by Amazing 68 Replies latest jw friends
The idea it's possible to bomb away problem is naive - to say it the least - especcially to bomb away people who are NOT afraid of dying. They will hit back, again and again, and it's NOTHING anyone can do about it.
Not if they are dead.
So what is your solution? Throw a party and invite them over? Pay them money to leave us alone? Grab our ankles and spread cheek? They hate us, they will continue to hate us as long as we exist. I'm curious what you think can be done to stop them.
I think good advice and deep thought will prevail in this instance. I am deeply sorry for any who are persecuted because of being Arabic, or looking Arabic, and I think it is rare. I work with people who are Arabic and they are nervous but there have been no problems in our area. Sadly, as was the case with the Japanese and the Germans in WWII they were recruited and they were used. German Americans were helping Hitler get his assembly lines squared away. Japanese Americans gave information on where the ships were and how the situation was for the attack on our navy at Pearl Harbor. Other Japanese and German Americans died fighting for this country. It is just a fact that any national group with a large immigrant group in a nation will look for and probably find some support in that group. If I were getting on a plane and noticed five Arab looking men parking a car next to mine and then later I heard that the planes were blown up, I would call back and notify someone. This just happened, guess what, they were the ones who did it. If you are looking for a white supremacist, I suggest you check out the white people.
Utopian Reformist, I think you sorely underestimate the average American. You said,
"our average mainstream media minded american has NO IDEA what a sikh is or where they come from. Most americans do not know the difference
between Shiite and Sunni's either, let alone the countries in which they reside. However, I'll bet those same americans know what happened on "Ally McBeal or Friends or Big Brother" right? I'll bet they know the lyrics to the top ten hits from J-Lo, Maraiah, Destiny's Child, N'SYNC, right?
These are the reasons the american mind is not ready to handle international matters."
You couldn't be more wrong. I am an average American. I know nothing of Ally McBeal or of Big Brother. I do know about the Sikhs. I know the difference between Shiites and Sunni also, it reminds me of the difference between the LDS and the branch that broke off. I loved some of the poetry by Kipling which directly referred to
Sikhs also. I do know a little about Mariah Carey and if you are implying that to appreciate a voice like hers is to somehow be inferior, well, maybe you need to become better informed. I've never heard of J'lo, I guess you are just more into that scene than me. Next you said:
"I am sorry for the current and incoming generations of americans. Perhaps, globalization may sharpen our senses and wake this nation,"
If you are going to pity anyone pity our generation. Assuming you are a "boomer." We are going to fall just short of some pretty wonderful improvements in every area including length of and quality of life. There is a large group of kids in this country who are getting fantastic educations and through computers and dual enrollment classes are so far ahead of where I was at that age that it doesn't bear examination.
Next you said
"While everyone is gadget conscious and electronically savvy, their foreign counterparts are able to grown their own food, handle weapons and animals and travel without assistance or machinery. No matter how angry our youth may seem today, they are not trained, nor even ready to be trained to confront what may become WWIII.
globalization may sharpen our senses and wake this nation, if not, occupation by foreign enemies will for a certainty.
Our kids can not only grow their own food, they will grow it for the rest of a largely unfed world, never doubt it. Travel without assistance??? Where do you live? Half the kids in our area have their own cars, tour Europe with the high school band, go to Mexico or Latin America with their church, apply for their first jobs after college across the nation. My son't first job was in Hartford, we are from Alabama and Florida. Use weapons? I was raised with them as was my son. As a matter of fact we have far too many weapons, not too few, and this generation of young men can train for war just as well as ours did. Were you ever in the military? Believe me, send these boys to Paris Island and they will come out just as Gung Ho and bald headed as we did. Finally, you said,
"globalization may sharpen our senses and wake this nation, if not, occupation by foreign enemies will for a certainty." No foreign nation will ever occupy this country except by immigration. There are too many people like me, and I hope you, who would prevent it. Open your eyes and look around, things are not as you seem to see them. America is on the cutting edge of technology and humanitarianism and it isn't all due to the older generations.
