Abbie, I can understand your bowing out of that part of the thread (I would too, in your position), but I hope you’ll remain arguing with the rest of us.
For example, I think this excerpt shows what I’m saying. If you were one of the ME folks who was trying to decide whether to change US policy in your homeland through political means or through strapping a bomb to yourself and blowing up a bunch of Americans, how would the stuff you quoted influence your decision?
I think that the propaganda war is a vital part of the war on terror. I think that speeches like Gore’s are essential to showing folks in the Middle East that a political solution is possible.
Once again I can agree you have a valid view. How about this I do a speech that if Gore delivered I would not be upset about?
“Hello fellow partners for peace, stability and economic advancement in the region, I know America has made mistakes, and I know sometimes the current Administration is not forthcoming with apologies for those mistakes. But I want to assure you that not all American’s feel this way, many are very upset about the detention of the 1000 plus Arabs immediately following 9/11, and they are ashamed of the lack of civil rights some of them where detained without. Most of those Arab’s where rounded up for minor offenses, visa problems and the like. We simply must not act like that in the future, as a strong American/Saudi relationship is vital for the region and the world. Most Americans will tell you they believe the policy was wrong and hopes it will be changed. We as a nation, do not condone such behavior, and as one American I would like to say sorry”
Sorry for it being sucky but hopefully you can get what I am trying to say. His being vague with specifics could lead to people (wrongly) assuming things.
Are you saying that if he gave enough specifics, you’d be okay with the speech? I think I can understand what you mean by that (although I don’t think that more specifics would have placated O’Reilly et al).
If that’s what you mean, then I think it is important to see the full text of the speech. The offending comments may have been summary comments, with full specifics elsewhere in the speech.
If not, then I’ll agree with you that he should have clarified what he was talking about. I do not agree, however, that he was fomenting hate with the speech: there certainly are plenty of things happening right now that he could have brought up as specifics in the course of making a speech that properly criticized the Adminsitration’s actions and encouraged Saudis to realize that there are those in America who can be their partners in a political solution to the crisis.
Yes I am saying that, I said something similar to that earlier in the thread.
I give a rats ass about O’Reilly, Michael Moore, Rush Limbaugh, Anti-war mom who camped out on Bushes lawn etc. I really don’t care what any total partisan has to say. You tell me I cannot believe in my right to have a gun, don’t agree with this being a fill Bushes buddies pockets with cash war, I shouldn’t be a Democrat. You tell me I cannot believe in a woman’s right to choose, gay marriage, so I cannot be a Republican. So I guess you can say I do not believe in most of the talk coming from anyone that is a straight party thinker.
No he did not give specific’s, sadly I cannot find the cite I was using that had a large portion of his speech, google is currently over-run by wanna be pundits on this speech. I will continue looking though.
It’s the idea that he’s “inciting hate” that sticks in my craw. I’m with you that whenever a person accuses someone else of committing a wrong, they oughtta give specifics. But I don’t agree that a lack of specifics points toward a desire to “incite hate.” Nor do I agree that this will have the effect of inciting hate.
I hope you’re right. But I have seen now what a simple cartoon can invoke. Let alone a speech from a former VP that can be construed to mean we rounded up 10’s or 100’s of thousands of Arab’s right after 9/11, held them all in unforgivable conditions etc.
If his intention was not to incite hatred and/or brownie points with the left, what would you assume his intent was? Bearing in mind he probably has some intelligent speech writers, and intelligence of his own, that would make it seem IMHO that leaving out specifics was intentional.
First, I’m not convinced he left out specifics–I’d need to see the whole speech in order to make that call.
Second, if he did leave out specifics, he might have done so in the belief that his audience knew enough specifics to fill them in themselves. He might have done so for rhetorical reasons: the speech had a rhythm that would be disrupted by the addition of statistics, dates, etc. He could have done so because he was being lazy. There are many reasons why he could have done so which would be bad reasons but would not be equivalent to inciting hatred.
Finally, there’s a big difference between the cartoons and this speech. The cartoons were a deliberate effort to insult Islam. The speech was an attempt to talk with Muslims about relationships between the two countries. I still don’t see any plausible line that can be drawn between the speech and a specific hypothetical violent act.
