Who says left and right are polarized and will never get together? Not I.
Today I received copies of this same piece in The Independent from two very different people.
The first was Tom Turnipseed, whose anti-war views arise naturally from his leftist leanings (naturally to him, anyway — I continue to believe it’s ironic that "conservatives" support, and "liberals" oppose, what is a liberal war in the JFK mold).
Breaking my own rule about not responding to e-mail, but being in one of those moods in which I can’t help myself, I wrote back to Tom to say:
Well, that’s helpful. I suppose we should all go jump off a bridge or something, seeing as how everything is so hopeless.
What this writer misses is that it was already a Big War. I believe it was Tom Friedman who wondered, in the week after Sept. 11, 2001, whether we all realized that we were engaged in World War III. We were then (and had been for some time; it’s just that few Americans turned their attention to the jihadists until they pulled off something really big right here on our shores), and are now.
And it was never, ever going to be small or easy. And it’s going to go on for a long time.
Moments later, I received the exact same article from Rebekah Sutherland.
That’s quite a combo. Seeing as how "Reb" once informed me I was a socialist (and she was not joking), I wonder what she would call Tom?
If these two folks can be so in sync that they send me the same piece to read on the same day, there’s hope for more conventional "liberals" and "conservatives" a little closer to the center to get over their "red state/blue state" alienation and start interacting in a more civil manner.
And if there’s hope for that, there’s hope for all of us. I guess I won’t jump off that bridge just yet.
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Great comments, Brad… why is it that so few people “get it” that we are indeed in the middle of WWIII? Even Mr. Friedman himself has fallen into the trap of wringing his hands over Iraq… more over his disdain for Bush than his squeamishness for the mission. I will grant him that much.
Senator Hollings just blames it on the Jews and Neocons. (July 23 OpEd)
Ask any jihadist… they know that they are in a religious war with worldwide implications. They want to expand the Califate of Islam… and if you’re not with them, you are the infidel, worthy only of death or dhimmitude. We in our Western minds cannot conceive the depths to which these Islamist Fascists will go to achieve their goals. I’m not sure even the “moderates” within Islam realize what they are fostering by their silence or complicity.
We “ain’t seen nothing yet”… and it won’t stop in 2008, either. Nor will it stop if Israel disappears. Only when we take it seriously and all civilized nations, including Islamic nations, rise up to squelch it will it go back into hiding…
jgm
There’s a continuum on the edge of left and right where the really extremist views intersect. Look at some of the matching views (mainly anti-semitic in nature) held by the Nation of Islam and the Aryan Nations.
The reason the war on terror will take so long is that there are two generations of fanatics to deal with. Their indoctrination into the radical jihad movement predates 9/11 (and the Iraq invasion). In one country alone – Pakistan – five million boys were brainwashed in the countries 12,000 madrassas between 1977 and 1988.
When you consider Saudi Arabia, US prisons, Aftica, and other breeding grounds of radical Islam, there are a lot of candidates for martyrdom.
At some point or another many will take up arms. It looks like Iraq triggered the metamorphosis for a bunch, and some event or just time will prompt the others to strap on a gun or an explosives belt and head where the action is or take action in the local neighborhood, as the London bombing shows.
It’s almost inevitable because these true-believers have little else to do but to follow the mission that’s been burned into their brains. In the West they may have jobs, but they are egged on by the radical imams. In Pakistan where employment prospects are poor, they’ve little else to do but fortunately can’t move too far to wage war simply because they don’t have the language skills, means to travel, and abilty to cope in the modern world.
So we can either sit back and wait for these enemies of civilization to force us into the Tancredo option or we can do what we are doing now, move actively on many fronts. Long-term efforts at public diplomacy are worthless without a plan for active intervention worldwide:
We’ll have to infiltrate some mosques and blow up others while encouraging the peace-loving Muslims – the vast majority of the believers in Islam – to speak out, take action on their own to defeat the radicals.
