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The United States of America has gone mad
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| ahlamalek |
January 15, 2003
The United States of America has gone mad
John le Carré
America has entered one of its periods of historical madness, but this is the worst I can remember: worse than McCarthyism, worse than the Bay of Pigs and in the long term potentially more disastrous than the Vietnam War.
The reaction to 9/11 is beyond anything Osama bin Laden could have hoped for in his nastiest dreams. As in McCarthy times, the freedoms that have made America the envy of the world are being systematically eroded. The combination of compliant US media and vested corporate interests is once more ensuring that a debate that should be ringing out in every town square is confined to the loftier columns of the East Coast press.
The imminent war was planned years before bin Laden struck, but it was he who made it possible. Without bin Laden, the Bush junta would still be trying to explain such tricky matters as how it came to be elected in the first place; Enron; its shameless favouring of the already-too-rich; its reckless disregard for the world’s poor, the ecology and a raft of unilaterally abrogated international treaties. They might also have to be telling us why they support Israel in its continuing disregard for UN resolutions.
But bin Laden conveniently swept all that under the carpet. The Bushies are riding high. Now 88 per cent of Americans want the war, we are told. The US defence budget has been raised by another $60 billion to around $360 billion. A splendid new generation of nuclear weapons is in the pipeline, so we can all breathe easy. Quite what war 88 per cent of Americans think they are supporting is a lot less clear. A war for how long, please? At what cost in American lives? At what cost to the American taxpayer’s pocket? At what cost — because most of those 88 per cent are thoroughly decent and humane people — in Iraqi lives?
How Bush and his junta succeeded in deflecting America’s anger from bin Laden to Saddam Hussein is one of the great public relations conjuring tricks of history. But they swung it. A recent poll tells us that one in two Americans now believe Saddam was responsible for the attack on the World Trade Centre. But the American public is not merely being misled. It is being browbeaten and kept in a state of ignorance and fear. The carefully orchestrated neurosis should carry Bush and his fellow conspirators nicely into the next election.
Those who are not with Mr Bush are against him. Worse, they are with the enemy. Which is odd, because I’m dead against Bush, but I would love to see Saddam’s downfall — just not on Bush’s terms and not by his methods. And not under the banner of such outrageous hypocrisy.
The religious cant that will send American troops into battle is perhaps the most sickening aspect of this surreal war-to-be. Bush has an arm-lock on God. And God has very particular political opinions. God appointed America to save the world in any way that suits America. God appointed Israel to be the nexus of America’s Middle Eastern policy, and anyone who wants to mess with that idea is a) anti-Semitic, b) anti-American, c) with the enemy, and d) a terrorist.
God also has pretty scary connections. In America, where all men are equal in His sight, if not in one another’s, the Bush family numbers one President, one ex-President, one ex-head of the CIA, the Governor of Florida and the ex-Governor of Texas.
Care for a few pointers? George W. Bush, 1978-84: senior executive, Arbusto Energy/Bush Exploration, an oil company; 1986-90: senior executive of the Harken oil company. Dick Cheney, 1995-2000: chief executive of the Halliburton oil company. Condoleezza Rice, 1991-2000: senior executive with the Chevron oil company, which named an oil tanker after her. And so on. But none of these trifling associations affects the integrity of God’s work.
In 1993, while ex-President George Bush was visiting the ever-democratic Kingdom of Kuwait to receive thanks for liberating them, somebody tried to kill him. The CIA believes that “somebody” was Saddam. Hence Bush Jr’s cry: “That man tried to kill my Daddy.” But it’s still not personal, this war. It’s still necessary. It’s still God’s work. It’s still about bringing freedom and democracy to oppressed Iraqi people.
To be a member of the team you must also believe in Absolute Good and Absolute Evil, and Bush, with a lot of help from his friends, family and God, is there to tell us which is which. What Bush won’t tell us is the truth about why we’re going to war. What is at stake is not an Axis of Evil — but oil, money and people’s lives. Saddam’s misfortune is to sit on the second biggest oilfield in the world. Bush wants it, and who helps him get it will receive a piece of the cake. And who doesn’t, won’t.
If Saddam didn’t have the oil, he could torture his citizens to his heart’s content. Other leaders do it every day — think Saudi Arabia, think Pakistan, think Turkey, think Syria, think Egypt.
