Dancing with Dogs: Sick and sicker!

Sick and sicker!

Ok - I usually don’t pick on other bloggers, since I understand everybody has an opinion and blah, blah, blah. But then, once in a while I come across such stinkers as this post and I cannot help but castigate.

Life is a Random Draw
Definitely NOT Fair and Balanced
: Let the Breast Beating Begin

Here is how it starts -

It is September 11th once again. Let the breast beating begin. Two years ago, in case you have not heard, 3,016 people died in NY city, Washington DC, and aboard four hijacked commercial jets. Those are the facts and just the bare facts. The event was televised and seen all over the world. Oh what a circus, oh what a show … The whole world was beaten over the head to mourn those dead, to join in a public display of grief, to express horror, to vow vengeance, to bring the criminals to justice. Suddenly, as it were, the world woke up to the horrors of terrorism, and indeed death. It was as if neither terrorism nor death was a factor before Sept 11th, 2001.

Excuse me - if the world chooses to mourn with America, go blame the world - what is America’s fault in it? I love the use of the words “circus” and “show” to describe the cold-blooded killing live on TV, of thousands of innocent people.

It is not immediately clear why the death of 3,016 should merit all that global attention and grief. Yesterday, 10,000 children died of malnutrition and preventable childhood diseases. Three times as many died yesterday as were killed on Sept 11th 2001. They were humans too. Where is all the breast beating and the public mourng for those innocent 10,000? And not just those 10,000. What about the 10,000 that died the day before? And the day before? What about them? What about the 7,000,000 children who died since Sept 11th 2001? Is it because the 3,016 were Americans that all the world has to put everything on hold and mourn those dead? Is it because the US can bomb 10,000 innocent Afghanis in retribution for their 3,016 dead that the world has to collectively mourn the American deaths and not give a second’s thought to the 7,000,000 children that have also died for no fault of their own?

So, children died of diseases - I wonder how people dying to poverty can be any different from people deliberately murdered - Can someone tell me that? 10,000 Afghan civilians were bombed - links, please! (Marc Herold’s bogus analyses don’t count) - Afghanistan actually has an economy and a marginally functioning government now - I guess the US was wrong to weed out Taliban from there. They should have just let the bearded ones keep torturing the women - don’t you know that it isn’t only the American lives that mean more but also those killed by America - their deaths mean a lot more than the lives of those that will live in relative prosperity, since they have the freedom to do so.

For the special 3,016 killed on Sept 11th, 2001, about $3,000,000,000 will be paid in compensation from a special fund set up for them. (Only 40% of the victims’ families have claimed compensation so far. The others are waiting to file suit and claim even more.) Where is the fund for the 7,000,000 children who have died needlessly since that day?

Oh My! Big bad US is compensating her people and people from all the other countries who lost their lives in a murderous attack - trust an ideologically blind person to spin it in a negative light.

So you will excuse me if I feel a little nauseated when I see yet another poem, yet another expression of grief for the 3,016. I have little grief left over for them because I am mourning the other 10 million innocents that have died since Sept 11th 2001 who are not being mourned.

This never fails to get me - why is there supposed to be a hierarchy for politically correct mourning? I must have missed the etiquette books in which it clearly said incidents must be mourned in a certain order and no more and no less. Get off your freaking high horse and shut up! It is people like you, who make me nauseous.

Posted by shanti at September 12, 2003 1:34 PM

Trackback Pings

TrackBack URL for this entry:
http://www.realwomenonline.com/scgi-bin/mt-tb.cgi/2861

Comments

Though there was a lot of harshness and bitterness in Atanu’s article, there were a few things that struck of note. The distinction to be made was between the US people and the US Government. While everyone sympathises with the US populace at large, the same sentiment may not exactly be shared of the US govt.

I wince whenever I remember the “Either you’re with us or you’re with them” statement.

It is a remarkable sentiment to compensate all victims (irrespective of their nations) from a special fund. It is a remarkable sentiment that the US is the largest funder for supporting humanitarian efforts world-wide. But their financial position has given them a power which has to be wielded with care. I could bombard you with links (as you’ve demanded in Atanu’s article) about US policy-screw-ups over the years and about how they’ve used their position to get a lot of what they wanted.

But sometimes when they get down from the moral high ground of financial power, there are other things visible to the naked eye, not seem from the pedestal we sometimes place them on.

Before you condemn me as a US-basher, let me tell you that I have more respect for it’s people, than those of India. I have more admiration for their sense of right and wrong. But I still, as an individual, have a right to state what I don’t like about the entire deal, right?

Here’s a thought I’d leave with - In the eyes of the average (note: the average) US citizen, what is more valuable - the life of a US citizen or the life of any other citizen in the world?