In short we need the patience and steadfastness we Americans and a few of our allies had during the cold war. Remember that? Remember how we railed against idiot presidents who sent intermediate-range nuke systems to Europe? Remember who stood with us? Who on the inside bravely spoke out? And who supports those few brave souls like Akbar Ganji, near death from his hunger strike in an Iranian prison, who are willing to speak out now? Not the UN:
We face a long, hard slugfest to fight for our survival on many levels. We will need the patience of Job and the dedication of the greatest generation. The dirty little secret is that if we don’t persevere, some of those crazies will kill a lot of us and our allies, and no president will be able to withstand the people’s demands to kill them all, and we will try to. For those unable to grasp the seriousness of what this is all about, try this for refreshing relief.
Listen to yourself man! Sometimes I think you have gone stark raving mad. You honestly believe that we are fighting WWIII, yet you are implying that Tom Turnipseed is the extremist. I’ve got news for you, if we had been fighting WWIII, billions of people would be dead by now, and the earth would have become uninhabitable. You need to get honest with yourself. For one thing, you are every bit as ideological as everyone else is. You hide behind supposedly centrist positions, yet in reality your no political party ideology is tantamount to a one party state. You are a neo-conservative, yet you never proclaim this fact publicly. Evidently, you’re still miffed about liberals abandoning the Vietnam War-well, I’ve got news for you again, the vast majority of liberals and many other Americans abandoned the war because over time they realized the war was based on a terrible political theory, and that the war was morally wrong. JFK most certainly would have felt the same way had he lived- the stances of Bobby and Ted can only bolster this conjecture. Somehow, you really think that you are one of the last surviving true liberals, yet nothing could be further from the truth. Your pro globalization economic views don’t reflect liberalism, your social policy views don’t reflect liberalism, and your views on global Pax Americana most certainly do not reflect liberalism. You are not a liberal in any sense. Let’s get this straight.
Sincerely,
Mark Whittington
Liberal Christian Social Democrat
Mark, I believe you are confusing “liberalism” with “socialist isolationism”. This country’s foreign policy today is very liberal in a classical sense, and indeed many neocons are former “liberals.” Both Woodrow Wilson and JFK, both classical liberals, would, in my opinion, strongly approve of our confrontational approach.
You wrote (of Mr. Warthen):
“Somehow, you really think that you are one of the last surviving true liberals, yet nothing could be further from the truth. Your pro globalization economic views don’t reflect liberalism, your social policy views don’t reflect liberalism, and your views on global Pax Americana most certainly do not reflect liberalism. You are not a liberal in any sense. Let’s get this straight.”
Socialism will defeat Europe yet again, and isolationism will only allow Islamism and Nationalism to take root and grow, just as isolationism allowed Nazism (national socialism) to take root and grow in Europe in the ’30’s. Please study your history… it has a way of repeating itself.
Best regards,
jgm
Here is one of the best opinion pieces that I’ve ever read: Ecocide by Tom Turnipseed.
Also, here is what real liberals think about Friedman: Thomas Friedman, Liberal Sadist?
Mark –
I would remind you that the sixth commandment is best translated as “Thou Shalt Not Murder” and that equating radical Islam Jihadists with mainstream Christian fundamentalists is bizarre, but typical of Mr. Turnipseed. Who is murdering innocents? Yes, a handful of Christian fundamentalist wackos have murdered hundreds of innocents over the past fifteen years – I’m thinking here of that idiot mountain man recently sentenced to life, of the Oklahoma City bomber sentence to death, and a few others – but as for organized mayhem no one quite measures up to the radical Islam Jihadists.
You and Mr. T need to understand that despite your excuses for their cause and attempts to explain away the usage of the word “jihad,” the radical Islam Jihadists want to kill you too unless you submit to their authority. Their grudge is old and they’ve been raising an army as you would have known had you read the post above. Don’t take my word for it, ask a Trotskyite.
Do you and Tom support the “insurgency” in Iraq like others on the left do? I make no charge, but merely ask.
As for “Ecocide,” Mt. T can quote eminent scientists about the imminent destruction of species, but were one to heed these elitist’s advice and adopt the measures they recommend, the world would be poorer, billions would die of malaria and AIDS, and we’d postpone the fate he fears by only six years. What’s worse is that I’d have to give up my cell phone; my share of the infrastructure that supports it equals a water heater. Do you realize the implications? There are much better ways to spend our scarce resources to do good.
Here’s a pretty realistic view of what’s happening in Iraq by an Iraqi.
