To Whom it May Concern

The BBQ Pit
1

sero sed serio

I hope you will forgive me for opening another thread in response to the events of 9-11. I simply lack the time and energy to join in the many worthy and spirited discussions already taking place on the boards, yet I feel the need to express myself. I place the thread here because I do not yet know what my anger will require of my expression, and I wish to be prepared. The following are in no particular order, except for the first, which is where it should be.

I am haunted by the image of brave people fighting their way through panicked crowds to get into a burning building. I am overwhelmed by the knowledge that if another disaster occurred tomorrow brave men and women would fight their way through fleeing crowds again, that they would once more (twice more, a thousand times more) risk their lives–even now, when the potential consequences have been made so crushingly clear—even now, they would fight through flames and fear and grief and risk everything to save the lives of strangers. It’s their job. The job title isn’t “hero”, but it should be. They deserve the title. They have earned it.

I am grateful for the undeniable generosity of spirit and substance that so many people have shown in the last week. The news is filled with reports of the money, hard goods, blood, plasma, time, and volunteerism that have organizations straining to meet the supply as well as the need. I thank each and every person who has done anything, however trivial[sup]1[/sup] it may seem, to help in this time of tragedy. In the words of a better man than I ”You may not think that what you do is important, but it is very important that you do it.” I hope also that we will remember that while we are not all called upon to be heroes, we do all have a part we can play. The overwhelming charitable response shows that we are doing our part today. Please remember that, like the heroes who stand ready to answer the next call, our job does not end tomorrow.

I am, as always, saddened by the realization that tragic events spur both righteous anger and unreasoning anger. The former steels resolve and encourages necessary action. The latter targets the innocent simply because they share a religion or ethnicity or superficial external characteristic with evil men. Looking over threads from the past week I have been happy to see that people here have spoken out to oppose irrational violence and to restrain passions so understandably inflamed. I thank those people for their courage and dedication to justice and reason.

I am resigned to the knowledge that some will invariably choose this opportunity to press a particular political perspective of Middle East relations or domestic gun control or religious/areligeous superiority. I understand that this is a board dedicated to fighting ignorance, but sometimes being right is a very different thing than doing right. I greatly value both the free expression of ideas and the unrepentant exchange of spirited debate, but there is a time and a place for everything. This is the place. For me, at least, it was not the time. Sometimes the proper expression is silence.

I am somewhat confused by some of the calls for greater understanding of the perspective of our enemies. I was not under the impression that the US Government had been operating in ignorance of the fact that some Islamic extremists find popular support for their message that America is an oppressive and evil country, as evidenced particularly by our past and present support for the existence of Israel. The purpose of foreign policy is not to make America universally liked. Amity is not the sole goal of international relations, and the U.N. does not give out a “nation congeniality” award. I acknowledge that other people, and other nations, have their reasons to dislike the USA. That fact has no relevance to my complete disgust and abiding rage toward anyone who engages in the indiscriminate slaughter of thousands of civilians. After some consideration, I have rejected the idea that we can protect ourselves from terrorism by making friends with everyone who might grow up to be a terrorist.

I am passionately convinced that America, both in our citizenry and with our government, must be clear and express clearly that our conflict is not with Islam. Islam did not attack us. Islam is neither monolithic nor intent upon our destruction.

I am confused by the reactions of anger or discomfort to the chants of USA by rescue workers in Manhattan. I find myself wondering if there is any scenario under which some people would find an expression of national pride acceptable, even uplifting.

Finally, I am hopeful that President Bush will be both determined and measured in his response to these acts. I am worried that the passions running in both our nation and the nations of the Middle East might be too easily inflamed beyond control. I am deeply troubled that two decades of American attempts to broker peace in the region have inspired widespread antipathy, outrage and resentment. I grieve for those who died on September 11. I offer respect and condolences, insufficient but heartfelt, to those who lost someone they loved. All of those thing, I feel, and much more: shock and outrage, melancholy and disbelief, fear and resolution, sorrow and profound fellowship.

All of these I feel, but not terror.
I was not terrorized on September 11.
I am not terrorized today.
I will not be terrorized tomorrow

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If ever my sig were appropriate . . .

3

WOW.

Thank you, Spiritus Mundi, for that beautiful and eloquent post. I just don’t know what else to say after that. Thank you.

Jeg elsker dig, Thomas

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You and me both. Thanks for posting your message. I agree with every word of it.

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If you want to win a war and don’t want to understand the perspective of your enemies then don’t be suprised when you lose. A large part of strategy is about understanding the perspective of your enemy. The rest is about understanding the perspective of your allies and any inanimate objects you use in battle.

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I disagree with your summary of military strategy, but I won’t quibble about that here. The understanding of which I spoke was empathetic, not tactical. I thought that the rest of the paragraph made that clear, but perhaps I was mistaken.

