CAPT. DEVLIN: Ray, it's Captain Devlin.
POLICE DESK SGT. WOZACK: How are you?
DEVLIN: I'm a little frazzled to say the least.
WOZACK: What is it, Building One? Building One? One World Trade just came down?
DEVLIN: No, Two . . . we just . . . command post here, going with the cops, the emergency people, everything. They're all there.
WOZACK: Oh my God.
DEVLIN: I don't know, everything . . . we don't have anything.
WOZACK: Oh, my God.
DEVLIN: All right, say a prayer, brother. All right, take care.
As a result of a lawsuit filed by the New York Times, an 1,800 page transcript of about 260 hours' worth of radio and telephone communications among Port Authority personnel was released today. The Washington Post, The New York Times, and ABC News all have significant lead stories (as does the LA Times, but they've got one of those fire-breathing registration dragons guarding the gates).
Carie Lemack, the daughter of a passenger on American Airlines Flight 11, said, "As a family member, you can't imagine the horror of finding your loved one's last words. What is the reason for releasing these tapes? If it's safety, that's fantastic. But if it's entertainment, then we're very concerned."
All I can remember about the night of 9/11 and the next day is the never-ending footage on CBS, the only non-cable channel that was still on the air in NY. All the others went off the air when the big antenna atop One World Trade was knocked to the earth, but CBS 2 had a backup system in place on the Empire State Building. CBS broadcast the planes, the towers falling, the walking ghosts. Over and over and over again. When, frankly, those of us who were there really didn't need to see it eight hundred times just then.
Now, the erosions of time, psychological defense, and political obfuscation have all done their synergistic work...for most people. I'm fairly certain that the families and friends of those who were murdered, those who escaped from the buildings, and those involved in the recovery still have acute memories, nearly unmuffled by the passage of time. They don't need to be reminded.
But for everyone else, for the 99% of the American population that was nowhere near the World Trade Center, the Pentagon, or a nameless field in Pennsylvania, who know no one who was there, know no one who died...their experience is a media experience. Phosphors on a television screen, that fade into black when they push a button. I was there that day, less then 700 yards away and, even my memories have softened.
In one sense, that's a natural process, a healthy reaction to trauma and distress. You cope with it, you move on. But this morning, when I read the brief exchange between Captain Devlin and Seargent Wozack, my eyes welled, my throat closed, and for a brief moment, I was there again. Not in downtown Manhattan, but sitting in my old grungy recliner in Astoria, watching the footage--watching on television the cloud of dust that I had so recently ridden through on my bike as I fled. That bike was in the front hall, with the dust of the towers still ground into its chain and its gears, with a fluffy bit of wall insulation and a layer of powdered gypsum that I wouldn't discover for another week still trapped under the pack on its rear rack.
I don't know why this particular snippet of transcript transported me, but I'm glad that it did. It is for that purpose--not for entertainment--that such words and images need to be brought forth. As human beings and as Americans, we must be reminded of the difference between intentional and unintentional. In particular, those who would point to the undeniable deaths of others at our nation's hands and say, Look! We, too, are murderers! must be reminded of the blood and treasure we have expended to gain the ever-increasing ability to not repeat Dresden, to not repeat Hamburg, Hiroshima, Nagasaki, My Lai. To those killed at the Afghan wedding party in January, to the huddled civilians who were killed in the Iraqi bunker in 1991, we as a people can truly say, We are sorry. We know that you are not part of our war, and that you did not deserve to die.
All our enemies can say is, We are glad that you are dead. We killed you, we meant to kill you, and we will go on killing you, because if you are an American you are a target, and you deserve to die.
That is the difference, and for that reason we must make these transcripts available, we must show the tumbling towers: this is who we face.
The precedence of a society’s war-making potential over its other characteristics is not the result of the “threat” presumed to exist at any one time from other societies. This is the reverse of the basic situation; “threats” against the “national interest” are usually created or accelerated to meet the changing needs of the war system. Only in comparatively recent times has it been considered politically expedient to euphemize war budgets as “defense” requirements. The necessity for governments to distinguish between “aggression” (bad) and “defense” (good) is a by-product of rising literacy and rapid communication. The distinction is tactical only.
In general, our war system provides the basic motivation for primary social organization. In so doing, it reflects on the societal level the incentives of individual human behavior. The most important of these, for social purposes, is the individual psychological rationale for allegiance to a society and its values. Allegiance requires a cause; a cause requires an enemy. This much is obvious; the critical point is that the enemy that defines the cause must seem genuinely formidable. Roughly speaking, the presumed power of the “enemy” sufficient to warrant an individual sense of allegiance to a society must be proportionate to the size and complexity of the society. Today, of course, that power must be one of unprecedented magnitude and frightfulness.
The existence of an accepted external menace, then, is essential to social cohesiveness as well as to the acceptance of political authority. The menace must be believable, it must be of a magnitude consistent with the complexity of the society threatened, and it must appear, at least, to affect the entire society.
Wars are not “caused” by international conflicts of interest. Bush and Company had actively prepared to attack Iraq and Afghanistan before 911. A "normal" or judicious reaction to the attrocities? Seek out the perpetrators and bring them to justice with evidence. Whoops. Proper logical sequence was reversed.
