I think in our society there’s a trend towards something of a … recreational victimhood. I’m not quite sure why, but a lot of people get a perverse and perhaps unconcious enjoyment of being a victim. Like they get to be some part of a special club. So all the weepy talk coming from Nebraska or California in the days, weeks, and months after the event from weepy people talking about what had been done to them personally weirded me out. Even now, when someone mentions a movie or something that features shots of the New York skyline, people will have to say “those buildings doesn’t exist anymore! :(”
Somehow I doubt that in 1941, after Pearl Harbor, people spent a lot of time relishing their victim status. They got pissed, got over it, and kicked ass. We’re such pussies now.
To answer the practical questions, I think we probably would be better off now if we did nothing at all in response to 9/11. Which isn’t to say that it didn’t justify a response, but rather, it was used as a crisis to drum up blind obedience to the government and allowed those in charge an excuse they’ve been waiting for to push through agendas that were otherwise untenable but suddenly with the rise of “support the government no matter what!” idiotic fervor were possible. Was Afghanistan, beefed up human intelligence, port security, etc. worth the cost of the blind obedience to the government, the notion that anyone who questions the president is a traitor, Iraq, Patriot Act, Guantanamo, torture, etc. worth it? Probably not.
The tone I got from her response was that by and large the attackers were probably justifiably reacting to American oppression in one form or another and thus (in some way) the attack was our just deserts. I think the "no love lost for America’ is pretty self evident.
That’s because …, well, I’ll make no assumptions about you. I’ll just say that she wrote nothing of the kind. Read it again:
Correct in every particular. Actions have consequences. Even good actions have bad consequences, and America’s actions have not been uniformly good. I think everyone has acknowledged that 9/11 was a big deal; what Sontag and others tried to point out is that it should have been no surprise.
There is a difference between understanding an action, and thinking it is justified. Like, understanding that a father might want to revenge the killer of his daughter, and to think that it is justified.
Quite apart from the fact that the full text of the commentary sort of oversteps fair use, the phrase “attacks were the acts of courageous victims of American oppression” does not appear in that text.
I don’t object to someone extrapolating from what is in the text. I do object to having the conclusion of that extrapolation thrust upon me without the benefit of the intervening rationalizatons.
P.S. flonks, “revenge” is a noun. “Avenge” is a verb.
kaylasdad, revenge can be either a verb or a noun, though you’re correct in your implication that flonks usage was incorrect. As a verb, revenge means “to avenge oneself of wrong by retaliating” or “to inflict injury.” One revenges an insult or an injury. One avenges another person who has been injured or killed.
In revenging the 9-11 attack, former President Bush sought to avenge those innocents who died that day.
I really didn’t want to get into this topic, but I just had to in agreement with Alex. If someone was hell bent on getting you, they would do much more damage than selective attacks on symbolic locations. The reason why these places were selected? Becasue it showed americans - “we* too can fight”. Hey, these terrorists could have easily slipped into the US society (before 9/11), somewhere in the sticks and silently killed of individuals one by one in their homes… hell… place 100 terrorists, each one told to kill 40 people, preferably without being caught… total number 4000. Bring in or recruit an army of 1000 individuals. Each one to kill 50 people… 50000 dead.
They didn’t do that. They just wanted to show, that “we too can kill your people on your soil, just like you are doing to us”.
Marty
not “we” as in “me” :eek:
PS… The above was an example and not a logistics exercise.
PS… I’m not defending war… War is evil… the world would be better if people just loved each other.
“Those people who destroyed 2 of your largest and most important buildings, attacked your national military headquarters, tried to destroy the seat of one branch of your federal government, killed 3,000 of your citizens, and by their own admission, planned to do a lot more? They’re not out to get you. Sheesh, what are you - paranoid?”
Pardon me, I have to go see a doctor now to get my eyes reattached - they just rolled out of my head. :rolleyes:
You would reduce the unprovoked slaughter of thousands of americans to a shin kicking 9 year old? It’s thinking like this, under the clinton adminstration, that lead us to 9/11.
This is the EXACT reason why I didn’t want to get into this - oh well. Before I continue, let me say this, before someone says otherwise. When I see the footage of what happened, I feel physically sick, I feel bad for all the victims, I would never wan’t such a devestation to happen again - anywhere.
Back to it.
The extreme left of thought (ie supporting the repressed (terrorists)) will NEVER be able to see or understand the side of the extreme right of thought (ie supporters of the US )*.
It’s like telling Hitler the good side of the Jews, and a Jew about the positives of Hitler**.
The attitude of “I’m right, and anything you say is wrong” just annoys me.
*(I’m neither… I can see both sided of the argument, agree/disagree on many arguments both sides have)
Ok, you can say, “they’d like to get us” kind of like a pothead “would like to get a job,” but they are too lazy, too disorganized, too far away to do it. So, yes, taken literally, “they are out to get us,” but in practice they’re not that big of a threat. All the propaganda be damned.
People may disagree with me on the definition of a “big threat” because Americans do not have much of a perspective on what threats are. This is the country where we are bombarded with proclamations of tragedy and denunciation of evil when a couple kids somewhere get hurt, because the media thinks their faces were photogenic. This is a country that has never been invaded, or faced famine, disease, and economic collapse that others see routinely. But even disregarding big-picture concerns, terrorism is simply much smaller than the day-to-day problems we face in America. Far smaller than murder, for one. (Which itself is smaller than car accidents, which themselves are far smaller than the things we typically suffer from.)
In 2001, 3,000 people died from terrorism. In that year, the worst year for terrorism in our history, about 3x as many people died from murder. 100x as many people were killed from mundane brutality in the past 30 years than from terrorism. And people lack an apperciation of that.
First of all, that’s one of the most common examples of faulty logic I see, even around here. “Y is worse than X, therefore X cannot be all that bad.”
Secondly, you’re solving for factors that you have no possible way of knowing. How many extremists are willing to die to attack the US? Of them, how many are capable of getting here? Of them, how many have been stopped? How many plots have been foiled at any given stage, that we’ll never know about? Dismissing all this, and more, to reach your pre-desired conclusion is, well . . . not . . . surprising.
:(”