Or so says a favorite lefty/comic writer of mine, Dan Savage
I would have to say that the his opinion of the current situation almost perfectly aligns with my own.
I wonder what my fellow Lefties have to say?
Stoid, I don’t know how carefully you read that article, but are you seriously in favor of “the West remaking the Middle East” through military invasion, occupation and imposition of our “superior” values??! Yikes!
Dan Savage does not speak for this particular Leftie, thank you. Feel free to make a better case than he did, but I find it surprising that you’d be on board with Western imperialism, even for the sake of liberal values.
Well, honestly Xeno, as an American woman living in he year 2003 and having lived through the 60’s and 70’s, I find that I just can’t work up any indignation at intruding on cultures that treat women worse than stray dogs, and that this feeling has always been the overriding one when I consider the Middle East.
So as far as that goes, yeah, I think we do have superior values. I really do agree with Savage when he says this:
No, I’m not all about making war on an entire region over it, but I’m definitely down with finding ways to bring 'em around to our way of thinking. I don’t think invading Iraq is going to help us acheive that, in fact, I think it’s going to do the opposite.
I agree with finding ways to bring 'em around to the Western ideas of equal rights, etc.; absolutely. But (and I feel like a good little capitalist pig saying this) maybe the best way to do that is through free and open commerce and joint business ventures.
:…wipes sweat from brow…:
Now look what you made me say!
Leftie, for the war and I don’t think there are any WOMD. I also think Dan Savage don’t thunk real gud – seems clueless on geo-politics and forgets concepts like the right to self-determination and stoof like *religious/cultural imperialism – al that stuff is so popular right now in the Muslim world. Gee, those folks, they jis can’t get enough of Jesus Christ and Britney and Freedom Fries and Jo-Lo ….no sur. And damn, that Christian / capitalism / democracy thang …… Well ! we all know * fur sure that suits everyone, them folks jis don’t know it yetaways …
I’d suggest he also look at who supported the regional nutters in the first damn place, who manipulated the region so the Arabs fighting amongst themselves for 30 years while Israel grew stronger and who is more resented in the region that ever, namely the USA/CIA.
Sorry, the man is a fool.
Btw, Is there any chance, any time soon, of folks realising that American values (whatever the fuck they are right now) are not what most of the world wants, let alone wants imposed on them, cos they have a funny habit of serving American self interests. Period. People wake up after 50 years / 3 generations of the same crap. For goodness sake, what on earth do you think ‘American values’ are doing in Saudi right now, where did most of the 9/11 bombers come from …
Out of interest Stoid, I guess you don’t think US arrogance / Imperialism (in various shades) contributed to 9/11 (as per various OBL interviews) in the first place … you don’t feel you’re going round in circles, history repeating and all that, cos you can’t see a solution without the US / Israel - and the US / Israel alone - imposing one . That attitude doesn’t strike you as involve making a few arrogant, Imperialistic, Kipling-esque assumptions of your own ?
How the hell any Left of centre commentator - even an American Left of centre commentator - can write an article that long without using the word ‘Palestine’ even once … I give up …
I think putting political pressure on Saudi Arabia and Kuwait to enact social reforms would be less costly (both in terms of money and in international goodwill) than the current war effort.
I need a definition, ** London. ** “Self-determination” - see, I’m all about that. But when I use the term “self” I mean * individual * “self”, not * collective* self. I’ve just heard too many horror stories from women to put too much stock in that “self” determination stuff when used to refer to entire countries.
Well, I don’t quite agree with the way you put it, “contributed to 9/11” because 9/11 was the act of a bunch of severely wrong-headed people, and I have never felt that it was something that was directly “our fault”. But I absolutely do believe that American arrogance and imperialism pissed them off. And we sure as hell need to clean up our act and find better ways of being in the world, because we fuck up all the time, and it is our blind and stupid self-interest that causes it. If we were trying to spread our values in a manner that was actually motivated by a desire to see a more democratic, free and peaceful world * for its own sake *, and not as a cover for advancing our economic interests, I think we’d see better results. Because our actions would be smarter, more helpful, less destructive.
And yes, I know that I’m living in Oz on this one, but a person can dream, can’t they?
I agree, ** rjung. **
It looks to me like Xeno and Stoid have tripped over a fault line running through modern liberalism. This would be worthy of a thread in itself. I think Mickey Kaus of http://www.kausfiles.com/ has explored this issue. He’s been described as a liberal trying to save liberalism from itself. I read him regularly, despite disagreeing with a lot of his politics.
I also read Dan Savage regularly in the Onion’s AV Club. He doesn’t strike me as someone who is easily pigeonholed as a “lefty” (except for the hating George Bush part), his hyperbolic description of himself as a “lifelong lefty of the commie- pinko-faggot variety” notwithstanding.