It may be more accurate to say that as a war-making society, we require and thus bring about/allow such conflicts to occur (there were repeated and credible warnings on all levels for the attacks - they were not a suprise. This doesn't excuse them, merely places them in a wider context).
The capacity of a nation to make war expresses the greatest social power it can exercise; war-making, active or contemplated, is a matter of life and death on the greatest scale subject to social control. It should therefore hardly be surprising that the military institutions in our society claim our highest priorities. In our case, to the tune of over $400 billion a year, dwarfing by multitudes every other social program, and every other nation's "defense" budgets exponentially.
Few clichés are so unquestioningly accepted as the notion that war is an extension of diplomacy (or of politics, or of the pursuit of economic objectives). In fact, economic systems, political philosophies, and corpora jures serve and extend the war system, not vice versa.
The military serves simply to defend or advance the “national interest” by means of organized violence - justified mass murder. It is often necessary for a national military establishment to create a need for its unique powers —- to maintain the franchise. And a healthy military apparatus requires regular “exercise,” by whatever rationale seems expedient, to prevent its atrophy.
The release of the 911 transcripts is on purpose and not for the benefits you self-righteously bark about.
Posted by: paulie | August 29, 2003 01:34 PM
To begin with, try to keep the ad hominem to a minimum. I don't have alot of patience for that sort of thing anymore.
Some points:
stamps and other agricultural programs, and federal retirement programs, including Social Security) accounted for 57%. I'd say that our priorities as a nation are clear.
Finally, I find your "war system" social model entirely false, as it relies on accepting the following premise:
Our "cause" as a society, with varying degress of consciousness, are those ideals, expressed in both the Declaration of Independence and the Constitution. The struggle that the 18th century elites set for their nascent nation was the realization of those ideals. Clearly, we do better with some of them than others, and some of the major difficulties occur when operating in the world outside of our borders. But that is the nature of ideals: they are approachable but not perfectly obtainable.
Does this cause require an enemy? No, because the cause is self-sufficient. The only time that the nation has gone to war over the past century has been when treaties obligated us to do so (WWI), our citizens or borders were attacked (WWII, both 9/11-related campaigns), or the developing realization of the self-sufficient cause was undeniably threatened by a entity which declared its intention to do us harm (Cold War, which encompasses Vietnam, Korea, "shadow wars" in Central and South America, etc.) These are all real threats to the cause--however imperfectly it is realized--and therefore the society.
If there were no threats, do you really believe that the American character would compel us to go out and conquer nations? If you think that the distinction between "aggression" and "defense" is tactical only, I would refer you to all of the nations we have annexed since the end of WWII.
Our society's devotion to this cause--independent of any enemy, manufactured or otherwise--is demonstrated by the vibrancy, virulence, and sheer volume of the public debate about how best to go about realizing it. When segments of the polity scream about Imperialist Amerikkka, it is because they feel that we are not acting as though "all [hu]men [beings] are created equal." When other segments of the polity bellow that America needs to respond to its attackers, it is because our citizenry--that is, the very polity which has these discussions and makes them possible--is threatened in life and limb.
Do you deny that there is a threat from Islamic extremists? Do you think that they will respond well to logic, reason, diplomacy?
Your proposed "judicious reaction" to 9/11 works just fine in a world conventionally armed. We don't live in that world, and I, for one, am fully supportive of minimizing further risk to our citizens. Do you doubt that if the 9/11 terrorists could have gotten hold of a nuke they would have used it?
Is that "unprecedented magnitude and frightfulness"? Not really, if you want to count the pile of corpses. A million dead in NY, what hey, we've got 249 million more citizens, right?
But tell me why it's worth the risk.
This absolutist all killing is wrong at all times in all places morality is very fine, and very nice for those who want to try to bring about the City of God on Earth. I truly wish that everybody in the world thought that way.
But they don't.
And, so, here we are.
Posted by: --iaw | August 29, 2003 03:50 PM
I was waiting-somewhat patiently-to read your thoughts here on A-Head about the newly released transcripts. In fact I've been waiting ever since I heard the news of the ruling.
You did not dissapoint.
Thanks for the good stuff I come here to read. I linked you.
Posted by: Deb | August 29, 2003 05:12 PM
good. healthy, debate. appreciate it.
y'know, there's an adage among professional con men that says: those who can't conceive that a con can be committed are suckers. You would seem ready for a spin. Watch your pockets. To think that editors of one of the most important newspapers in the world, or judges, or leaders of our government, are somehow above or unknown to involvement in what you term a "conspiracy" is...ad hominem....silly. You know this though. It seems you defend a team and that's OK.
maybe my flip ending is based on cynacism based partly on experience and partly on my particularly-driven review of historical, industry and scientific propoganda methodologies and their motivations.