Smokealot, if the US created the monsters, then they had the obligation to remove them. period.

Ankh, nice sentiments, but where exactly in Atanu’s post does he make any of the ppoints you are attributing to him? Quote him and tell me where exactly does he differentiate between people and the government. You yourself say that the people are different from the government and blah, blah, but end the comment saying the American people think US lives are more important - I love that, actually. Every country should think her citizen’s lives are more important. That is called patriotism and I don’t see anything wrong with it.

So, you say it is somehow monstrous that the US is in a financial position good enough to pay for the dead? What do you say? Make them poor? I asked for links about the dead in afghanistan, if you bothered to read my post objectively - not for general US-policy screwups.

The LTTE angle is not a correct analogy. Tamil Nadu, because of its cultural roots, always sympathized with the LTTE’s cause. Note I say ‘cause’ not their ‘methods’. They simply believed fellow Tamilians deserved a separate statehood in the North-east part of Sri Lanka — that is until LTTE started competing with Hamas/Islamic Jihad in suicide bombings. Things came to a head when Britain branded them as a terrorist organization.

Regardless Gaurav makes a larger point here. US has long been accused of destabilizing a lot of regimes in the past in the name of national security and needs of geopolitical positioning. Nowhere is it more evident than during the cold war. US was publicly or privately (through CIA) meddling with just about every regime in the world. The list is endless - Cuba, Iraq, Congo, Dominican Republic, Vietnam, Chile and almost all of Central America. This is not to argue about the merits or demerits of such adventures. One could make a case saying US was instrumental in getting rid of Communism, Nazism, Islamic Radicalism or whatever. The fact remains they are responsible for letting loose some ghosts that have finally come back to haunt them.

L - great points - I really, really, really don’t understand the administration’s waffling over the Saudis and Musharraf - I mean, how can we forget 15 out of 19? That is one of the reasons why I refuse to see the war on Iraq as a part of the war on terrorism - I like it only for the humanitarian reasons. It is serious BS to be going after Saddam who “might have done something some time sooner or later”, when SA and Pakistan, who have been openly involved with terrorism against America are let go scot-free.

So far, none of the reasons behind that waffling make much sense, while the only theory that came remotely close to explaining stuff is that once Iraqi oil is flowing, SA can be told to go to hell, though it still doesn’t justify the administration’s molly-coddling of Pakistan.

Dilip, I disagree with that - I think 9/11 was the cost paid for the Mogadishu debacle and the bombing of USS Cole after that. Both these incidents and many like that helped establish that the US didn’t have the spine to tackle her attackers - I doubt if the terror-mongers can be as complacent about their next bombing as they have been before. I think there is a reason they hasn’t been a 9/11 since 9/11.

Shanti, Never have I opposed the action taken by the US in Afghanistan. That is the only justified war, though smokealot may disagree. My beef is with the Iraq war.

However….

I refuse to see the war on Iraq as a part of the war on terrorism - I like it only for the humanitarian reasons.

By this you are proving all the anti-iraq-war people right. You see, no one is saying Saddam is this great dude we need to keep in Tehran. What everyone here is accusing the Americans of is malafide intent. They attacked Iraq though it was no threat to their security.

You people are making the same mistake that was amde in the 80s. One might say that supporting Bin Laden and a bunch of beardos in the 80s was good for “humanitarian reasons” because it helped kicked those damn commies out. I liked the end result too, kicking the commies out. However by concentrating on the end result, they planted seeds for 9/11.

Same thing happening in Iraq. End result may be nice. But the fallouts will be even more disastrous.

Ask an American today if he would mind letting Afghanistan rot under a Commie regime if it meant no 9/11 happening. He would take the offer with both hands. Too bad we havent built a time machine yet.

Gaurav, I disagree - Iraq war did not have to happen. If all those millions of people and the all the countries in the security council stood together against Saddam with the same amount of venom they spewed against America, do you think Saddam would have continued to stand tough? He took a gamble - he thought that as long as the world and Germany and Russia and France were on his side, he could avoid the war. There were no teeth to the UN resolution and he knew it, which is why he so openly violated everything and kept playing games.

Before we go around blaming America everytime someone in the world sneezes, we should also accept our part of the responsibility for making things the way they are.

Every thing has a fallout - Kosovo had a fallout because of action and Rwanda had a fallout because of inaction - given a choice, I would always choose action like that in Kosovo (again, unapproved by the UN) than inaction that killed hundreds and thousands in Rwanda.

do we really have the moral authority to pontificate on this?

