Oh, and what buttonjockey said.
Sorry. I found it under GD, so I assumed there was something to debate.
Since the CNN thing seems to be offering prescience, I thought it fair to wonder where it came from. I’d like to know what consequences to look forward to, and on what basis.
Man, I couldn’t agree with you more. I think it’s reprehensible for the US to be trying to get by on the cheap in the face of human need. That wasn’t my beef. I was merely saying that the threat of dire consequences, at least of a physical nature, have no basis. It sounds like fearmongering to me. Now if you want to talk about dire consequences to the supposed ideals of the US, to its collective soul, if you will, then I’d say there’s certainly a point to be made.
I didn’t throw in the world “Jihad” just for kicks, it was kind of central to my O.P. How can one predict exactly how severe the results will be in the next few generations? I wasn’t attempting to, believe me.
My feeling is that the world is struggling to exist at all with the diametrically opposite life-views that exist. Many of them but surely not all of them are the product of a religious point of view, or faith itself. Events such as the tsunami in Southeast Asia have rippling effects. The numbers are numbing and awful, no doubt there. 155,000 lost human beings is staggering. The impact to the survivors will be felt for decades, as will the impact back to the nations that step up and do the most to offer long-term support and rebuilding help.
America’s lack of response in accord with it’s supposed position as the last Superpower on the planet has dismayed me in the extreme.
The nation staggers under the weight of international contempt on so many fronts- and Australia comes up with that kind of cash support???
Again with this?
Numbers for promised short-term aid have been under revision continually since the disaster. As of a day or two ago Japan was “in the lead” and the U.S. was second. U.S. officials have stated that our aid will rise into the billions as time goes on. So maybe we are first. Or not. As mentioned, private donations (which according to some sources constitute a much larger percentage of American foreign aid compared to European nations) have been large and do not figure into commonly quoted totals.
It is irrational to conjure up such gloom and despair when a dispassionate view based on fact leads to a diametrically opposite conclusion (regarding our “ignoring” the tragedy).
IMHO.
If the U.S does not donate a significant amount of money (whatever that may be), there will not be resentment in the muslim world because of that.
Oh i can imagine a hypothetical scenario along the lines of " they only donated such and such when tens of thousands of our brothers were homeless and starving while they gave 50 times that to Israel that doesn’t need it" but it’s a very weak argument. It doesn’t fly.
What the U.S do have at present is an opportunity to somewhat mitigate anti-american feelings by making a GOOD PR SHOW while cameras are still pointed at Indonesia/India. Lots and Lots of helicopters and U.S military branded with the U.S flag carrying lots and lots of boxes full of food, helping wounded, etc.
That, more than abstract sums of money, may generate some goodwill (assuming once again that there are cameras around to pick it up).
Is it too late for this? I don’t know. Possibly. I don’t watch tv so I don’t know how much coverage is still dedicated to the Tsunami Aftereffects.
And don’t forget, I said “Somewhat mitigate”. This sure as hell isn’t going to erase the Iraqui fiasco.
Indeed. IMHO- where I stated my opinion, OP’ing a thread where others could post. What I very specifically did not do is post an OP in Great Debates that lacked any significant support for a thesis.
I’m not the first Doper to post an OP in IMHO that has been based on an emotional response instead of debatable cites. It is not against the Forum rules in there to OP a thread based on an emotional response.
In case you haven’t been reading along here, I did not originate this post in G.D. And for the second time, I did not request that this thread be moved to this Forum. If you as a poster find my OP to be irrational and not a sound basis for rigorous debate, then by all means- say so.
A careful reading of my OP will reveal that it was based on something I heard on CNN. It was definitely food for thought, but not offered as the basis of a debate.
I think it is difficult to predict what will trigger the hatred of some against the US. 9/11 happened in large part because US soldiers set foot in Saudi Arabia in the course of driving Saddam out of Kuwait. bin Laden then took refuge in a country that would likely still be controlled by the USSR, if it weren’t for US military support.
If this is the kind of thing that will piss someone off, I suspect normal parameters of what is reasonable and what is not don’t apply.
Regards,
Shodan
What Shodan said.
bin Laden was trained by the US (CIA specifically) and didn’t take up arms against us until 1991. Why? Because we had troops in Saudi. He was friendly with us, taking our money and our guns and our training, when it suited his purposes, and then taking up arms against it when it suited him as well.
I refuse to feel ashamed about how the US has responded to this tragedy, and refuse to try to change the way we operate for some longer-term strategic goal. People are dying, and we’re going in to help stop that. I will never ever feel bad about doing that, regardless of the long-term geopolitical consequences.
I guess I’m just not seeing any logic to the OP’s opinion. Granted this wasn’t intended for a debate, but even giving your opinion on something you have to back it up with something. I don’t see any effect of the supposed US stingyness on terrorists for instance. They have bigger fish to fry as has been pointed out, and I seriously doubt some guy in South Asia is going to sit back and look at the relative totals of aid given and decide he now hates the US enough to strike a blow.