"Naturally, the common people don't want war. It is the leaders of the country who determine policy, and it is always a simple matter to drag the people along. The people can always be brought to the bidding of the leaders. That is easy. All you have to do is tell them they are being attacked and denounce the pacifists for lack of patriotism and exposing the country to danger. It works the same in any country." Hermann Goering said it best, though the attacks in the 911 case were real. I argue the US reaction is based not on the attacks, though, but on a larger context on which our current top-levels of leadership of our society is based.
and please forgive the "self-righeous crack" - unnecessary and I'll be more respectful as this is your site and a good one -- thank you for it. But: "All our enemies can say is, We are glad that you are dead. We killed you, we meant to kill you, and we will go on killing you, because if you are an American you are a target, and you deserve to die..." is, good or bad, self-righteous. Maybe said by some, but define who is saying this? "Our enemies"? And the quote invokes similarities to what we say to OUR enemies - so my point is that we all demonize for justifying hate and war. I say enough with the justifications for taking at least 7 times the lives lost in the 911 attrocities -- how many "enemy" civillians have been killed? Red Cross and other reports say between Iraq and Afghanistan roughly 20,000, +/- a few marriage ceremonies. It is deeply Freudian, this continuation of jingoistic cries to "never forget" -- as we strive to move beyond our own many and stupendous committed attrocities and wars current and past. Has anyone seen the Vietnam Red Cross site reviewing the horrors of our chemical warfare (the orange kind) on the populations there? Still killing them in thousands. Where's it stop? Are we justified based on being morally superior?
"If men can develop weapons that are so terrifying as to make the thought of global war a sentence for suicide, you would think that man's intelligence and his comprehension...would include also his ability to find a peaceful solution."
President Dwight D. Eisenhower, Press Conference, Washington, DC, 14 November 1956
I take it your view of US history and the workings of our political system, as it pertains to war in particular, is that we "citizenry" (or the best of us) decide what is "a threat", that we participate in the process, and that wars are fought only for a morally-backed cause based on our American character -- the defense of our "freedoms". That as the world's most powerful nation, one that "annexed" plenty of foreign territory in its 250+ years, we are above imperialism? I think this view is idealist at best. And dangerous at worst. This view predisposes that because of a Constitution we are more righteous ? I don't think you said or really meant that but it sounded like this.
I do not believe that killing or murder or war is absolutely wrong and/or never justified -- I said that our military serves to defend or advance our “national interest” by means of organized violence. This isn;t absolute nor is it advocating anything -- its a description of our military, one many reject because it requires we look at what our military is based on by its action, sans moralizing or justifications.
And me, I have zero patience for advocating the destruction of the civillian populations of Iraq and Afganistan based on the actions of a few Islamic nuts - and they were nuts and the rest are dangerous -- many trained to fly in this country, were tracked and ignored by the highest levels of government, and supported by Saudis that have gone unpunished, unfound, unaddressed. Why?
I think we ought to be very cautious about using the phrase "War on Terror." There can't be a war on terror. That is a logical impossibility. First of all because war is one of the principal means through which terror is perpetuated; and secondly because the USA is one of the leading terrorist states in the world. You think our Black Ops, Green Berets, CIAs, Delta Forces, SEAL Teams, and the many others are, what, peace keepers? Protecting the good? They are elite storm troops organized for terror strikes against other countries. Let's have an honest assessment first then we can debate their merits and justifications.
I clearly don't deny the terrorist threats - I am confused by our justifications and methods that have increased the threats worldwide, increased the killing, destroyed and terrorized thousands of innocents, and done very little (not nothing, little) to protect citizens of this country. Please explain that and the rest of it based on your assertions of our motivations. And I'll find and post that information on the US troops, the "defense" policies and the press published reports that discuss the plans for invasion of Iraq, et al, well prior to the 911 attrocities. By the way, this doesn't mean Bush is corrupt -- it means, Bush, Clinton, Bush 1, Reagan, Carter, Nixon, Johnson...POWER corrupts. Absolute power corrupts absolutely. Is our government and military the most powerful in the world? Absolutely. And we MUST be deluding ourselves to think we can possess such power without the consequences. Question: without a hearty, intelligent, vigorous and open debate, where does this power lead us?
Posted by: paulie | August 29, 2003 06:48 PM
I had a similar reaction to reading the parts of those transcripts that appeared in the media. And I looked for as much as I could find, and read every word. I was offended by the suggestion that Americans would read them for "entertainment."
I was also in downtown Manhattan that day - not nearly as close as you were, but about a mile north of the towers, watching them burn, watching the tallest hook-and-ladder trucks leaning futilely against them (not even reaching halfway up), wondering aloud, in shock, how are they going to get the people out of there? And then I saw an explosion in the second tower as the next plane hit, and I thought "They are coming down. There's nothing they can do. They're going to come down. Everybody get OUT OF THERE."
It was terrible.
And when I read the transcripts, I got sent right back to that day, not to watching it on TV, but to watching it on the sidewalk, close enough to see the ladders, smell the smoke, and be terrified for the people I knew down there.
Honestly, as much as it shook me up to read them, I was grateful for the opportunity to hear from the people who were IN THERE that day, some who did and some who didn't survive.
I remember being so strongly affected by their faces and the few words written about them in homemade flyers that papered the city for a month afterward. I WANTED to be reminded of that, painful as it is. I wanted to be reminded of their humanity. That is the meaning to be found in this - nothing but loss and being sad for those people - so much like me - who got killed.
Anyone who thinks that is entertainment has a screw loose.
Posted by: Valencia | August 30, 2003 01:03 PM
Possible. But to what end? Whipping up the sheep, perhaps? Hardly a conspiracy worth forming, I think. The second anniversary is about two weeks away...that alone would be enough. It's such concern with the minutiae, this conviction that They Are Behind Everything, that defines the quintessential conspiracy theory. The only motivation, here, is the NYT editorial staff wanting to have enough new material for its 9-11-2003 retrospective. And, as I've said, I don't think that that's necessarily a bad thing.