Don't worry about America. We will be fine.
Thanks Grunt. You make good points and well stated. I too grew up with guns as have my children, and we know how to use them. My parents survived tough times, I have and continue to, as are my children and so forth --- as you say, we will be fine. Thanks. Amazing
Hello Amazing,
thanks for this post. For once here in
Europe we knew aheadof the Americans. Take the words
of European nations...it is not pessimistic as it seems.
It's maily 100% cooperation and support with the United
States of America.
Greetings, J.C.MacHislopp
While I’ve seen a lot of interesting opinions expressed on the topic of finding appropriate solutions to the terrorism problem I think there is little appreciation for the fact that simple solutions seldom solve complex problems. As an American, I’m just as outraged and deeply saddened by the attack as most Americans but I fear that the blind anger and retaliation that will undoubtedly be expressed towards some nation will not only fail to stop terrorism but will play right into the deleterious thinking of religious fanatics as the USA being the “Great Satan” and will strengthen their resolve to carry out and commit further acts of terrorism.
My reasoning for this expectation primarily comes from my own experience in escaping the mind virus that the Borg represents along with former career I had as a professional security consultant for about 11 years. I think many ex-dubs realize the power that memes and Weltanschauungs have over our conceptual view of reality. We can twist around any number of events to match our paradigms. Think for a moment of how different things would be in many people’s minds if one of those terrorist hijacked planes crashed into the JW headquarters in NY! If that happened, in the minds of JW’s everywhere, it would be Satan attacking, not religious fanatics with hatred towards the USA. You can use this same conceptual tool to model the thinking that might happen to survivors of the expected American response when we turn some region of the globe into a big ashtray with our weapons. To them, it will be the Great Satan attacking them. Their belief system will survive and be inseminated into future generations of terrorists who will keep the cycle of revenge and terror alive, to all our regret.
To those who feel that an “eye for an eye” and “tooth for tooth” is the appropriate response, maybe you might do well to look at how well this policy worked for Israel who daily lives with terrorist attacks and responds viciously. It is very ineffectual. Even if you sent in hit teams to murder all the known terrorists or make an overwhelming and shocking response (say nuke a city someplace) it won’t stop terrorism. It reminds me a lot of the drug war, you can make things difficult for the drug traffickers but you won’t stop it until you stop the demand for drugs.
Thus considering this my own two cents worth for an effective response probably won’t be appreciated much. I think collectively the world has to face the fact that religious mind viruses are just as bad as drugs, if not more so. For those individuals who already find themselves infected with a deadly mind virus that subscribes to violence or death to protect itself, the choices before us are to either kill them all, use advanced mind washing techniques (probably ineffective for something like this) or strictly exile and isolate such individuals and prevent them from reproducing and spreading the dangerous memes to others. The only way something like this could be implemented in a region like the Middle East is to force entire nations to outlaw and round up any religious extremists or face complete nuclear obliteration. Nothing less than the unthinkable horror of that would likely be sufficient to cause independent governments to cave in and make good on following through.
Finally, the way I see things, even though the attack on the USA was horrific, it isn’t enough to do what needs to be done yet. We will suffer even more and worse attacks. This attack wasn’t anywhere near the potential casualties that a small nuclear weapon would produce or biological weapons can bring. After we Americans see a few million people die from terrorism in our country, then there will be the resolve to do what is needed to stop the mental cancer from spreading.
Skipper
Skipper,
I didn't really get exactly what you propose should be done? I don't think you were serious about the isolation of the religious as you of course couldn't "isolate" all of Islam or any major religion.
I also have to say like Shakespeare's character Mercutio from Romeo and Juliet, right after he'd been stabbed in reference to his wound, it wasn't as deep as a well or wide as a door, but it would do. And it did. So I believe this wound will do the job. I hope I am right. I hope the people who did this are brought to trial, convicted if guilty and then (my only bit of sadistic enjoyment) electrocuted. Then I hope they turn to the next terroist group and hunt them down. It may not work, maybe the numbers you catch and kill would be like advertisments but you have to do something. I sure hope you are wrong about the attacks. I do believe we will suffer more of them but I hope none this bad.
