BTW, New Iskander, your Saladin analogy is fatally flawed, although it is interestinmg that you picked that particular historical figure.
After nearly 200 years on the ground, the Crusaders were not quite terrorists. More to the point, Saladin did not invade Italy or France to compel the pope or the French king to accept Sharia law as a better method of conducting justice nor to punish them for sending the crusaders.
Rather, Saladin made war against an invading force of occupiers who were attempting to impose their Christian way of life on the Muslim inhabitants of the region, not unlike the claim that this “Christian” administration is going to impose democracy on the lands that we occupy.
It would seem that you should be addressing Mr. Clarke in your request for a citation as it his assertion that there was a “window of oppportunity”. However, the impracticalities of requesting such a citation from Mr. Clarke immediately present themselves.
Clarke’s comments were posted. You commented on how the parts of Clarke’s comments was painfully inane. I asked you why you thought that they were inane. I disagreed with some of the equations you said you used to arrive at the idea that Clarke’s comment was inane. My assessment of your means for determining relative inanity was only dependent on what you presented as the basis of your conclusion and some simple arithmetic.
It seems implied that a signifigant part of the reason you think Clarke’s comment’s inane is that you’re ignorant of the “window of opportunity” he refers to. Since, in general, just because New Iskander has an area of ignorance about a subject, it isn’t prima facie evidence of the inanity of the subject. Therefore, it seems that if you had information that refuted Mr. Clarke’s assertions about a “window of opportunity,” you would’ve presented it when you explained why you judged Mr. Clarke’s comment, (and, apparently, the comments of fellow posters), to be painfully inane. Since you did not do so, nor have you indicated that you’ve a propensity to present such information, that pretty much just leaves the combination of your own area of ignorance about a subject and the conflation of “al Qaeda et al” with the “Islamic world” as contained in the phrase, " they killed the whole bunch of us" for an explanation of how you came to the conclusion that Mr. Clarke’s comment was inane.
Perhaps it was not realistic, for Saladin was wise.
From what I read in B. Lewis it appears that expulsion of Crusaders had very little to do with religion. Muslims of those times were the most civilized and tolerant people in the whole world by far. Christians were allowed to Jerusalem for pilgrimage, were allowed to bring their own weapons. After Christian pilgrimages turned into a tidal wave, Jerusalem and many other Mideterranean outposts were conceded without any serious fighting (Jerusalem was not such a big deal back then, the center of civilized world was in Baghdad in Damascus), Crusader kingdoms were incorporated in the Levantine political scene. Serious issues arose when the worst of Crusader knights took to plundering Muslim pilgrims bound for Mecca, including sinking the whole boatloads of them just for fun. Saladin swore revenge and carried it out. It was his own WoT. After the fighting was over, most Christians were allowed to stay or leave as they desired, the worst ones Saladin beheaded himself.
I’m sorry. I was under a false impression that you have undertaken to argue for Mr. Clarke. Apparently, you did no such thing. You took Mr. Clarke words at face value and argued exclusively against me. So I guess I’m not going to get any cite, after all. Very well, I’ll provide my own. I will not pay attention to all the BS spewed by Muslim and Western officials and try to recollect the popular reaction. Immediately after 9-11 what stuck most in my mind were celebrations in the streets and complete absence of any show of popular support for US in Muslim countries. My selective memory preserves expressions like this, “Allah took out His sword”, which clearly meant that the time of war is upon us, the time “to kill and be killed”. That’s how majority of Muslims interpreted the event. Muslims are brave people, they are not afraid to fight and they are not afraid to die, they know the cruel part of life much better than most Westerners. There are episodes in Muslim history when blood flows in astonishing profusion and somehow purifies the whole world. I don’t hate Muslims and I don’t fear them, but to pretend that we don’t have a big fight on our hands is irrational.
Just compare these words, “Allah took out His sword”, uttered by a man in a Muslim crowd to asinine wishful thinking about “window of opportunity” by our terror bureaucrats, and you can understand how 9-11 came about so much better.
In fact, the only two places anit-American sentiment were expressed was in Iraq by official Iraqi news (who you can imagine were about as Anti-American as it is possible to be) and some Palestinians. These reports of Palestinian protesting were overblown, and in fact when the protesters were told of how many people were killed most were shocked and changed their stories. I will try to find a cite for that.
So, we did in fact have a window with most of the world, including the Muslim world (with the possible exlusion of Iraq and Palestine).
Paul Krugman quotes the following from yesterday’s USA Today:
I can’t find it on the USA Today site, but I don’t imagine Krugman’s making this up. So that seems to confirm most of the story cited in the OP.
It’s the smoking gun: we really did pull resources away from the war on al-Qaeda to fight Iraq.
That’s “smoking gun” as in “unmistakable, irrefutable evidence”, btw, not as in “will bring down a Presidency.” It may help, though. Bush can no longer claim that the one didn’t interfere with the other.