That little word--"though"--changes the entire nature of the problem, and the reality of it can't simply be glossed over with any integrity. We were attacked. On our soil. Thousands died. That is the crux of the debate, not a mere incidental.
That somewhat tired Goering quote is often used to somehow demonstrate that our government has a propaganda machine akin to the Nazis'. Of course we have propaganda; all governments do. But in the service of what? Power, yes, of course; it's the nature of the beast. Corporate interests? Most assuredly. Is that all that it's used for? I say no.
To suggest that our propaganda machine resembles--in intention or execution--the one used to pacify a population in preparation for invasion, annexation, the wholesale slaughter of ethnically undesirable populations and the advent of a thousand-year empire is just...ad hominem...silly.
The day that our political and religious leaders thunder without censure from the Capitol and the televised pulpit, calling for the death of all Muslims simply because they are Muslims, is the day that I will agree with this.
Many seek to draw this sort of equivalency, claiming that what we do is "really just like what they do," and so forth. To do this, they need post-modern theories of power, and linguistic gymnastics.
But what is taught in the madrassas and the mosques in significant portions of the Arab world needs no interpretation, no spin, and no semantic analysis. It's direct, it's intended to incite, and those who espouse it claim it is the very will of God that we be killed. When was the last time you saw a mob of Americans in the street, burning the Saudi flag, burning the Koran, burning Muslim leaders in effigy? Even when Saudis and Egyptians killed 3,000 of us you didn't see that sort of thing here--not even in NY--and that wasn't because the President of the United States went on national television and asked the American people to respect their Muslim neighbors. It was because, for all its cantankerous faults, our society is fundamentally more tolerant than that which gave rise to those who have sworn to do harm to us.
The irony of this is that of the 1.6 billion Muslims in the world, only around 20% are Arabs. Yet from that 20% and--more specifically--from Saudi Arabia, has come the extremist poison that has spread throughout the Middle East, into Africa, into Indonesia and East Timor, into India and Pakistan, into Great Britain, France, and America. If you want to define "our enemies," look there, towards that source. Not to the Muslim world as a whole, but to the Arabian penninsula, and to the Wahabbists and their corrupt, indolent supporters.
There are no "enemy" civilians, and I challenge you to find any person in the military or the government who believes that there are.
Neither can you claim such certainty of number at this stage in the history of the conflict. I have my own biases, of course, but I find that the methodology used by the Red Cross and other NGOs is aburdly biased, often based on nothing more than local hearsay, with little distinction made between civilians and "civilians" with guns and RPGs. Even iraqbodycount.com lists less than 8,000 at most, and I don't trust them any more than I trust the NGOs. (And, by the by--where, now, are all those pre-war doomsayers who predicted civilian casualties in the hundreds of thousands? Who, like ex-Monty Pythoner Terry Jones, publicly predicted we would kill "more than Saddam ever did"? Nowhere to be found.)
All that aside: this is not about the heights of the corpse-piles. This is not about revenge, which is what the comparison of those heights implies. This is about the clash of our ideals with their ideals. Our ideals and our attempts to realize them, however faltering, have attracted immigrants by the tens of millions.
Look at the Arab nations, and see what their ideals have produced.
You're using "justify" in a sense which implies that, if such justification is successful, the deaths we have caused will be proper, and will somehow be transformed into a Good. That can't ever happen (and is, actually, the source of a deeply-felt moral conflict that I will be writing about soon).
Again, I'll ask you: Do you doubt that if the 9/11 terrorists could have gotten hold of a nuke they would have used it?
Why is it worth the risk of doing anything less than everything we can, now, to prevent that eventuality?
Are there more effective ways of reducing that risk, given that the Iraq campaign will (I believe) end up on the House of Saud's palace steps eventually? Given that the entire Arabian culture has been warped by decades of secular tyranny and religious extremism?
Well, we've hardly "destroyed" the civilian population. I certainly don't advocate this and I don't know of anyone who does. However, there are some mass graves in Iraq which, I feel, speak most eloquently against deliberate civilian slaughter.
Now, that's a good question, isn't it? Time will tell if the current administration is truly serious about doing what needs to be done.
That's an even better one. Except for the fact this this debate is occurring. Right now. And I don't mean just you and me; I mean the black-sneakered WTO Starbucks-smashing dingbats and the flag-waving Christian nutters, the Democrats and the Republicans, the newspaper editors that are tools of the establishment and the independent media outlets that are tools of an ideology.
To be honest, I am, in fact, almost stupidly optimistic. We're living through a time where the cultural and ideological rubber meets the road. Are we, as I say, fighting to defend ourselves and the society which makes such raucous, wonderfully agitated debate possible? Or are we, as you say, merely playing out an old game of power, serving hidden interests with our military?
Only time will tell. Perhaps someday I will remember this conversation as I sit in the Montana gulag sipping Freedom Gruel, remembering the glory days of the internet before the Ashcroftian hammer came down on all our heads.
But I doubt it.