I think “soft libertarian” or “left libertarian” might fit him better. With some neocon tendencies on foreign policy, given his support of the war in principle, and some of the other stuff he said in that article.
“We need him gone, but not like this, not like this” are the words that echo in my mind from the wisest Iraqi I know, and hugely respect.
Blaming 9/11 on America in any way is like blaming the Holocaust on the jews. 9/11 was done to us. For absolutely no other reason than to butcher civilians.
With that in mind, I am totally in favor of dragging the Middle East into the 21st century (hell, the 20th would be nice), kicking and screaming if necessary. They quite obviously can’t do it themselves.
Check this out for a good view of what’s wrong with them.
Well said, Hail Ants.
Since everybody seems to be such a fan of this war, its looking like the next one may be with the next door neighbor and axis of evil partner.
Apparantly Iran is doing its best to get ahead of N Korea on our hit list. Dumb bastards.
Yeah, it had nothing to do with the US. And after the US do what they will with Iraq and consequently piss off a whole new generation of terrorists, and then those new terrorists do something to the US like 9/11, and then the US decides to launch another attack on the Middle East, pissing off more people who retaliate… The US will of course be utterly blameless.
This is the stuff that long running religious wars are made of, and I seriously hope that the US isn’t getting itself in way too deep.
No, not well said, Hail Ants, not well said at all. Very poorly said. Because those 19 men and the people who sent them on their way were not without “any other reason” than butchering civilians… you make it sound as though they did it for shits and giggles, because they were a bunch of Ted Bundys who managed to find each other and beat off to the sight of human beings dying in mass numbers. And that’s ludicrous and self-serving.
They had very real reasons. They were bad reasons, or maybe not; the reasons could conceivably be argued as entirely legitimate…it was the act itself that lacked legitimacy.
And I can’t tell you how disturbing your use of the term “hit list” is, ** debaser. **
Sorry Stoid for sounding off, I just tend to vent a little at the moment. I see the Right of Cheney and Rumsfeld and Pearle, etc. with a really crystal agenda and the road ahead clear for them; the acquisition of Iraq by the dominant market player (USA.PLC), with a much wider agenda unrolling through this term and the next. Yet, at the same time, the Left of centre is pole-axed by woolly thinking and hand-wringing about the legitimacy of invasion/Liberation - no one on the left is looking at the big picture and addressing this new and grand, neo-conservative ideology as it patriotically unfurls. I’ve never been to angry at the Left.
Well, you don’t get one Stoid – think back, someone says to, say, your Great/Grandmother before universal suffrage “I want a definition before I give it to you”. How does that work ? It works like this, women got what they could and worked at getting more – how long was it from, say, getting the vote to Roe vs. Wade - would your Great/Grandmother have included the latter in her list of prerequisites ? It ain’t one-stop shopping.
Instead, you give people space for self-determination, a framework, a conducive environment based on ownership of land and property, a judicial system, etc and they work out the details over decades … you don’t engineer the rise of Saddam Hussian and say ‘Okay, we got that kinda right, lets have another stab’ cos after 20 years of doing your bidding he becomes a loose cannon for ten.
Find me one, just one example in all history of an imposed political/social solution working – it doesn’t because, like Communism, human nature rejects it.
I wouldn’t go as far as Savage, but I have said from the beginning that a case can probably be made for this war–it’s just that Bush and his administration haven’t made it.
L_C got it precisely right in that penultimate paragraph (the one about setting a framework for self-determination). Invasion and occupation suck at establishing “values”; what wars are good at, the entire point of waging war, is to establish control over territory or the production and marketing of goods. That means an occupying force establishes economic rules for the occupied, at the point of a gun, and old values become something jealously retained by the occupied people while they mimic the conquerors’ values for the sake of accomodation.
You don’t create good little democrats that way. What you create are good little terrorists.
The wooly mammoth relaxed, and considered the situation. The black ooze of the tarpit bubbled around his ankles, inching slowly, slowly towards his knees. He was pleased with his decision. He had considered wading into the tar pit, but worried he might not get deep enough before he was stuck. After careful planning, he took a bold gamble. He went back about half a mile, got a running start and leapt nimbly into the tar, landing squarely on all four feet.
The situation was excellent. He was content.
Sigh…
Oh yeah, don’t wanna make the terrorists mad at us.
News flash: They already hate us with every fiber of their being. And for no reason other than we’re a prosperous, but non-muslim people.
Now is not the time to give peace a chance. We were at peace when 9/11 happened. Now is the time for decisive, unwavering, and overwhelming military action.
Those who hate us are not going to be reasoned or bargained with because there is no legitamite reason for their actions and there is no legitamite bargain to be made. They are either going to realize that they’re wrong or they’re going to be destroyed.
Do they
or are they
as your article says, Hail Ants?