Secondly it hasn’t been shown that the US IS being stingy…or that the perception is that the US is being stingy by The World™. Quite the opposite in fact from what I can tell. Most of my own foriegn friends have been pretty impressed, especially by the things the US is doing that DOESN’T tally into that (currently) $350 million…but which still cost the US a lot of money. Thinks like sending carrier task forces in to help, dispatching military helocopters to ferry supplies, dispatchign military medical teams, engineering teams, etc etc. We do those things when others don’t because we can while not everyone else has the capability.
Like others I’m proud of my countries response to this crisis, as well as my fellow citizens…and I’m equally warmed by the response of the rest of the world. Nations are dispatching aid and citizens of the world are donating generously not for obscure geo-politial reasons (which are faulty anyway as referenced to the OP) but because its the right thing to do.
-XT
I think to some extent that both of the somewhat opposing viewpoints that keep coming up in this argument have some validity - the truth is probably somewhere in the middle…
The amount of money that we donate, the amont of effort our pilots put into delivering food, etc, etc, is not going to change the point of view of the “hardcore” terrosists in the least, that is correct. They’re going to continue to hate us for a whole slew of other reasons.
However, what we can do is improve our standing in the eyes of the rest of the world, including places where the terrorists operate from. If the normal, everyday people of those nations have a better view of the US and the West, it will make our war, police action, whatever you want to call it, against the fundie terrorists that much easier. Anyone who has looked, for example, at the last couple of years’ Pew Foundation Global Attitude Surveys realizes that vast majorities of the population in many of the countries in and around the Middle East strongly dislike us (or worse). They’re not terrorists themselves, but they may someday be in the position to shelter or aid one, or, conversely, to help us catch one. The likelihood that they’ll make the “right” choice among those is undoubtedly dependent in part on their impressions of us.
In other words, it’s a “hearts and minds” campaign, same as we should have had the sense to mount in Iraq immediately after Saddam fell. Why do you think it’s now proving so hard to crush the Iraqi insurgency? Try the fact that probably a significant majority of the population now hates our guts for what we did to their country, and they are now functionally behind the insurgents. This is why virtually every counterinsurgency war that has been fought in the last century (the textbook case being Vietnam) has failed - because the general population ends up, either tacitly or openly, in support of the insurgents.
We would do well to understand that the battle against violent fundamentalist Islam may well end up as a counterinsurgency effort (not necessarily an actual “shooting war” in all places all the time), played out on the scale of a large part of the world. The terrorists themselves will never be on our side; but, if we want to win, the ordinary people have to be - that, in a geopolitical sense, is why we need to do as much as we possibly can (and, as akifani correctly said, do it as visibly as we can).
The lack of normal parameters is what has me concerned.
That’s a fair response.
I guess I am saying that terrorists and others who wish us ill do not judge us by the same standards as the rest of the world, or that we use ourselves. And I would argue that we should not accept the judgement of terrorists, or of our other enemies, and use them to determine our behavior.
Thus we shouldn’t be giving aid, or withholding it, or increasing it, or anything, in order to be popular, or to forestall attacks, but because we decide it is the right thing to do. Regardless of whether it is popular or not.
I don’t care to argue that the amount we are donating to tsunami relief is too small, or too large, or just right, because I don’t know. But I will argue that we should give or withhold based on our best guess on the moral thing to do.
It is like the aid we donated back in the 80s to Ethiopia during the noxious Mengistu regime. And his regime responded, in essence, that he was willing to accept the aid, but not to expect that it would mean that he despised the US any less.
Which was reassuing to me, in a way. We weren’t giving because we expected a reward, even a reward as meaningless as soft words from a monster. We were giving to meet a need.
Maybe we should give more. But I wouldn’t expect that if we did, we would be more popular in the world. We are too big and too powerful to be universally loved.
Regards,
Shodan
Using that logic you would assume that If we were to support a muslim religious leader in a quest to stop the Soviet Union, then muslims would love us. That kind of love we don’t need.
The same group of people that want you dead are not interested in money. They want you dead because you’re not of their religion. Listen to one of OBL’s speeches. The United States is collectively the great Satan. We are helping a region where people walk around with OBL on their T-shirt.
I second what John Carter of Mars said: We do it because we can afford to, and it’s the right thing to do.
If any asses need kissing it’s the people who are donating the money. If any of these funds are diverted to terrorists then the next big disaster is going to be met with the sound of crickets chirping.
If countries pay a price for not donating enough what will happen to Saudi Arabia whose government is only contributing $30 million? From the richest Muslim country to the largest.
Australia has pledged $1.8 billion over then next 5 years including $500 million in interest free loans and the original $800 million offered.