Baghdad represents no clear and present danger to its neighbours, and none to the US or Britain. Saddam’s weapons of mass destruction, if he’s still got them, will be peanuts by comparison with the stuff Israel or America could hurl at him at five minutes’ notice. What is at stake is not an imminent military or terrorist threat, but the economic imperative of US growth. What is at stake is America’s need to demonstrate its military power to all of us — to Europe and Russia and China, and poor mad little North Korea, as well as the Middle East; to show who rules America at home, and who is to be ruled by America abroad.
The most charitable interpretation of Tony Blair’s part in all this is that he believed that, by riding the tiger, he could steer it. He can’t. Instead, he gave it a phoney legitimacy, and a smooth voice. Now I fear, the same tiger has him penned into a corner, and he can’t get out.
It is utterly laughable that, at a time when Blair has talked himself against the ropes, neither of Britain’s opposition leaders can lay a glove on him. But that’s Britain’s tragedy, as it is America’s: as our Governments spin, lie and lose their credibility, the electorate simply shrugs and looks the other way. Blair’s best chance of personal survival must be that, at the eleventh hour, world protest and an improbably emboldened UN will force Bush to put his gun back in his holster unfired. But what happens when the world’s greatest cowboy rides back into town without a tyrant’s head to wave at the boys?
Blair’s worst chance is that, with or without the UN, he will drag us into a war that, if the will to negotiate energetically had ever been there, could have been avoided; a war that has been no more democratically debated in Britain than it has in America or at the UN. By doing so, Blair will have set back our relations with Europe and the Middle East for decades to come. He will have helped to provoke unforeseeable retaliation, great domestic unrest, and regional chaos in the Middle East. Welcome to the party of the ethical foreign policy.
There is a middle way, but it’s a tough one: Bush dives in without UN approval and Blair stays on the bank. Goodbye to the special relationship.
I cringe when I hear my Prime Minister lend his head prefect’s sophistries to this colonialist adventure. His very real anxieties about terror are shared by all sane men. What he can’t explain is how he reconciles a global assault on al-Qaeda with a territorial assault on Iraq. We are in this war, if it takes place, to secure the fig leaf of our special relationship, to grab our share of the oil pot, and because, after all the public hand-holding in Washington and Camp David, Blair has to show up at the altar.
“But will we win, Daddy?”
“Of course, child. It will all be over while you’re still in bed.”
“Why?”
“Because otherwise Mr Bush’s voters will get terribly impatient and may decide not to vote for him.”
“But will people be killed, Daddy?”
“Nobody you know, darling. Just foreign people.”
“Can I watch it on television?”
“Only if Mr Bush says you can.”
“And afterwards, will everything be normal again? Nobody will do anything horrid any more?”
“Hush child, and go to sleep.”
Last Friday a friend of mine in California drove to his local supermarket with a sticker on his car saying: “Peace is also Patriotic”. It was gone by the time he’d finished shopping.
http://www.timesonline.co.uk/articl...-543296,00.html |
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| juzfugen |
| i find it quiet amusing that its an english news paper article talking about american sentiments. pure liberal biased article and completly naive assumptions |
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| PeacefulWarrior |
excellent article!
| quote: | | i find it quiet amusing that its an english news paper article talking about american sentiments. pure liberal biased article and completly naive assumptions |
huh, so the thought that the United States is in the wrong in many of its policies is an outlandish absurd opinion that cannot be entertained or debated?
:rolleyes: |
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| LiquidXtrance |
I was about to discuss about this article, had jsut read it today .
Very good and to the point article, in my opinion, I find it yet, so true.
And this is on the TIMES mag also .
Nice nice nice article ! |
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| Cyrus King |
| Beautifully articulated and TRUTHFUL article.... thanks for enlightening those who choose to be more open-minded Ahlamelek. |
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| Dj_Irish |
| Yep, that was a very interesting read indeed. Thanks for posting it! |
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| King_Mack |
nothing short of beautiful.
Well articulated passage...brilliant job |
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| AnotherWay83 |
| quote: | Originally posted by juzfugen
i find it quiet amusing that its an english news paper article talking about american sentiments. pure liberal biased article and completly naive assumptions |
can you please point out the 'naive assumptions' for us? |
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| Arbiter |
The United States of America cannot be defined as having gone mad, as it is not of one mind, but many.