Posted by: --iaw | August 30, 2003 06:56 PM
"Are we, as I say, fighting to defend ourselves and the society which makes such raucous, wonderfully agitated debate possible? Or are we, as you say, merely playing out an old game of power, serving hidden interests with our military?"
you mischaracterize and twisted my comments on many levels with this ending...too bad because you raised some interesting points. read mine again and you'll see I said both of these things. and I agree with you -- this is the time where rubber meets road, intensively, more quickening surely to come. and it is through debate and discussion that ideas and ideals can be exploited and explored, in the open...
while my use of "destroyed" Iraqi and Afghani populations was taken literally as 'deaths' by you, huge numbers (and 20k for both wars is in fact conservative, despite your "mistrust" of The Red Cross and other aid agencies -- interesting!) may not have been killed in the massive bombings or battles, are we considering the millions of refugees and victims of future war consequences? maybe we oughta, it's a consequence, eh? and I'd argue for the counting of bodies and illuminating the consequences of our 2 invasions (for reasons of the 911 bombings?), for one, since a quick review of your position above presides in a good tit-for-tat dance, before your good point about ideals. and for two it takes the dehumanizing gloss-over effect away and accords a better view for us -- our 58,000 dead Vietnam vets show up on the wall in context VASTLY better than as a few symbols on paper. if viewing our deeds and their consequences is in fact what we're interested in -- so we can get around to our higher ground values and ideals.
we ARE a nation of people with great tolerance. built from an escape from what was seen as great oppression -- the Brit system of 18th century. are we more tolerant (to ourselves, certainly and many) than the Arabs because we're younger than all these other nations? we seem to be growing more intollerant - maybe this is an illusion based on the focus of view from my limited years. militant cries for "bombin' those insane towelheads" and turning the whole region into a glass factory ARE here in this country, if not screamed from the TV as you say -- uh, did I hear Michael Savage and many other TV commentators call for "nukin'" em? Uh, right, we don't burn the flags and do that mosque thing...we're more advanced. sorry, but there's a strong resistance to see our own input into the matters, like an alcoholic's resistance to see the effects of his drinking.
so, sure, let's debate values and ideals instead. because I agree, we have ones I like. I'm just not sure we're gonna ask tough enough questions about how they're to be carried out.
Posted by: paulie | August 31, 2003 04:54 PM
Troll alert!!!
Posted by: John | August 31, 2003 10:20 PM
Now, John--disagreement does not a troll make. I don't want to turn the noble Commentarium into a place where dissent is piled onto like a stray green football...
And, pauli...
While my last two paragaphs were mostly rhetoricall fillip, I don't think I was too far off the mark, actually. I was referring back to your first post, in which you posited that our society's prominant war-making tendencies are not the result of a true external threat but the end result of the internal organization of power between the government and the governed. You softened a bit on that during the course of the exchange, which--being closer to the position I've advocated--I of course choose to call progress.
I don't think your actual position is as extreme as that, but you did start from that point.
As far as body-counts, and the ostensible similarity between one blown-up building and another...I'm working on that, in the second part of my series on Evil. All I have at the moment are instinct and precedent; no nitty-gritty arguments that I want to get into at the moment.
And as for "Michael Savage" and the rest of his ilk: I was careful to stipulate "without censure" when I commented about public Muslim extremists. Savage, O'Reilly, Limbaugh, Coulter...all are justly ridiculed for their rhetoric, even by what is ostensibly their own "side."
My point is that, despite their idiocy, they still have a voice, and their ideas are publicly debated, then shot down as the empty, inflammatory nonsense they are. Nobody dies. Does that make us "more advanced" in that regard? You bet it does.
Again--compare and contrast: America's marketplace of ideas, Arabian Islam's marketplace of ideas.
What happens to ourextremists? As a rule, they're heard, then derided once the true color of their ideology and the paucity of their thinking shows itself. What happens to their extremists? Their "sermons" are attended by tens of thousands, they inspire suicide bombings, truck bombs, and mass murder, and then have nifty posters, keychains, and videos made to commemorate their most savage successes. This is not to say that there aren't plenty of Muslims (and I know that there are) who dismiss a rabid Sheik just as you or I dismiss a Limbaugh or a Coulter. But there aren't nearly enough of them, and this is amply demonstrated by recent history.
Now: it's actually a day off for me, so I'm going to attempt to treat it as such.
Posted by: --iaw | September 1, 2003 11:38 AM
slippery! good twists and turns, on your day off no less, and still, real strident in your sure and certain distinguishing of Arabian Muslim "marketplace" of ideals vs. ours -- the us good vs. them evil argument again, part of my original point about a means to have an enemy and the use of military/Pentagon as the centering society organization. thanks, you obviously are a case in point, its effectiveness and all that -- and it's strident intelligence that hooks us into avoiding the obvious! marvelous.
nevertheless, our very own good and Democratic extremists (O'Reilly and co. are just the mouths - the real ones reside at higher levels) still managed to massively bomb and invade/occupy two countries, killing thousands in the process, despite overwhelming global opposition and lack of "evidence", and for the right "cause": the 911 attack on us. or, uh, the threat of something not inherent to these 2 countries' and their civillian dead....? extreme? in the eyes of Arabs and the global population, fer sure, wayyyy. good, we argue our merits as things plunge into a dark hole. and oh, holy be the rest of the progressive "accomplishments" of such intelligent ideals and thought-leaders -- just wait, it'll all to come out soon enough!
