After swimming this morning I heard a man speaking to another in the locker room. Summarizing what I remember:
I had to leave to get to work, but I realized what that point of view meant. The showing of the sole of the shoe is a grave insult in the Middle Eastern world. A gunner would sit in the open doorway and be basically thumbing their noses at the Iraqi people every instant as they flew over.[ul][li]Do you think this really occurred?[]What percentage of Iraqi/Muslim/Middle-Eastern/etc. people would actually think Americans were trying to be insulting versus just being obliviously insensitive?[]What other customs and deeply held beliefs do you think Americans don’t know or ignore that engender hatred in other peoples?[/ul]Stream-of-conscious:[/li]I was thinking about how I’m oblivious to some things and how I treat other things lightly. If someone flipped me the bird I would just ignore them, not want to kill them. But if someone tries to cut me off in traffic, I’ll block them. I’m “anonymous” in my car, but if I had to wear a priests collar while driving I wouldn’t be so aggressive because I wouldn’t want anyone to think badly about a “priest.”
As an American I think we, as a culture, typically allow just about anything to be said and done. We want to be open-minded and tolerant, as long as we’re still invited to parties. Then someone calls our values or ethics into question according to their values and ethics. We want to be liked, if not necessarily by our accuser then by our own friends. We worry that our friends might get a bad or wrong idea about us and - not like us. So we bend over backward and become Politically-Correct. We squash ideas under doctrine and legislation so that we don’t have to take a stand.
The war in Iraq is about liberation, and about the oil, and about terror, and about business, and about rights, and about what’s good for you, and about control, and about freedom, and about a lot of things.
What values do you think people are imposing in this war, and when do people back down because they just want to be liked? When do we stand for our convictions against all odds, and when do we sell out a good idea for what we think is a greater ideal? When do the means justify the end, and when does the end justify the means?
[sub]Well, no need for any more threads now. I’ve just about put every question in this one. … Good thing those helicopters weren’t playing the theme from Apocalypse Now! or this discussion would deteriorate really quickly.[/sub]
I do not believe for a minute that the Iraqis hate the Americans because they fly over Iraq dangling their feet out the doors. I believe that is just a silly simplification and Iraqis have more substantial reaons for hating Americans. You know, like Americans having invaded their country and having killed a lot of people and continue to occupy their country and kill people. If Americans had arrived as tourists I can guarantee you they would not be hated like this even if they showed their butts.
The war is about money and power, not about a show of feet.
And I thought it was American flounder and sole was English. What America has is soul.
Except that polls show that most Iraqis are pretty happy with us being, and in fact, want more of us there. We invaded their country, but we didn’t blow them all to hell and we erased Saddam almost totally from the picture. Fact is, th vast majority of them seem to want us to kill more people, so long as we get rid of the Baathists.
Basic point of order: the country wasn’t theirs to begin with.
smiling bandit, I am sure you can provide citations in support of your assertions.
American forces are under attack daily and it is quite clear the attackers have the help of the local population. If the locals denounced the attackers, the Americans would catch them easily.
After every attack you see Iraqis cheering. The most recent case was with the downed helicopter. Not long ago I saw a swarm of children who were throwing stones at an American vehicle which had hit a mine and the soldiers had to fire their weapons to turn them away.
We have all seen and heard about many instances of anti-American demonstrations. Now please tell me where you have seen the pro-American demonstrations. Tell me where you have seen Iraqis come rushing to help the Americans. Where and when they had massive pro-American demonstrations.
Please explain why those Iraqis who have helped Americans are being given visas to live in America because they fear for their safety in Iraq.
Please provide ample evidence to support your assertions which go so much against all the evidence we are seeing.
But, this reminds me how at the beginning of the occupation there was some grief because the troops were wasting their time ripping up a Bush Sr. mosaic instead of stopping looting. Seems the floor mosaic (thus having people walk on his face) was deemed plenty insulting to the ol’ Pres.
Oh smiling bandit, have you heard that the Iraqi’s all want their daughters to marry American soldiers and start making American babies? Don’t have a cite handy. Everything is gonna be aaaalright.
Well, regardless of the standard issues regarding the war that this thread has already raised, the “story” from the OP is bullshit. Even in 'Nam it was pretty rare for a gunner to hang his feet out the side of a Huey. I have never seen a photo of a Blackhawk where the gunner was dangling his legs. And, of course, the Chinook (the actual copter that was shot down) rarely even carries a side-door gunner. This is an invention by someone who wants to create a situation, either by portraying the U.S. as so culturally ignorant that they would insult people while utterly oblivious of their own actions or by portraying the Iraqis as so backwards as to take offense from points of “honor” that are simply ridiculous.
sailor, it’s interesting that you don’t see any need to provide a cite for your assertations that the Iraqis hate the Americans. You also insist that smiling bandit provide a cite for his claims that the opposite is in fact true.
tomndebb, Good to know, thanks. I’ve heard about the showing-the-shoe-is-an-insult, but it’s hard to believe it could be taken so seriously. Then I think that with people all around you dieing that you could see life as cheap and take the little things to heart. But here I am, safe and sound, walking down aisles filled with food, rinsing leftover food down the sink with lots of water and I don’t know what their life is like. And I’m not going to apologize or feel guilty for having a nice life either.