;) |
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| LiquidXtrance |
| quote: | | Bush's other major policy slip in European eyes was to forge Iran, Iraq and North Korea into an "axis of evil." Whatever its moral justification, the phrase lumped together disparate opponents instead of trying to divide them, and in North Korea's case, created an embarrassing hostage to fortune. Bush's bedrock argument for attacking Saddam Hussein is that he is uniquely bad, due to his record of abusing human rights, using chemical weapons, aggression against his neighbors and long-term lust to acquire nukes. |
From times.com
A whole article of why europeans are MAD AT THE AMERICANS, VERY, VERY INTERESTING STUFF.. |
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| juzfugen |
| quote: | Originally posted by ahlamalek
January 15, 2003
The United States of America has gone mad
John le Carré
America has entered one of its periods of historical madness, but this is the worst I can remember: worse than McCarthyism, worse than the Bay of Pigs and in the long term potentially more disastrous than the Vietnam War.
The reaction to 9/11 is beyond anything Osama bin Laden could have hoped for in his nastiest dreams. As in McCarthy times, the freedoms that have made America the envy of the world are being systematically eroded. The combination of compliant US media and vested corporate interests is once more ensuring that a debate that should be ringing out in every town square is confined to the loftier columns of the East Coast press. |
Show me a Country/President/King-Queen that hasnt made mistakes.
What freedoms have i lost? if the FBI want to wiretap someones phone go for it, they might actually save lives this time.If our government were more aggressive in the years previous to 9/11 maybe it would have been prevented
| quote: | Originally posted by ahlamalek
The imminent war was planned years before bin Laden struck, but it was he who made it possible. Without bin Laden, the Bush junta would still be trying to explain such tricky matters as how it came to be elected in the first place; Enron; its shameless favouring of the already-too-rich; its reckless disregard for the world’s poor, the ecology and a raft of unilaterally abrogated international treaties. They might also have to be telling us why they support Israel in its continuing disregard for UN resolutions. |
Your damn right this war was planned years before, its been in the
making since 1990.Sign a treaty to stop a war ,violate it and pay the price. Trickery on how Bush got elected I guess you didnt get you New York Times the morning THEY proclaimed Bush the winner of the election after they did their own private recount of the votes. Yes Enron its all Bush's fault even though all its crimes were commited under the previous administration, Im not rich but yet I pay less taxes then I did in the previous 8 years, oh ya blantant favoring. I just dont understand how people can say it favors the rich, if there is an across the board taxcut who saves more? The guy making 50K a year like me or someone making 1 million a year.
Disregard for the worlds poor hmmm in 2001 the US gave 10.9 BILLION in foreign aid followed by Japan $9.7 billion, Germany $4.9 billion, the United Kingdom $4.7 billion, and France $4.3 billion.
Now the Isreal thing i do agree with here but the answer is simple
the Jewish population in America. It wont change no matter who is elected and this crossed both party lines. Some say its to foster the one truely democratic regime in that area but i disagree , Iran has made huge strives in the last 15 years and isnt blatently violating human rights.
| quote: | Originally posted by ahlamalek
But bin Laden conveniently swept all that under the carpet. The Bushies are riding high. Now 88 per cent of Americans want the war, we are told. The US defence budget has been raised by another $60 billion to around $360 billion. A splendid new generation of nuclear weapons is in the pipeline, so we can all breathe easy. Quite what war 88 per cent of Americans think they are supporting is a lot less clear. A war for how long, please? At what cost in American lives? At what cost to the American taxpayer’s pocket? At what cost — because most of those 88 per cent are thoroughly decent and humane people — in Iraqi lives? |
Yep Bush is very happy at the current state of his presidency/sarcasim. So its it too hard for the European community to understand that 88% of americans are for war, we have different views and sentiment then you guys. Yes our military budget is upped, thank god did you know one of the main reason for it?? I GET A PAY RAISE!!!!!!!!!! WOOHOOOO
After military cut back after cut back under the last president its truely needed trust me i deal with it everyday.