I was just curious about how you reached the conclusion that what Mr. Clarke said was inane. I thought that you might have some info to share. It’s completely unecessary to accept Mr. Clarke’s words at any value to ask after the possibility of additional, pertinent information.
What criteria do you use to establish which things “spewed by Muslim and Western officials” are BS and which are valid?
Would you please share your source for the highlighted section? Where did you come across the information that 500,000,000+ people around the globe interpreted 9-11 as “the time of war is upon us, the time “to kill and be killed””?
You’re implying that the fight is with Muslims in general?
“a man in a Muslim crowd” vs a counter-terrorism expert hired by the Bush Admin
Hard call about who’d be more trustworthy. I mean, “a man in a Muslim crowd” is pretty generic. So to start, he’d be about as trustable as any random stranger having a bout of whooping schadenfreude.
Being a counter terrorism expert is neutral, but being hired by a presidential administration casts some doubt on his general honesty. I’ve heard that it can be hard to keep politician from rubbing off on you, (Doper politicians excluded of course).
“Allah took out His sword” vs “we had a window of opportunity, where we could change the ideology in the Islamic world”
The odds are that “a man in a Muslim crowd” is not a cleric who is considered an expert on what God wants. Maybe he is, but the random probability is slim.
On the other hand, Mr. Clarke’s addressing something related to his feild of expertise.
So while I think that a randomly selected “man in a Muslim crowd” is more likely to be forthright than a fella who’s been a long-time staffer of a US presidential administration, I think that in this instance that what the staffer said is more likely to be correct, (at least technically correct), than what the random man said.
Unless there’s reasonable reason to believe that “a man in a Muslim crowd” either controls or speaks for the Islamic world, the things he says don’t really that have much to do with what Mr. Clarke said.
It may be a good idea to compare the “selective memory” of yours that you spoke of to some external sources of facts to resynchronize assessments from time to time.
Any statements by gov. officials unsupported by actions are BS. Please see example of Taliban words and deeds in preceding post.
Such is my impression.
I am implying that the fight is with Muslim radicals, while the whole Muslim world in particular and the World in general are at stake. Exactly like WWII was with Hitlerites, while the whole Germany in particular and the World in general were at stake.
Mr. Clarke spoke so much with his sphincter he is now drowning in his own verbal excrement. He is all yours, do what you want with him. I suggest a bath first.
Ouch. But “sharp and shooting pains” are disappearing…
Cite?
Oh, that was you asking for a citation! In other words, you took a couple of images of fewer than a couple of hundred people who had specific reasons for hating the U.S. before the attacks who were displayed on TV for their shock value and have applied their reaction to hundreds of millions of Muslims who displayed completely different reactions and are now rationalizing your selective choice of facts with broad-brush claims that you “know” how Muslims are–despite the fact that you have demonstrated that you possess no such “knowledge.”
I already said that I think people dancing in the streets after 9-11 were mostly mentally unstable. I am not basing my opinion of general Muslim reaction on them. Instead, I am basing them on things we didn’t see, such as a spontaneous public show of support for US anywhere in Middle East. Can you provide an example? Because some say that I need to tune to the real world.
“Allah took out His sword”, is not an anti-US statement in any way. These are words of regular Muslim man who seen a lot of grief in life, lost almost all hope and knows that there is a whole lot more grief to come, now.
I couldn’t possibly read through all of them yet, but I will make an effort. However, I must say right away that I don’t expect those cites to tell me anything I don’t know already. I know there are great many decent people in Islamic world, which have nothing in common with those types we are fighting now. I also know that their views were not reported enough in Western media. SimonX was trying to do a smear job on me and paint me as some kind of bigot and I don’t know how much you bought into that. I met many Muslims in my life and most of them were good people that I can learn how to improve myself from. Still, the reality of life on this planet is that those people are beholden to a different culture, different civilization even; they are not going to immediately support us in the fight against their own oppressors and are quite likely to fight against us. We have to do a great deal to win those people over. I think it’s possible; Germans were that way, Japanese even more, but there is an enormous job to be done.
When I cited “Allah took out His sword” as an example how I believe great many people in Muslim world have interpreted 9-11, I had in mind how many Germans and Japanese must have had interpreted the news of Pearl Harbor: the life was pretty brutal before, it sure is going to get a whole lot worse now.
Returning to the “window of opportunity”: please answer me this: all those people whose responses to 9-11 you cited, did they advocate violence against US before 9-11? Did 9-11 change their minds only for a while? Finally, and most importantly, how many of those decent people are advocating violence against US now? Because if those people were always honest and decent, were always against violence and remain unchanged in their hearts to this day, then there was no special “window” open on 9-11, the “window” was there always and remains there even now. 9-11 was an attempt to close this window, not to open it. That is the major reason I found Clarke comments frivolous and even inane. Decent Muslim people you cited and great many others would never even dream to describe their long held convictions this way:
**Iraq invasion harming the War on Terror: the smoking gun? **
What’s the debate here? What smoking gun? In a world of limited resources, dividing those resources is going to harm one of the endeavors that is competing for the resources. That should be obvious to all concerned.