On a positive note, I do appreciate that you all didn’t blame it on the Joos.
Kid:
Don’t encourage ’em… if you saw Fritz Hollings’ article in last Saturday’s paper, he pretty much DID blame it on the “Joos”…
Shalom, y’all
jgm
Greg –
You’re right, I fergot.
These guys are slippery. In the middle of an argument they’ll say “My grandfather died in a concentration camp” to confuse the issue or elicit symphathy. The whole truth is that the guy had too much schnapps and fell out of a guard tower.
Since Mark has linked “Ecocide”: http://www.commondreams.org/cgi-bin/print.cgi?file=/views05/0722- to Brad’s Blog, and it doesn’t appear to meet The State’s criteria for op ed publication because it was submitted last Friday, I guess I have to get in my 2 cents worth. Maybe if they referred to me as a local “leftist” in my byline The State could run the piece.
Anyway, I have received several nice e-mails from folks who read it on Common Dreams, a progressive website that i commend to you.
Conservative wordsmiths and pejorative propagandists like the late Lee Atwater or his clone, Karl Rove would refer to Common Dreams as “leftist” or “socialist” to conjur up demons of the past in the minds of those who hated such evils as Social Security or the Civil Rights Movement.
In conclusion, (I have other matters to attend to), I feel compelled to answer “The Kid”(’s) query. Of course, I do not support the “insurgency”. I have opposed the actions from the beginning that have made the “insurgency” possible. If we had never invaded Iraq, then the “insurgency” would have never existed. Iraq had nothing to do with 9/11 and it represented no military threat against us, yet we are responsible for the deaths of many innocent people there. Our actions have been wrong because they were based on lies from the beginning; regardless of how many bad or evil people we have killed in the process. Will we ever learn?
I feel exactly as Mark Whittington does about the insurgency as stated in his e-mail above. Our invasion and occupation of Iraq–under false pretenses–has greatly damaged our credibility in the global community and Iraq has become a vast training ground for Islamic jihadist terrorists. The U.S. and the world are less secure because of our trumped up war against Iraq.
Mark & Tom –
You guys are right! How stooopid of me! I’ve been thinking, not feeling.
Of course it is our failure to understand the grievances of otherwise well-meaning, religious folks that’s the real problem. It’s us, not them. They do have
valid complaints:
How can we argue with that? We’d rather deal with them than the fundie Christians any time, no?
Kid:
VERY well-put… couldn’t have said it better myself, so I won’t try.
jgm
You guys are just too cute and clever for me to even try to contend with. Beyond the cute and clever, the facts are that the Iraqis have been there 5 or 6 thousand years and we invaded and are occupying their country because we want to control their vast oil reserves and a place for our military bases to control the oil rich Persian Gulf area. They also know we supported Saddam in a devastating war against Iran in the ’80s, and realize we really don’t care that he was a “ruthless dictator” but understand he is just another pawn in our colonial/imperialistic game of pitting folks against each other in their oil rich region of the world.
Tom –
You should have stopped at “You guys are just too cute and clever for me to even try to contend with” rather than continuing on and proving your point.
Actually, the Assyrians and Chaldeans were run out of Iraq by the Arabs more like 1400 years ago, about the same time the Byzantine Greeks were run out of Palestine, the successors of the Romans who ran the Jews out of Palestine in 135 AD… if you want to get technical, that is.
Saddaam looked pretty good when compared to the Ayatollah in 1980… I was there in ’83 myself. We supported the devil against the witch… go figure. I truly wish I could join your dream world where “if we’d just leave them alone and stop supporting Israel, they’d quit trying to blow us up…” Britain has been kissing the Islamists’ butts for decades, and you see what it got them on 7/7.
jgm
Islamist “terrorists” have been provoked by the U.S. and Britain’s colonial/imperialist policies, primarily our quest for cheap oil in the Middle-East, for more than a half century. We overthrew the democratically elected government of Mohammed Mossadegh in Iran in 1953 and installed the Shah whose autocratic excessiveness led to his overthrow by the “witch” Allatoyah Khomeini and his Islamic revolutionaries. Then we sicced Saddam on Iran.