Nor can I see a line between the speech and a specific violent act. I see this on the same line as a recruitment tool.
Fake Video:
Gore:“Arabs in the United States where indiscriminately rounded up, often on minor charges of overstaying a visa or not having a green card in proper order, and held in conditions that were just unforgivable.”
Voice over: See followers of Islam, the Americans are abusing us, the former VP of the United States admits it. Do not allow those American dogs to abuse us Arabs any longer. Join the fight! It is not just isolated to Iraq and Afghanistan, this is a war against us, even in the “free lands” of America!
The problem with this is that I don’t think there’s any doubt in the mind of the fence-sitters that Americans are committing atrocities. As I said earlier, they’ve got plenty of evidence for that already. Having Gore say it isn’t going to be the statement that convinces them: the only thing it’s likely to convince them of is that some Americans agree with their disgust.
For this scenario to be plausible, there’d have to be people who think, “You know, it’s kinda tempting to attack and kill American civilians, given what the US is doing to Muslims. Only, I’m not sure if they really ARE doing anything to Muslims–after all, the government that I suspect is violating the rights of Muslims, the government whose citizens I’m considering murdering, denies they’re doing anything wrong. If only some former representative of that government would admit it, I could be sure!”
I think someone could have written a speech with specifics that would really be an incitement. Second, the importance of something in a speech is directly related to the amount of time spent on it. If Gore covered this in one or two sentences, and specifics would have taken ten sentences, then the revised speech would have made the issue 5 - 10 x worse.
Third, you write a speech for a specific audience. His audience almost certainly knew the details of the situation, so taking time to remind them of it might be considered inflammatory.
Finally, the attitude that Gore mentioning the abuse in someway would remind the terrorists of it seems related to the mindset that calling torture not torture makes it better, ignoring memos about bin Laden’s plans means they won’t happen, and not responding to email about dikes breaking means that there will be no flood. Terrorists know how to Google too.
An excellent point. Not to mention that if the standard we now use is “if any sentence or sentence fragment of this speech, taken out of context, might possibly be used by radical Muslims in a recruiting video, then this speech is evil/bad/traitorous/scandalous/whatever”, well, that’s sure as hell going to curtail the ability for public figures to ever talk meaningfully about this issue.
I still have some minor reservations about the speech, and insist he should of worded it better. But I withdraw inciting hatred as a reason, and that means, well you have won. And I do not mean that in a bad way, you have debated in a compelling manner and changed my view. I can no longer in good faith say his speech will cause or be the cause of violence.
Thanks, Abbie! And for the record, I started off thinking Gore couldn’t be criticized for the speech; you convinced me that the lack of specifics was problematic. So we BOTH win!
It totally cracks me up how the true-believers go so absolutely ape-shit every time a Democrat (i.e, traitor) points out the truth about the Bush administration. “It is not the time or the place to discuss such nonsense”. Fuck you. The funeral of Coretta Scott King or an economic forum in Saudi Arabia are perfectly appropriate places to bring up the total and complete incompetance of the Bush administration. In fact, I cannot think of a situation in which it would be inappropriate to bring up such topics, unless it was the actual funeral of GWB himself.
what the fuck is this nonsense about not overseas, not in time of (war??) not from politicians, blah blah blah.
a spade is a spade. We are playing a fucked up hand, and it doesn’t help to pretend otherwise, whether here or abroad.
I say “teach it, Al–if only you hadn’t waited so long to find your balls.”
I cannot believe that there remains any semi-literate person who doubts that we are enthusiastically torturing whoever we take (or mis-take) for the “enemy”.
Lets move on from parsing whether a glo stick up the ass is torture, shall we…
In point of fact, having a person of Gore’s standing reference our shortcomings is far more likely to redound to our credit and undercut 'sama’s recruiters–it’s not like the people we have broken and then released aren’t talking shit about us already the obfuscations floated by the lying sacks of shit we have permitted to grab control of our once great country aren’t fooling anybody but the determinedly self-deluded and panic stricken kool aid drinkers who piss on themselves everytime an airplane flys overhead.