Did the war in Iraq detract from the war in Afghanistan? Of course.
Was it worth it to get rid of Saddam? Some think so, some think not.
Ftr, I did no such thing. I’ve only attempted to examine your thought processes.
I don’t think that you’re necessarily a bigot. I do believe you when you said that you judge things based on the content of your “selective memory” though.
A long-time WH counter-terrorism expert said that there was an increase in sympathy for the US following 9-11. New Iskande says that there was no increase of sympathy for the US following 9-11. As evidence, NI cites anedotes from his “selective memory” that demonstrate the “selective memory’s” lack of evidence supporting an increase of sympathy for the US and anbecdotes from his selective memory that demonstrate an increase in antipathy for the US.
The long-time WH counter-terrorism expert says that the increase in sympathy for the US was bounded by reactions to the WH’s aggressive foreign policy ventures- that the increase in sympathy is now gone as a result of US actions. NI says that the smattering evidence presented by tnd of an increase in sympathy for the US is evidence of duplicity if those involved subsequently changed their mind about the increased sympathy.
What’s really in conflict are the contents NI selective memory and NI’s use of his conclusions as both premises and conclusions, and the long-time WH counter-terrorism expert’s assessment of things.
I mean both acknowledge that there was an increase in expressions of sympathy for the US after 9-11. They both acknowledge that these expressions of sympathy have tapered off. The long-time WH counter-terrorism expert found that the tapering off is a result of the WH’s aggressive foreign policy ventures and NI found that the tapering was merely evidence of duplicity on the parts of those who expresssed the sympathy in the first place.
Why [did NI choose to see the subsequent tapering as merely evidence of duplicity instead of some other way, one might ask?
My personal suspicion is that it is because that view fit more easily with the contents of his “selective memory;” however, one could ask
“NI, why would you see the change of mind re expressions of sympathy for the US as evidence of duplicity rather than a change of mind that resulted from changing circumstances?”
Again with the “It’s inane because I disagree with it because it doesn’t match the contents of my selective memory. I disagree with it becase it’s inane because it doesn’t match the contents of my selective memory,” schtick.
Anyway, just to be clear, **I never called you a bigot or tried to smear you. **
John, I agree with every word you say. In a rational world, with a rational Administration, there would be no debate.
But the current Administration has claimed all along that the Iraq excursion doesn’t impede our ability to combat al-Qaeda and its fellow travelers. And millions of Americans believe the Administration when it says such things.
Hence the necessity of specifics to back up common sense. Only when that moment arrives when Middle America realizes that this Administration has been repeatedly conning them on a multitude of issues in order to get its way, will they be able to see the obvious once again.
Remember how long it took back in Watergate, to get the idea through to most folks that Nixon had some pretty serious stuff to hide, even when it was obvious from the word go? It’s like Watergate all over again, only with the stakes raised a hefty notch. So yeah, I want “specificity”, just like the GOP demanded that long-ago summeer night in the House Judiciary Committee, a couple nights before they voted the impeachment resolutions.
I found it more than a little strange that you quizzed me very deliberately regarding my interpretation of Clarke’s words, yet you didn’t slow down and ask me any clarifying questions before lecturing me with platitudes like these:
You don’t want to jump to conclusions except when you want to jump to conclusions?
Also, you completely misunderstood or trying to misinterpret my statement that “windows of opportunity” exist between honest and reasonable people always and forever. Self-serving fanatics like UbL are trying to close them, while self-serving US bureaucrats are trying to bamboozle us with yelps, "The window is opening! The window is closing!” and they both can go to hell, hand in hand. This simple truth is supported by the cites tomndebb has provided, while you refused to do so.
RTFirefly: Why did you surprise me with a civil, rational answer? No Fair!
Now: In my lifetime, I have called leaders and members of the following administrations liars:
G.W. Bush, Clinton, Bush the First, Reagan, Nixon, Johnson and Kennedy.
I don’t recall if the Ford and Carter administrations lied or not. Most likely their lies were of the sort that did not impress/outrage me enough to label them as liars.
I presume that if Kerry gets elected, his administration will also lie, so lying/spin doctoring is not going to be a factor in who I cast my vote for come November. My vote is still up for grabs. A few more calm and rational responses such as yours from the Brotherhood of Bush Bashers[sup]TM[/sup] may cause me to give Kerry more careful consideration.
Do you really think that “Mid-America” is not aware of the lies? I think that many people just assume it’s business as usual around the White House.