And that’s my sad point. It’s so hard to know what’s true and what’s false. Every news media, government office, watchdog group, and pro-/anti-whatever just want to portray the events and ideas that serve their own cause. It’s so hard to find plain facts so that I can make up my own mind.
I am thinking that maybe I need to find the most pro-site and most anti-site on an issue so that I can see what each side has to say and compare-and-constrast. Unfortunately, just like stores that say “We guarantee the lowest price [sub]on the same item[/sub],” they only stock the item that is purchased for their chain.
Since it seems to be hard to find fair-and-balanced information, do you think it’s a productive idea to find pro- and anti- sites to try to get diametric viewpoints so that I could just get some facts to be able to form my own opinions?
Does anyone have recommendations for sites that they think are fair-and-balanced? Does anyone have recommendations for sites that they think are pro- and anti-? If you’ want to mention really nutty sites, go ahead, but please mark which are for entertainment purposes and which are your real recommendation, thanks
Its perfectly true that in some parts of Iraq people hate us. But then, some parts of Iraq had it pretty good under Saddam.
Because, after all, even the worst, most inhuman son-of-a-***** needs his home base. And Saddam’s was -and is- Tikrit. these people didn’t get purged quite like the the rest of Iraq. They didn’t revolt, and they weren’t butchered. They were Saddam’s loyal minions, because they got everything in return. There’s a place in Iraq - well, an artificial region - called the Baathist Triangle. It stretches from Tikrit to some other place I can’t recall, to a small section of Bagdad.
And that area has been by far the most dangerous in Iraq. fact is, the poeple who are fighting us are figthing us not because of some noble ideal that we mercilessly crushed, but because we took away their rights to money, power, and control. The people of Iraq didn’t own Iraq. The Baathists did. They killed thousands in horrific ways over the last ten years, and they have no qualms about killing us to get their filthy hands back to the ability to kill thousands more.
Like burning the American flag? Or portraying Ronald Reagan as less-than-saintly?
The BBC remains my first choice for balanced reporting. Barring that, the SDMB is a good source as well, if only because people here are conditioned to back up their arguments with data.
“Assertations” is not an English word. Let’s start with that.
I get very tired of people asking for citations and when I provide plenty of them they do not acknowledge them or admit their error. They just disappear from the thread and go and repeat the same crap in other threads where we start the same song and dance all over again. If you want citations all you have to do is search for my posts because there are plenty of them.
If you are saying Iraqis are not attacking Americans, Iraqis are not demonstrating against Americans, Iraqis are demonstration in favor of Americans, that is an extraordinary assertion which goes against everything we are reading and seeing these days and such an extraordinary assertion is what requires proof.
On the other hand, do you really need proof that Iraqis are attacking and killing Americans daily? Do you really need proof that the US command has recently said attacks are increasing to about 30 - 35 daily? Don’t you read the news? Haven’t you seen footage of anti-American demonstrations almost daily? What world do you live in?
Here’s a sample:
And that’s the police captain who was, I assume, the most sympathetic the US could find.
Are you saying all the attacks are carried out by a small minority with no support from the population?
I’ll tell you what. In this and other threads I have provided citations showing Americans are not welcome in Iraq. I am confident I can provide two citations supporting that for every one you provide to the contrary. Let us see of you can so the same. Provide two citations for every one of mine showing Iraqis love Americans. Show they are not attacking them but helping them, Show Iraqis in mourning for American casualties, Show they demonstrate in favor of Americans and against those who attack Americans. Let’s see who runs out of citations first. Your turn.
Since I cannot post photos here I have made a web page where I have posted some photos and their captions.
And a bunch of citations. I anxiously await proof that all this is not representative and that photos of Iraqis showing their love for American troops are more representative.
I distrust any poll of Iraqis at the present time. I don’t think that the pollsters have any way of knowing what a “random sample” of the Iraqi population is, or contacting the selected individuals in their sample, and I’m not sure that they have enough knowledge about Iraqi society to frame the questions properly. It seems to me they are no better than the man-in-the-street questions you occasionally see in the local newspaper.
Those things are crucial and are sometimes screwed up, even in polls of the US population with which poll takers ahve a lot of experience.
Since we did not, in fact, deny these things, I submit that you have not added anything to the debate with your wild accusations of ignorance and insanity.
… Good thing those helicopters weren’t playing the theme from Apocalypse Now! or this discussion would deteriorate really quickly.[/sub]