? neither logic nor solutions to problems await using the prisms you insist on. just endless kiddie circle jerk. its like having a 4-year olds' naive vision. Maybe we'll get around to seeing just how flawed Daddy is to understand how best to manage the shitstorms (denied by him) that he's causing all around him, like bankruptsy, abuse, hopelessness, rising criminal behaviors, and poverty for those outside his own narrow world. Like, maybe we take an adult view. Like, time to grow up and quit evading the consequences of being naive. but I do marvel at "optimism" and strident resistance in the face of all this (and the rest), in the face of real monsterous and insane behaviors. bravo! uselsssssssss. but sure feels good, eh?
your own professed optimism is based on the skills of people, skills like those in your own mind and heart. and please thank the many who will wade through these insane justications for forging the cause of paranoia despite our collective (now there's an evil word!) interest in finding similarities, not differences. ahh, if we can now, at this important time, turn off the omnipresent talkshow idiots and think, talk....maybe....for ourselves....humans might make progress through this ...that we all....can live with.
now, pass me the keys to the Hummer, I'm going for a drive through the chemical weapons plant (we have those?! like, all over the wonder-a-ful supply-side marketplace called the US??!! What d'ya meean we're the number one weapons manufacturer and exporter in the world??!!! How is that possible with our lofty ideals?!)
Darling....
Posted by: paulie | September 1, 2003 01:33 PM
Unfortunate. At the last, you have ridiculed my arguments but made no counterarguments of your own, except to point out the mere existence of contradictions which we have both already acknowledged.
Clearly, I have failed in my exposition, because you seem not to have understood the distinctions that I have made, and have retreated into ad hominem and frustrated sarcasm. There are reasonable responses to my arguments and methods, but you have chosen not to make them.
Neither have you acknowledged or offered possible answers to the tough, practical questions presented by the WTC attacks and the very real potential for nuclear/WMD proliferation, or suggested what might consitute an appropriate response that would safeguard our citizens.
Now...take a deep breath, calm down, and read carefully.
While your apparent devotion to an an absolute standard of justice is laudable, it will not aid you when you so blithely--and illogically, given your devotion--dismiss the validity of "good vs. evil," as "childlike" and "naïve," as though it is a simplistic worldview instead of one of the most complex discussions of moral philosophy.
The "prisms" I admittedly insist on present an undeniable tension between two poles: if we can claim the striving for ideals that I suggest, then how is what has transpired possible?
Appropriate and thoughtful resolution of that tension without simply nullifying one pole of that tension is the true challenge. In this discussion, your response to the tension has been to repeatedly declare "we are extreme" or "we are unjust," thus nullifying it by eliminating one pole. Easy enough, but I do not find that solution satisfactory. To put it bluntly, it's a cop-out.
Do we do things that, by an absolute standard of total justice and respect for all human life, are extreme or unjust? There is no question that we do.
But you have denied the very thing that might offer an answer to this contradiction, by eliminating the entirety of the moral compass. You posit that "good vs. evil" has no merit, as though the ideals of Good and Evil are irrelevant to the questions we ask. This denial is implicit in nearly every statement you make regarding my use of "enemy" terminology...yet you demonstrably hold to an absolute standard of justice, which must involve a recognition of Good and Evil and their conflict. Because of this deep-seated dissonance, you seem unable to appreciate the moral differences between the intentional mass murder of 3,000 Americans which is held by the ideology which drove it to be a definitive Good, and the unintended killing of civilians which is regarded as regrettable by the ideology which drove it and minimized as much as possibility and necessity will allow.
That is the reality of the respective acts now, today, and historical violence has no bearing upon it.
To claim, as you do, that all deaths in this conflict are equivalent--which, at a certain level of abtraction, I agree with--while deriding the "good vs. evil" premise upon which that claim is ultimately based, is to contradict yourself.
The notion of the conflict between Good and Evil, and how such ideas operate in the real world, is in fact central to the argument, just as the reality of the September 11 attacks which you so easily dismissed with a "though" is central to the argument for the use of military force.
Ideals unrealized do not equal hypocrisy. That is their nature. Is it more naïve to rail against the failures of an imperfect world populated with flawed human beings, or to recognize those imperfections and to attempt to work within their boundaries?
In other words, this world does not present us with ideal choices. Unpalateable, distasteful, enraging...but truth.
This current situation is not the worst disaster to ever befall mankind. Nor is it the worst that could have happened, given the circumstances. We have the capability to eliminate nearly every terrorist on the planet in very short order.
The reasons why we didn't do this are central to my moral fascination with the American ideological experiment, and I suggest that those reasons are what distinguishes, as you put it, "us" from "them."
I'm counting on it.
I suggest that this discussion is finished; I suspect that we've each said what we had to say.
Posted by: --iaw | September 1, 2003 03:02 PM
if ending here is what you'd like, OK....you've really said some great things, many good points, and the discussion has raised such a good and thoughtful pulse in me -- I do not agree with all your assertions, of much of your argument, of your characterizations of my responses, but the mental challenge is fantastic -- to that I say thank you. and it would seem we do seek the same ends. again, how we get there is the rub.