Now you are arguing about morality? I am really confused with your line of reasonings. Elsewhere you said Saddam wasn’t responsible for 9/11 even though he help trained al-Qaeda. Here is al-Qaeda’s “mission statement”:

to kill Americans and their allies, both civil and military, is the individual duty of every Muslim who is able, until the Aqsa mosque [in Jerusalem] and the Haram mosque [in Mecca] are freed from their grip, and until their armies, shattered and broken-winged, depart from all the lands of Islam

By supporting this cause (by aiding and abetting as you said) Saddam is not even morally responsible for 9/11? Maybe not enough to start a war on Iraq but the US never claimed they are attacking Iraq simply because of their complicity in 9/11.

hmmm…..shanti, you say the iraq war isnt a part of the war on terror, but gets ur support on a humanitarian basis, right? which leads me to believe that having saddam in baghdad (cant believe i wrote tehran earlier:shocked:) does not really affect an american’s life, the way that having mullah omar or OBL in Kabul does.

so the war was right because it removed this horrible dictator?

i might say the war was “beneficial” because it removed the horrible dictator. and i being no fan of saddam’s would not have any desire to defend or justify why he did not avoid war etc etc. he couldve avoided everything, even the first gulf war.

just because i am criticising america does not mean i am a saddam fan….what am i, a pakistani?:tongue3: dont use the “with us or with them” line of thinking.

read my previous comment again. it says that the war, though having achieved a good end in short term, has done so by using means which are horribly wrong. and this may come back and bite both the americans and the iraqis in the ass in the future. i am not echoing the arab world and saying americans deserved 9-11. far from it. however even the most ardent america-lover will consider it delusional to ignore the part played by previous administrations (by the way, Reagan, Bush Sr and Bush Jr. administrations are of the same party and with similar thinking, so ur BJP-Congress-LTTE analogy does not apply here) in the making of Al Qaeda.

Before 9-11 one can understand the Americans following this shortterm-oriented policy repeatedly, since there was no major fallout for the americans. however post-9-11, one wouldve expected them to be a bit more circumspect.

strangely, perpetrators of 9-11 are still making lovey dovey home videos for al jazeera. the architects of the taliban are being wined and dined at camp david. and billions are being spent on attacking and occupying a country that had nothing to do with that attack.

it is as if 9-11 never happened.

One last thing to add - even if American government lied, the people who were lied to and who are losing people are the Americans - no one else in the whole world (apart from the coalition forces) shed a single drop of blood to help the Iraqis, war or no war - do we really have the moral authority to pontificate on this?

come on, shanti!! i didnt expect this kind of an argument from you. so indian blood has to be spilt in any part of the world for me to have a moral right to comment about it? this is a veri twisted logic that would silence most debates around the world. was any american blood spilt from 1989-1996 when afghans were suffering from the atrocities of motley warlords after the soviets left? No. The only people to bring relative peace were those barbarians named Taliban(brought to you by ISI). Now does that mean that no American had the moral right to pontificate on Taliban’s methods?

Such kind of a logic would preclude you from making blogposts about most topics in the world. Have I spent any time or money educating poor Indian muslim kids? No. Does that mean I have no right to criticise certain madarsahs if they spew hatred, just because at least those madarsahs are doing some good by reducing illiteracy?

As per your first comment, the ONLY reason why I supported the war was because of the humanitarian reason - looking at it from the American POV, it isn’t like the sanctions on Iraq hurt Americans any, except as tools in Saddam’s propaganda machine. There might also be some roundabout arguments to make the case, but again Saddam DIRECTLY didn’t affect a thing American, atleast not yet. But then, you did side step my question about what should have been done in Kosovo and Rwanda, since any step against radicals might be contrued as risky as who knows what might come and bite you in the butt?

I already said in response to L’s comment that I hate the way Saudi Arabia and Pakistan are being handled by the current admin - nothing more to add.

As for Reagan, Bush Sr. and Bush Jr. being from the same party, it still doesn’t mean they have the same policies or even that they should be blamed for others’ mistakes - Should we blame PV Narasimha Rao for the Khalistan that Indira Gandhi helped sustain ?

As for the second comment, no, I don’t mean you cannot say anything until India got involved in stuff - not having the moral authority never stopped anyone from discussing issues - it is just that at some point your (not just Gaurav, but plenty of others who I have discussed this issue with) insistence on putting down America’s war on Iraq regardless of anything else, gets old. Whether it is good or bad for America, as a citizen of the world, one should appreciate the good that comes out of deposing a dictator instead of being stuck in the warp of - “no, admit America is wrong! no, admit Bush is wrong!” and blah, blah, blah.

it is just that at some point your (not just Gaurav, but plenty of others who I have discussed this issue with) insistence on putting down America�s war on Iraq regardless of anything else, gets old. Whether it is good or bad for America, as a citizen of the world, one should appreciate the good that comes out of deposing a dictator

No.. come again. I really don’t understand. I will play the devil’s advocate for the moment here. IMHO America was wrong to have went to war with Iraq without building up a credible support and without securing UN’s approval. I told-you-so-earlier that in the aftermath of the war America would’ve to bend its tail between its legs and come squawking at UN for help. I disapprove of the means. I appreciate the need for the end but I still don’t agree with the means. It is exactly this unilateralism that is preventing America from getting the requisite amount of international support to ensure Iraq doesn’t slip into Afganistan - II.