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With all due respect, I believe that is false. A key part of war is understanding the intent of your enemy. To determine what his objectives are and how he intends to achieve them, and to exploit that knowledge to your own advantage.

Oncew the battle is joined, it matters not WHY your enemy does what he does. Did it really matter to the United States on December 7, 1941, WHY Japan and Germany made war on them? (Yeah, nitpickers, I know Germany declared war a few days later.) Did it really matter to Roosevelt, Marshall, Nimitz et al. how Japanese industrialization and imperialism began with the Meiji restoration, or how the Washington Naval Treaty pissed them off, or what disputes between the Imperial Navy and the Army caused them to adopt the strategy they did? No; all that mattered was knowing how Japan intended to conduct the war, so their forces could be engaged and destroyed.

And so it was for Germany. Did we really have to know WHY Nazis were psycopathic murderers? Not at all. All we had to know was how to annihilate them.

So it is with terrorists. Wise diplomats will learn the perspective of our neighbours so we can make peace with them. But we are not dealing with peaceful relations here - in fact, we are not even dealing with a nation with whom a negotiated peace is a reasonable possibility. For that matter, we aren’t even dealing with any group we CAN engage in diplomacy with - ARabs and Muslims for the most part are decent people, and so far we know of no states that are responsible for this horrific violence. Nonetheless, we’re dealing with an enemy that must be wiped out, hunted down to a man and destroyed with utter ruthlessness. Our need to understand Osama Bin Laden ends at the point that we know where to put the bullet.

The United States, and the Western world (I hope) is engaged in defending itself here, the only kind of war we really should ever fight. Frankly, the enemy’s little peccadilloes don’t much matter, because if the war is properly conducted, it won’t matter. Corpses don’t have intentions or perspective, and those we can make peace with are not the ones we should be fighting.

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Spiritus, I have missed you sorely in these days. There aren’t enough posters like you on the boards.

I hope everything is well with your family, and thank you for the post.

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Yes, yes, and yes!

I am so glad there are people far more eloquent than I who can say what I feel in such a way so I can agree with them.

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I don’t like the connotations of empathy. I think more of us have been saying “what the fuck is up with these sickos? How can this keep happening? How can we stop it by figuring out what the hell is up with these people? How can that knowledge help us avoid terrorism in the future? Is there a way to destroy their motivation and their cause through diplomacy?”

That isn’t empathy, at least not the way I think of it. Calling the other discussions on the board “empathy for terrorists” and “wanting to make friends” sounds like a slur.

I loved most of your post, but buried within it seemed to be a swipe at those who are brave or intellectually motivated enough to propose some unpopular views on the board. It’s a real bummer when craving peace and attempts at understanding make one a target of multiple pit threads. I say this being one of the people “on the other side” of course. But I’d also be crabby if the doves on the board kept posting digs at those of you who want to talk about sound military
options.

I want to hear about your views. I want to hear everyone’s views. But why slam the rest of us by choosing words that make us sound ridiculous?

Well, fuck. I sound like a whiner which is a clear sign I need to take my ass to bed. But I’m going there disappointed.

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If you do not advocate an increased understanding of and identification with the situation, feelings and motives of the terrorists, then there is no reason why you should feel the word “empathy” was directed at you.

If you have not argued that the United States needs to revisit it’s foreign policy with the specific goal of improving our image among cerain foreign populations, then there is no reason why you should feel my disagreement with that position was directed at you.

Nothing in my post was buried. Each section reflects emotional responses I have had over the last week.

That you disagreed with one section of it is clear. Whether that section was actually addressed at specific positions that you espouse is not. I purposefully avoided calling out names or linking to other threads. I am not seeking to simply create another front for board conflicts. If the perceptions that spurred my emotion do not reflect your position, then why do you seek offense in my words? If you posted a reaction to people calling for carpet bombing of Afghanistan I would see no reason to assume that you were taking a swipe at my position that a measured military response will probably be both necessary and proper.

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I missed you, too. I simply haven’t been able to combine the necessary time and emotional perspective for a while. I seem to recall we were in the middle of something when I left. If I remember what it was, I might undergo a search and resurrect mission.

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Spiritus! I was starting to get worried about you, man.

Your post is, as ever, brilliant and eloquent. To do what is right is not always to do what is popular.

Is it just me, though, or is there the silent message in your post that the US’s foreign policy has always been ethically unimpeachable?

pan

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Spiritus, I’m glad to see you posting! Your calm and thoughtful voice is good to hear [read] in a crisis.

Like kabbes, though, I’m a bit puzzled at the implication that US foreign policy is off-limits for criticism. If the events of the past week are not indicative that some of our policies may need to be reassessed, then I don’t know what would be.