No new nuclear weapons are in the pipeline everything weve ever wanted has already been concieved, yes some weapons might be retro fitted for specific purposes but your a fool if you think the United States will actually use any of these weapons, unless they are used agaisnt us first. American war , American lives its our country not the yours anymore if we feel the need to goto war its not up to the EU. Trust when i say ALL American soldiers are ready willing and eagerly waiting to be put into action. This is exactly what we train for not to mention what we get paid to do.
| quote: | Originally posted by ahlamalek
How Bush and his junta succeeded in deflecting America’s anger from bin Laden to Saddam Hussein is one of the great public relations conjuring tricks of history. But they swung it. A recent poll tells us that one in two Americans now believe Saddam was responsible for the attack on the World Trade Centre. But the American public is not merely being misled. It is being browbeaten and kept in a state of ignorance and fear. The carefully orchestrated neurosis should carry Bush and his fellow conspirators nicely into the next election. |
I for one can tell you war on terror is going on as we speak I know firts hand for I have been there and participated. I was in Kandhar, I was at Tora Bora I saw the "Daisey Cutter" being dropped. Trust me when i say that the war on terror is happening.This bring up another little thing that really makes me irrate, how the public thinks it needs to know every detail that is going on during a war. Do you guys even realized that the more and more you press for information puts my life and my fellow marines lives in danger. Hell Im in the feild literally adn my famaily who watches CNN knows more about whats going on then I do.
| quote: | Originally posted by ahlamalek
Those who are not with Mr Bush are against him. Worse, they are with the enemy. Which is odd, because I’m dead against Bush, but I would love to see Saddam’s downfall — just not on Bush’s terms and not by his methods. And not under the banner of such outrageous hypocrisy.
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This statement can mean one of two things: 1) you want to keep trying diplomacy which has been going on for 12 years and has failed miseribly or 2) you want to see a Democratic President get him.
| quote: | Originally posted by ahlamalek
The religious cant that will send American troops into battle is perhaps the most sickening aspect of this surreal war-to-be. Bush has an arm-lock on God. And God has very particular political opinions. God appointed America to save the world in any way that suits America. God appointed Israel to be the nexus of America’s Middle Eastern policy, and anyone who wants to mess with that idea is a) anti-Semitic, b) anti-American, c) with the enemy, and d) a terrorist. |
Complete nonsence here is an article from one of the most prominate and vocal religous leaders in the US who is against this war
http://www.townhall.com/columnists/...b20020916.shtml
| quote: | Originally posted by ahlamalek
God also has pretty scary connections. In America, where all men are equal in His sight, if not in one another’s, the Bush family numbers one President, one ex-President, one ex-head of the CIA, the Governor of Florida and the ex-Governor of Texas.
Care for a few pointers? George W. Bush, 1978-84: senior executive, Arbusto Energy/Bush Exploration, an oil company; 1986-90: senior executive of the Harken oil company. Dick Cheney, 1995-2000: chief executive of the Halliburton oil company. Condoleezza Rice, 1991-2000: senior executive with the Chevron oil company, which named an oil tanker after her. And so on. But none of these trifling associations affects the integrity of God’s work. |
God issues see above, im glad you did your homework on resumes
what your trying to say here i have no idea. Im from Texas born and raised i grew up in a city of 4 million people and to tell ya the truth everyone i know is either in the oil business or has a famaily member in the oil business, Im still baffeled as to what your trying to say.
Yep the Bush famaily has been very political, it reminds me alot of the Kennedy except for the fact that bush's did hire the mod to strongarm and fix the election for JFK to win.
| quote: | Originally posted by ahlamalek
In 1993, while ex-President George Bush was visiting the ever-democratic Kingdom of Kuwait to receive thanks for liberating them, somebody tried to kill him. The CIA believes that “somebody” was Saddam. Hence Bush Jr’s cry: “That man tried to kill my Daddy.” But it’s still not personal, this war. It’s still necessary. It’s still God’s work. It’s still about bringing freedom and democracy to oppressed Iraqi people.
To be a member of the team you must also believe in Absolute Good and Absolute Evil, and Bush, with a lot of help from his friends, family and God, is there to tell us which is which. What Bush won’t tell us is the truth about why we’re going to war. What is at stake is not an Axis of Evil — but oil, money and people’s lives. Saddam’s misfortune is to sit on the second biggest oilfield in the world. Bush wants it, and who helps him get it will receive a piece of the cake. And who doesn’t, won’t.