Oh and btw, there is a tinpot tyrant ruling Guinea-Bissau. Can we make our next stop there and “realize the good that would come out of disposing him?”

Are you deliberately zooming past my point everytime? Try to understand that an action can have many consequences. You are basing your entire argument on one such consequence and that is disposing of Saddam. Definitely it is a major outcome but look at what is happening in the aftermath. The administration has admitted that it miscalculated its post-war plans. That kind of relevation is going to bring out the I-told-you-so crowd and to your dismay they do have a point. Can’t you see the major obstacle to Iraq re-construction is the lack of sufficient military power? Don’t you see that the US troops are tired, fatigued, disillusioned and what not? Not only did they have to wage a war but they have to contend with dissident elements who are taking the death toll to alarming limits. Now hypothetically if US had built up a coalition, who knows? Maybe instead of begging to Poland for troops they might have been able to demand equal participation at the UN meetings.

See I belong to the crowd that believes UN is a spineless body, ok? I believe their revolving mechanism of having one representative from every country every few months to complete the 5 permanent members of Security Council is an exercise in ridiculousness. In that arrangement sometimes you have a representative from Liberia heading a meeting over human rights abuses. For 10 years Saddam cocked a snook at UN weapons inspectors and built a hefty pile of WMD. One wonders where he manged to hide them all. I read atleast one instance where he gassed the kurds with some kind of chemical beast leaving many dead. I think its time some country stood upto it and I admired the way Bush pushed the UN to atleast call a referendum on the war. Beyond that whatever happened is a judgement call. I have been saying from day one on this thread that nobody is arguing about the merits of Bush’s ultimate decision. Its the many ramifications that one has to worry about. The way Afganistan in the 80s bred the Taliban, this might lead to something similar. 20 years down the line another lunatic with a long beard will declare a jihad against the entire world in general modulo radical islamists. Who knows? In the end you are responsible for your actions and that is why I said one of the consequence of US’ action in the past was 9/11. Today America is not able to put up with it. Similarly in the future, God forbid something like 9/11 should repeat itself, America will have nobody but herself to blame.

You asked:
Why is it that everytime we talk about one dictator (Saddam, in this case), people find the need to bring up stuff like what about this dictator, what about that and so on?

Because it sets a precedent. If America can use dubious reasonings to attack a Sovereign state and by citing national security what is to stop say Pakistan from claiming that India is manufacturing nuclear weapons to launch a secret attack on her and hence make a pre-emptive strike? Or what is to stop North Korea from lobbing another missile at Japan claiming some spy found classified information about something equally dubious? You see when courts deal with contentious legal issues they always look for legal precedents. A precedent makes sure that a decision doesn’t stray too much off track. Its defines a boundary within which further debate can be conducted. If you plan to set a historical first you better be careful with what you do. Have you forgotten immediately after US launched its strike against Iraq, Israel let out a statement saying they support it because that is same kind of terrorism they have been facing for eons and it implicitly granted itself a carte-blanche to attack Palestine whenever it feels like it?

In summary I would say your views do not encompass the whole gamut of the implications.

like dilip, you are looking past my point too. u keep bringing up kosovo and rwanda. now kosovo is what can be called an “altruistic” campaign, without UN sanction. did clinton at any stage claim that neglecting kosovo would expose america to the dangers of bioterrorism or nuclear attack? did he at any stage say that milosevic was responsible for deaths of americans in america?

no! that is why they have streets named after clinton. since america never attached any self-defence like rationale to the kosovo campaign, people saw it the way it was - the globocop on beat doing a good job.

in iraq, by shouting itself hoarse abt WMD and links with the al qaeda etc, america displayed malafide intent.

i hope you see why kosovo is different from iraq.

and narsimha rao may not be held accountable for indira gandhi’s mistakes, simply because their governments had totally different ideologies. the bush administration on the other hand has been saying that america SHOULD follow reaganlike methods. the neocon website explicitly mentions this. and then they are repeating reagan’s and bush sr’s follies.

please note that i am not doing what everyone else does - i e, i am NOT bringing up the old vietnam ghost. vietnam was LBJ’s mistake. however when the neocons themselves link their thinking with the reagan years, it is logical to cite those follies, right?

September 12, 2003

Sick and sicker!

Trackback Pings

Comments

Post a comment