Also, while I understand and share your disgust for any sympathy given the “causes” of the terrorists, I want to caution against any turning away from empathy for Middle-Eastern Muslim concerns. As you say, this is not a war between the US and Islam, but the militant groups who have so far used US indifference to justify a jihad against us will be sure to exploit heavy-handed disregard if we display it. And yes, we should be concerned about that, if only because such militantism tends to obscure the more moderate voices of Islam. Our foreign policy need not pursue amity at all costs, but should certainly not seek to turn ambivalence into emnity.

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Yes. And there are plenty of Americans who have been wanting to see changes in US foreign policy for a long time before last week. Do you expect them to change their minds now, Spiritus? Osama, if he’s behind the attacks, is recruiting suicide bombers from somewhere, probably from nations who’ve been screwed by elements of our foreign policy they see as hypocritical, like Egypt, Sudan, etc. No, we don’t have to “make friends” with “anyone who might grow up to be a terrorist”, but I don’t see how you can criticize the impulse to demonstrate sincerity in our policy, especially from people who have wanted that for years.

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Well, I do espouse those positions. So to that extent, it would be directed at me as well as to others. But I don’t mean this as a one-on-one thing (me vs. you). I’ve been consistently expressing, across the boards, that I’m disappointed when we move from debate to gross mischaracterization of others’ positions. The portion of your post which I objected to me feels to me like an extension of a broader discussion going on elsewhere in the pit, one in which you used that word “empathy” again and I screeched like a skinned cat about it in that thread, too.

I’m telling you my personal reaction to a few words in your posts, but I don’t mean to say I alone feel my words and thoughts have been mischaracterized. There are a bunch of Dopers who have advocated the things you list above, and I don’t think a one of them–or the people I’ve heard talk about this in the national media–have suggested something as ridiculous and simplistic as “making friends” or taking the terrorists’ side.

I don’t mean to make this personal; I still adore your haiku-writing self. But my shackles go up when I hear someone’s position (not just my own) being bastardized by an extremist simplification of the sentiment. I’d scold people on “my” side if they characterized your position as “bombing them back to the stone age.” Because that’s not fair either. It’s just a CrankyAsAnOldMan trait, and it’s probably as annoying as hell to the rest of you.

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kabbes, xen, I don’t think the idea is that US policy is a shining beacon on which to base all further action, but rather we have a problem now that political and diplomatic measures won’t really solve. Si’? The distinction is small, but meaningful.

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kabbes, xen
I have apparently been unclear. I am not sure what phrasing of mine you see as a silent message that US foreign policy is unimpeachable, but no such message was intended. I thought I was quite explicit in such lines as: I am resigned to the knowledge that some will invariably choose this opportunity to press a particular political perspective of Middle East relations . . . This is the place. For me, at least, it was not the time. and sometimes being right is a very different thing than doing right.

Many US policies deserve criticism. All US policies should be open to reasoned discussion. I simply wish that some folks had waited until the dead had been counted before interjecting political polemics into a moment of shock and grief. If you recall, I mentioned gun control and religious/atheist schisms in the same paragraph. Did you also imagine that I was sending a silent message that those subjects were beyond the pale of reasoned criticism?

cranky
If you accept the meaning then I don’t know why you object to the word. Still, it is the meaning I object to, and if you would prefer to call it by another name I really don’t mind.

As to “making friends”, in a thread which we both have read a person made teh assertion that the US is in a “war for the hearts and minds” of moderates in the Middle East. I do not see “making friends” as either an inacurate or an insulting summation of that position. It is not particularly respectful, I suppose, but I do not particularly respect the position.

As to “taking the terrorist’s side”, I never said such a thing.

cuautemhoc

I “expected” nothing differenet than what I saw, thus the phrase "resigned to the knowledge . . ."
I wish that human nature were otherwise, thus the use of the phrase "resigned to the knowledge . . ."
I was in no sense asserting a blanket disagreement with any person’s particular long-standing political/religious/ethical position. Thus the clause "sometimes being right is a very different thing than doing right."

Now–as to the passage where I did disagree with a specific position:

I suspect that we have differeing understanding if both the purpose of international relations and of the meaning of “demonstrate sincerity”. The salient point, though, is that I disagree that an increased understanding of the motivations of these particular terrorists is either necessary or useful as a guide to the US response. Additionally, I find calls to reduce our risk from terrorist attack by reducing the level of antipathy to the US among populations in the region to be simplistic, unrealistic, and inappropriate as a direct response to the slaughter of several thousand civillians in an act of terror.

Both of those are very specific positions that make no claims toward the justness or sincerity of any long-standing US policy in the region.

19

If you simply meant that the arguments came too soon, my friend, then fair enough. I agree with you actually and haven’t got involved with them myself either.

I misinterpreted what you were saying and was aware that this was always a possibility (hence my “is it just me?” qualifier). Go in peace, my son.

pan

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Oh, sorry - thought this was a Unitarian Universalist prayer thread. Never mind… :wink:

Esprix