actions undertaken enjoy wide bipartisan support at home and support abroad, going from unqualified (Britain) to extremely qualified (many Muslim nations).
Bush continues to enjoy a huge approval rating; it’s just that most Americans aren’t out in the streets. Why protest when you sadly if resolutely approve of what is being done?
I have huge amounts of empathy for the “Afghan in the street.” That lessens not one iota my need to see justice done. As it happens, I don’t believe those two states of mind are mutually exclusive.
I thought the same thing myself. But then I remembered, way way back in 1982, during the Falkland Islands War, one of the major newsweeklies like Newsweek ran a picture of a British aircraft carrier on its cover, steaming south at full speed, with the caption “The Empire Strikes Back”. And they were the good guys then, and they won. So there’s a good association for “strikes back”.
I don’t see a lot of hawks. Almost all the email I get (& almost automatically delete due to the redundancy) is from anti-war people.
Regarding the names for things: Doesn’t a lot of this boil down to semantics? The labels don’t matter much to me. I can’t think of anything better to call these things. “Holy War” is the worst thing I’ve ever heard.
Normally, all the pro-war talk would grate on my nerves, but given the current situation, I can certainly understand.
While I do consider myself a pacifistic liberal-leaning kinda guy, I also acknowledge the realities of the situation – sometimes violent action is needed for self-defense and deterrence, and the terrorists have made it very clear that they’re not willing to sit down at a diplomatic summit and air their grievances like civilized human beings. I am satisfied with the United States’ current course of action (“satisfied” in the sense that I think it’s striking the right balance between violent response and peace-making efforts), and most of the hawkish attitudes I’ve seen appear to be a reflection of that mood.
Now, if someone talks about prolonging the violence and nuking Afghanistan into a parking lot, then I’ll get peeved…
Not much disagreement, rjung. I think you are close to the heart of the matter. This is largely an emotional response, the urgent desire to strike back. As OBL (may he simmer in Hell in a pool of bacon fat) has made abundantly clear, it is his dearest hope to provoke military response. He knows as well as we that it its impossible without killing civilians, whose misery he fully intends to capitalize upon. We are following his script.
Has anyone given us a clear plan of how this military action will prevent attacks like WTC? Deterrence works on sane people, sometimes. I doubt very much it will be effective in this instance.
However…if it turns out that WTC pretty much shot thier Islamic wad, and they are unable to mount anything effective against us (and it has been eerily quiet on that front), you can bet your patootie the Hawks will hand themselves medals and claim victory. (You know how many combat medals and ribbons were handed out after our glorious struggle for Grenada? You wouldn’t believe it…)
Which would gall me, but, chinga lo…long as the killing stops.
This is all small potatoes. But powerful Hawks are, even as we speak, lobbying mightily to extend the war to other nations, to “settle things once and for all”. And that scares the bejabbers out of me.