So what is your solution? ...I'm curious what you think can be done to stop them.
First of all you have to realize there is NOTHING a country can do to guarantee that that any country will not be victims of terrorism. All these talks of bombing countries that harbour terrorists are propaganda to make the American public FEEL like they are dealing with terrorism.
One has to realize that a country can only REDUCE the threat of terrorism by making themselves LESS OF A TARGET.
At the root cause of terrorism is HATE. America should be asking themselves why so much of the world has a hate toward them? Why are they considered targets of terrorists? At what price is American foreign policy and protecting American interests abroad carried out at the expense of the safety of their people back home?
Many of the problems in the middle east are not easily understood from our cultural vantage points. Perhaps leaving these communities to deal with their own issues and leaving negotiations to the international community throught the United Nations is an option.
If America acted more as a member of the international community instead of constantly acting independently, it would go a long way to improve its image. Because of the way they constantly act independant of the world community, many see them as a sort of bully.
As the world becomes more and more multicultural in many cities, people need to learn that hating people because of where they are from is unacceptable. People hate often out of ignorance and education can help people see that others are not so different and appreciate the beauty in other cultures.
As for feeling safer, spending more time and money policing their own country and reducing violence at home by their own citizens is a good place to start. A country with that many guns to protect themselves from their own citizens has something very backwards.
At the end of the day, one hopes that whatever action is taken will cause America and the world to be a safer, more peaceful place and not one of brutal and primitive 'kill or be killed' survival.
Path
I just want to say in light of my comments above, that I in no way feel that America somehow deserved what happened to them.
What I am saying is that innocent people NOWHERE in the world deserve that sort of violence. There are more peaceful options that need to be explored first.
Path
Grunt,
I hope I'm wrong about worse attacks coming to the USA and other nations but I really feel we are in for one horrible string of strike and counterstrike for decades to come. When you look at the potential harm that terrorists can do in the USA (even just a few suicidal religious fanatics) it makes you sick to your stomach. What is even worse is the realization that terrorists have become more sophisticated and better trained. This in itself raises the horror of what may happen. It doesn't have to be a smuggled nuke or Anthrax either to cause mass casualities. A simple grenade exploding on a LNG tanker in a marine port of a major city has a potential of killing ten times as many people as what happened in NYC. A ship full of ammonium nitrate fertilizer (like what was used in the Oklahoma City bomb of the Federal Building) could destroy and sink a cruise ship with ten thousand passengers aboard. Thus my fear of things getting worse isn't paranoia and I have plenty of company from other terrorism experts.
As per my comments regarding solutions, the only way short of destroying a nation that supports dangerous religious fanatics is to completely isolate it from the rest of the world by means of a blocade that really works. Nothing goes in, nothing comes out. Anyone from other countries that wanted to subscribe to that mind virus can go in and stay there but can't come out again. In short, complete and total exile, more so than the economic blockcade used in the past for some trouble making countries, it would also block any movement of citizens to any other country.
Path...
The problem with educating people that hate is wrong is that the people infected with hatred don't want to change themselves and the educational methods we use today are not up to the task of doing this unless a person wants to change themselves. You or I, might change our lives and thinking by means of reason but those blinded by hate won't (for the most part anyway.) If you brain washed them to the point where they were no longer the same person, you have effectively killed the person they were, although in a less violent way.
On top of these problems is the enormous amount of economic and social resources it would take to change millions of people. Not only do we have extremists flooding the Middle East, they are spreading around the world, and indeed are in America already.
I do think your comments about America acting more responsibly on the world scene by changing our foreign policy has some merit. Hell, many Americans hate their own government for the actions of these political criminals. Of course right now patriotism is being whipped up and the right buttons are being pressed on the American public to support large scale killing in retaliation, and it is very unlikely that the direction of politicians will change from the "big bully" approach we have developed over the decades. Sorry to say that the flames of war will just be fanned by the strikes and counterstrikes.
Skipper