Just before and during this time the US CIA recruited Osama bin Laden and many other radical Islamists to foment a very violent insurgency against the Sovier supported government in Afghanistan. Here again, the chickens have come home to roost–on us–as Osama is now credited with the 9/11 attacks, and we are now occupying Afghanistan as the Soviets once did and will probably be ousted from that country by the same Taliban monster we created. Islamist/Arabs look upon us as a Dr. Frankenstein who help to create both Saddam and Osama.
Our unquestioning support for Israel has an exascerbating affect on the dislike of Arab Islamists for the US. Meanwhile, as always, with previous conflicts in the region, the oil/war profiteers like Exxon/Mobil and Halliburton that are the driving forces behind US policy are picking our pockets. Don’t worry Gregg, it is all being done in the interest of our “national security”. I wonder how many of our troops will die and how many of the “evil” Islamists will go to an early meeting with Allah before we wise up?
There is truth in what you say. There is also truth in what I say. The difference between us is the fact that in your version of truth, the Arabist/Islamist terrorists get a “pass” and America gets the blame… but don’t forget to include the British, French, and Turks, who were our forebears in “exploitation” of the area.
There is something to be said for “national security” when the price of NOT acting in the interest of our “national security” results in a ruined economy, anarchy, a rollback to the 7th century, and Sharia as law of the land.
We, along with every nation on earth, carry the baggage of our poor decisions and fallacious plans and schemes that don’t work out as planned, and there are worse examples than the ones you cite – Hitler, for example, did Germany no favors, nor did Imperial Japan’s ambitions work out for the Japanese.
Your country is NOT the root of all evil. It may make you feel intellectual to say so, but to insist that America is the root cause of the world’s current problems is to engage in a truly fantastic level of hyperbole.
I am curious, however, to hear what happens in your version of history if we ever DO “wise up”… what does a “wised-up” US and world look like in your mind? I’d really be curious to know… please start with how we caused 9/11 and what we can do to avoid another mass attack on our soil. And please include your view of Israel’s future as well.
Thanks for your time…
jgm
To “wise up” we need to think of ourselves more as global citizens with an objective view of what really has driven U.S. policy in the Middle East for the past 50 years.
We also should think of ourselves as global citizens because of the constant global migration of our species. Narrow nationalism has been a root cause of war and exploitation.
Since all the U.S. emigrees from Europe came here in the past 400 years and the Africans were brought here since then, we need to better understand the European colonialism that settled America. After the American Revolution we established an American Empire and declared it our “Manifest Destiny” to destroy the indigenous people and “settle” on their lands. I do not think this makes us “evil” but simply imperialistic.
For more than 50 years the U.S. has engaged in Machivellian manipulations in the Middle East to control the vast oil reserves of that region by pitting nation against nation and tribe against tribe in classical colonial/imperial fashion. I know the truth it is hard to take for folks who have listened to Strom Thurmond say things for so many years like “God has blessed us with a Constitution and the right to have more blessings of the good things of life than folks over there”.
You are right about the other colonial powers like Britain. France and Turkey in the Middle East.
I believe that Israel has a right to exist and prosper and the U.S. should stand by our commitments to them, but the tremendous influence of Israeli proponents in U.S. media, entertainment, politics and business has tended to tilt our policies to allow Israel to occupy and colonize the West Bank and Gaza and continually violate U.N. Resolutions on nuclear weaponry and other issues without any consequences. I sincerely believe peace can finally prevail if we focus on being honest brokers in reaching a Israeli/Palestinian peace agreement.
The answer to our energy problems is to quit basing our foreign policy on cheap Arab oil that creates CO2 emissions which contribute to very serious global warming/climate change and extreme weather phenomena. We should immediately put the subsidies we now give to Exxon/Mobil et. al. into clean, climate neutral energy sources like hydrogen, wind, solar, biomass and energy conservation.
The United States is a great country and my favorite by any measurement. I predict we will do the right thing and work for peace, justice, prosperity and a viable eco-system in our increasigly interdependent world.
To “wise up” we need to think of ourselves more as global citizens with an objective view of what really has driven U.S. policy in the Middle East for the past 50 years.
We also should think of ourselves as global citizens because of the constant global migration of our species. Narrow nationalism has been a root cause of war and exploitation.