I will say your characterization of me as a moral abolutist is false and without any basis - there is perhaps in arguing strong positioning that is read in various ways, but I took the statement as part of your larger argument, related to the poles -- good vs. evil and all this -- OK, have it. good vs evil is a fine subject. but I say we need to go futher.
I declared (as it relates to our striking 2 nations on the basis of said terrorist attacks) "we BEHAVED extreme" and "we have behaved as unjustly as those that we accuse." Observing the obvious and examining is NOT nullifying, but attempting to use our own chances at loftier ideals to raise the bar -- if we are to advance, as people, as a society, as nations sharing the same earth, how do we keep from repeating the same mistakes? NOT a cop-out to ask this question. And I think we agree on this.
Terrorists attacked the WTC and 3000 people died. Among our responses was to attack and occupy 2 nations. Through the views you use to see our current motives, this is illogical.
Given the lofty ideals you presume, among the most basic responses to these attrocities would to determine who did this. Find out why. Find out how. Determine the factors relating to our global position and the consequences of potential actions. Seek those who specifcally supported this horror and either bring them to justice, or, if necessary, eliminate them -- with careful analysis of the consequences. Trials should be public. Consequences should be public.
OK, what's next...?
Posted by: paulie | September 1, 2003 08:22 PM
Ian, I know you want the commentarium to be a place for exchanging ideas and if necessary ratcheting out arguments to their logical conclusion (or concussion). But I have to say that to have this huge explosion of political back-and-forth in the comments section of what was for the most part of a plain tribute to the people who died (along with a bit of patriotic pride) is really bugging me. Can we just for a minute leave it at this: This was a tragedy, and a horror, and deserves some respectful remembrance. Let's take the arguments over military implications somewhere else. Forgive me if I'm out of line, here - it's your commentarium.
Posted by: Valencia | September 2, 2003 10:01 AM
As promised, info regarding the pre-911 plans for attacking Iraq and Afghanistan, most available on web.
A blueprint for the creation of a global Pax Americana was drawn up for Cheney, Rumsfeld, Wolfowitz, Jeb Bush and Lewis Libby (Cheney's chief of staff), entitled Rebuilding America's Defences, written in September 2000 by the neoconservative think tank, Project for the New American Century (PNAC).
The plan shows Bush's cabinet intended to take military control of the Gulf region whether or not Saddam Hussein was in power. It says "while the unresolved conflict with Iraq provides the immediate justification, the need for a substantial American force presence in the Gulf transcends the issue of the regime of Saddam Hussein."
The PNAC blueprint supports an earlier document attributed to Wolfowitz and Libby which said the US must "discourage advanced industrial nations from challenging our leadership or even aspiring to a larger regional or global role". Nip 'em in the bud -- the idea of prevention before growing to challenge us. It describes 'peacekeeping missions' as "demanding American political leadership rather than that of the UN". It says "even should Saddam pass from the scene", US bases in Saudi Arabia and Kuwait will remain permanently... as "Iran may well prove as large a threat to US interests as Iraq has". It spotlights China for "regime change", saying "it is time to increase the presence of American forces in SE Asia".
The document also calls for the creation of "US space forces" to dominate space, and the total control of cyberspace to prevent enemies using the internet against the US. (Not astonishedhead.com! Noooo!) It also hints that the US may consider developing biological weapons "that can target specific genotypes and may transform biological warfare from the realm of terror to a politically useful tool". Wow. Biotech IS growing, too.
Finally - written a year before 9/11 - it pinpoints North Korea, Syria and Iran as dangerous regimes, and says their existence justifies the creation of a "worldwide command and control system". This is a blueprint for US domination. But before you dismiss it as an agenda for rightwing nutbags....er....uh, those guys running things, it is clear it provides a much better explanation of what actually happened before, during and after 9/11 than the global war on terrorism thesis. This can be seen in several ways.
First, it appears clear US authorities did little or nothing to pre-empt the events of 9/11. It is known that at least 11 countries provided advance warning to the US of the 9/11 attacks. Two senior Mossad experts were sent to Washington in August 2001 to alert the CIA and FBI to a cell of 200 terrorists said to be preparing a big operation (Daily Telegraph, September 16 2001). The list they provided included the names of four of the 9/11 hijackers, none of whom was arrested. Bizarre in its distinctness.
It had been known as early as 1996 that there were plans to hit Washington targets with planes. And in 1999 a US national intelligence council report noted that "al-Qaida suicide bombers could crash-land an aircraft packed with high explosives into the Pentagon, the headquarters of the CIA, or the White House". OK, at least not unknown -- any precautions taken?
Fifteen of the 9/11 hijackers obtained their visas in Saudi Arabia. Michael Springman, the former head of the American visa bureau in Jeddah, has stated that since 1987 the CIA had been illicitly issuing visas to unqualified applicants from the Middle East and bringing them to the US for training in terrorism for the Afghan war in collaboration with Bin Laden (BBC, November 6 2001). It seems this operation continued after the Afghan war for other purposes. It is also reported that FIVE of the hijackers received training at secure US military installations in the 1990s (Newsweek, September 15 2001). Five? Wow.