If Saddam didn’t have the oil, he could torture his citizens to his heart’s content. Other leaders do it every day — think Saudi Arabia, think Pakistan, think Turkey, think Syria, think Egypt.
Baghdad represents no clear and present danger to its neighbours, and none to the US or Britain. Saddam’s weapons of mass destruction, if he’s still got them, will be peanuts by comparison with the stuff Israel or America could hurl at him at five minutes’ notice. What is at stake is not an imminent military or terrorist threat, but the economic imperative of US growth. What is at stake is America’s need to demonstrate its military power to all of us — to Europe and Russia and China, and poor mad little North Korea, as well as the Middle East; to show who rules America at home, and who is to be ruled by America abroad. |
What is your problem with God? yes it was just a fluke that the first time GB sr visisted the middle east after he helped repell Sadams attack on Kuwait that there was an assisnation attempt on him.
For being a reporter you sure are an idiot, here is why we are considering attacking Iraq.Oh ya this might be another reason.Iraq has no economic impact on the US just like they have no economic impact on Australia.
If this was all about oil it would have happened several years ago and FYI Iraq does NOT have the second largest oil feild in the world.
Why would we need to flex military muscle just to flex it? Everyone knows we have the best men woman and machines on the planet.The people rule America unlike most parts of the world.
| quote: | Originally posted by ahlamalek
The most charitable interpretation of Tony Blair’s part in all this is that he believed that, by riding the tiger, he could steer it. He can’t. Instead, he gave it a phoney legitimacy, and a smooth voice. Now I fear, the same tiger has him penned into a corner, and he can’t get out.
It is utterly laughable that, at a time when Blair has talked himself against the ropes, neither of Britain’s opposition leaders can lay a glove on him. But that’s Britain’s tragedy, as it is America’s: as our Governments spin, lie and lose their credibility, the electorate simply shrugs and looks the other way. Blair’s best chance of personal survival must be that, at the eleventh hour, world protest and an improbably emboldened UN will force Bush to put his gun back in his holster unfired. But what happens when the world’s greatest cowboy rides back into town without a tyrant’s head to wave at the boys?
Blair’s worst chance is that, with or without the UN, he will drag us into a war that, if the will to negotiate energetically had ever been there, could have been avoided; a war that has been no more democratically debated in Britain than it has in America or at the UN. By doing so, Blair will have set back our relations with Europe and the Middle East for decades to come. He will have helped to provoke unforeseeable retaliation, great domestic unrest, and regional chaos in the Middle East. Welcome to the party of the ethical foreign policy.
There is a middle way, but it’s a tough one: Bush dives in without UN approval and Blair stays on the bank. Goodbye to the special relationship.
I cringe when I hear my Prime Minister lend his head prefect’s sophistries to this colonialist adventure. His very real anxieties about terror are shared by all sane men. What he can’t explain is how he reconciles a global assault on al-Qaeda with a territorial assault on Iraq. We are in this war, if it takes place, to secure the fig leaf of our special relationship, to grab our share of the oil pot, and because, after all the public hand-holding in Washington and Camp David, Blair has to show up at the altar.
“But will we win, Daddy?”
“Of course, child. It will all be over while you’re still in bed.”
“Why?”
“Because otherwise Mr Bush’s voters will get terribly impatient and may decide not to vote for him.”
“But will people be killed, Daddy?”
“Nobody you know, darling. Just foreign people.”
“Can I watch it on television?”
“Only if Mr Bush says you can.”
“And afterwards, will everything be normal again? Nobody will do anything horrid any more?”
“Hush child, and go to sleep.”
Last Friday a friend of mine in California drove to his local supermarket with a sticker on his car saying: “Peace is also Patriotic”. It was gone by the time he’d finished shopping. |
Personally i could care less what Mr. Blair has to say it doesnt affect me in any way shape or form. The United Nations have said by a 15-0 vote of the Security Council is that Saddam IS a threat, he HAS violated every resolution and if he is caught with his hand in the cookie jar it CAN result in military action.
Im always up for a good debate but next time post al ink to an article with some factual substanance instead of biased opinions |
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