Since all the U.S. emigrees from Europe came here in the past 400 years and the Africans were brought here since then, we need to better understand the European colonialism that settled America. After the American Revolution we established an American Empire and declared it our “Manifest Destiny” to destroy the indigenous people and “settle” on their lands. I do not think this makes us “evil” but simply imperialistic.
For more than 50 years the U.S. has engaged in Machivellian manipulations in the Middle East to control the vast oil reserves of that region by pitting nation against nation and tribe against tribe in classical colonial/imperial fashion. I know the truth it is hard to take for folks who have listened to Strom Thurmond say things for so many years like “God has blessed us with a Constitution and the right to have more blessings of the good things of life than folks over there”.
You are right about the other colonial powers like Britain. France and Turkey in the Middle East.
I believe that Israel has a right to exist and prosper and the U.S. should stand by our commitments to them, but the tremendous influence of Israeli proponents in U.S. media, entertainment, politics and business has tended to tilt our policies to allow Israel to occupy and colonize the West Bank and Gaza and continually violate U.N. Resolutions on nuclear weaponry and other issues without any consequences. I sincerely believe peace can finally prevail if we focus on being honest brokers in reaching a Israeli/Palestinian peace agreement.
The answer to our energy problems is to quit basing our foreign policy on cheap Arab oil that creates CO2 emissions which contribute to very serious global warming/climate change and extreme weather phenomena. We should immediately put the subsidies we now give to Exxon/Mobil et. al. into clean, climate neutral energy sources like hydrogen, wind, solar, biomass and energy conservation.
The United States is a great country and my favorite by any measurement. I predict we will do the right thing and work for peace, justice, prosperity and a viable eco-system in our increasigly interdependent world.
Tom, we’re not global citizens, we’re Americans. We may have done stupid or foolish or even evil things in the past, but that’s a great reason to correct our errors now. During the Cold War the foreign policy realists looked for balance and took a win-win approach to international relations. The idiot Reagan had a different idea: we win, they lose. As we applied greater pressure, the stinking Commies folded.
We’re now in a hot war that we’ve just realized started in the 1970s. With each radical Islamicist attack, we either withdrew (Lebanon, Somalia, various parts of Africa, etc.) or responded fecklessly. By so doing, we signaled to the Jihadists that we were impotent — paper tigers — and that they could have their way.
If you know a way to protect our sovereignty, enable continued prosperity, and assure the safety of the American public, let’s hear it. You’ve told us some of the “what’s,” now how about some “how’s.” For example, I’ll give you hydrogen, but you’ve got to take nukes too. Here’s why.
Mike, you are correct in some of what you posted, above.
The “hows” and “whys’ of an eco-sustainable energy policy could go a long way toward establishing peace with the Islamist dominated nations and regions of the world.
Our foreign policy regarding them has principally revolved around the vast oil reserves in their part of the world, along with the Israeli/Palestinian situation that exascerbates the situation to the delight of war profiteers and neo-cons.
The problem with nuclear energy is: the threat of terrorism; it enables nuclear weapon’s proliferation; the extremely difficult task of storage/elimination of its deadly residue/waste: and, its untold hidden costs that we(taxpayers and ratepayers) have subsidized for all these years.
If a terrorist operated aircraft hit a major nuclear plant like the one just north of N.Y.C., it would make 9/11 look like a very minor tragedy regarding the amount of death and destruction.
The constant fear of nuclear weapon’s proliferation in such nations as Iran and North Korea also make it a must that we live up to our forgotten part of the non-proliferation treaty to dismantle our own nuclear weapons also.
What do we do with the extremely toxic waste that is overflowing and piling up at all the nuclear plants around the U.S.?
It would be very interesting to find out the real numbers on just how very much nuclear power has cost us all these yesrs.
Certainly, we will not get such numbers from the power companies who have benefitted from the subsidies. The monopoly franchised power companies have done so much advertising in our media through the years that such business and influence can result in a bit of a msdia bias in their favor.
Those are a few of the reasons why the solution is clean, climate neutral energy sources like hydrogen, wind, solar, biomass, with a renewed interest of our governments in doable energy conservation.
Let’s subsidize companies that develop them for a change, rather than the same ol’, same ol’ fossil fuel and nuclear dinosaurs.
Peace, brother Mike.