Instructive leads prior to 9/11 were not followed up. French Moroccan flight student Zacarias Moussaoui (the 20th hijacker) was arrested in August 2001 after an instructor reported he showed a suspicious interest in learning how to steer large airliners. When US agents learned from French intelligence he had radical Islamist ties, they sought a warrant to search his computer, which contained clues to the September 11 mission (Times, November 3 2001). But they were turned down by the FBI. One agent wrote, a month before 9/11, that Moussaoui might be planning to crash into the Twin Towers (Newsweek, May 20 2002).
All of this makes it all the more astonishing - using the war on terrorism perspective - that there was such slow reaction on September 11 itself. The first hijacking was learned about at not later than 8:20am, the last hijacked aircraft crashed in Pennsylvania at 10:06am. Not a single fighter plane was scrambled to investigate from the US Andrews airforce base, just 10 miles from Washington DC, until after the third plane had hit the Pentagon at 9:38 am. Why not? There are and were standard FAA intercept procedures for hijacked aircraft well before 9/11. Between September 2000 and June 2001 the US military launched fighter aircraft on 67 occasions to chase suspicious aircraft (AP, August 13 2002). It is a US legal requirement that once an aircraft has moved significantly off its flight plan, fighter planes are sent up to investigate. Why not here? Bizarrely questionable.
Was this inaction simply the result of key people disregarding, or being ignorant of, evidence? Or, as some reports have said, could US air security operations have been deliberately stood down on September 11? If so, why, and on whose authority? The former US federal crimes prosecutor, John Loftus, has said: "The information provided by European intelligence services prior to 9/11 was so extensive that it is no longer possible for either the CIA or FBI to assert a defence of incompetence." Big indictment. And among many others.
Nor is the US response after 9/11 any better. No serious attempt has ever been made to catch Bin Laden. In late September and early October 2001, leaders of Pakistan's two Islamist parties negotiated Bin Laden's extradition to Pakistan to stand trial for 9/11. However, a US official said that "casting our objectives too narrowly" risked "a premature collapse of the international effort if by some lucky chance Mr Bin Laden was captured". They bailed on his capture! ??? The US chairman of the joint chiefs of staff, General Myers, went so far as to say that "the goal has never been to get Bin Laden" (AP, April 5 2002). Really? The whistleblowing FBI agent Robert Wright told ABC News (December 19 2002) that FBI headquarters wanted no arrests. And in November 2001 the US airforce complained it had had al-Qaida and Taliban leaders in its sights as many as 10 times over the previous six weeks, but had been unable to attack because they did not receive permission quickly enough (Time Magazine, May 13 2002). None of this assembled evidence, all of which comes from sources already in the public domain, seems at all compatible with the idea of a real, determined war on terrorism.
The evidence does, however, fall into place when set against the prism of the PNAC blueprint. From this it seems that the so-called "war on terrorism" is being used for achieving wider US strategic geopolitical objectives. Tony Blair: "To be truthful about it, there was no way we could have got the public consent to have suddenly launched a campaign on Afghanistan for what happened on September 11" (Times, July 17 2002).
Similarly Rumsfeld was so determined to obtain a rationale for an attack on Iraq that on 10 separate occasions he asked the CIA to find evidence linking Iraq to 9/11; the CIA repeatedly came back empty-handed (Time Magazine, May 13 2002). And we now see little to support ANY of the admin's specific claims, found to be false. FALSE.
9/11 offered an extremely convenient pretext to put the PNAC plan into action. Plans for military action against Afghanistan and Iraq were in place well before 9/11. A report prepared for the US government from the Baker Institute of Public Policy stated in April 2001 that "the US remains a prisoner of its energy dilemma. Iraq remains a destabilizing influence to... the flow of oil to international markets from the Middle East". Submitted to Vice-President Cheney's energy task group, the report recommended that because this was an unacceptable risk to the US, "military intervention" was necessary (Sunday Herald, October 6 2002).
Similar evidence exists in regard to Afghanistan. The BBC reported (September 18 2001) that Niaz Niak, a former Pakistan foreign secretary, was told by senior American officials at a meeting in Berlin in mid-July 2001 that "military action against Afghanistan would go ahead by the middle of October". US Troops were on the borders and readied. And until July 2001 the US government saw the Taliban regime as a source of stability in Central Asia that would enable the construction of pipelines from the oil and gas fields in Turkmenistan, Uzbekistan, Kazakhstan, through Afghanistan and Pakistan, to the Indian Ocean. (Shit, we're using the Taliban now for the same reasons - stability). And after the Taliban's refusal to accept US conditions, the US representatives told them "either you accept our offer of a carpet of gold, or we bury you under a carpet of bombs" (Inter Press Service, November 15 2001).
Given this background, it is not surprising that some have seen the US failure to avert the 9/11 attacks as creating an invaluable pretext for attacking Afghanistan in a war that had clearly already been well planned well in advance.
And there is a precedent for this. The US national archives reveal that President Roosevelt used exactly this approach in relation to Pearl Harbor on December 7 1941. Some advance warning of the attacks was received, but the information never reached the US fleet (though the big carriers did find a way out to sea). The ensuing national outrage persuaded a very reluctant US public to join the second world war.
Similarly the PNAC blueprint of September 2000 states that the process of transforming the US into "tomorrow's dominant force" is likely to be a long one in the absence of "some catastrophic and catalyzing event - like a new Pearl Harbor". They say it. The 9/11 attacks allowed the US to press the "go" button for a strategy in accordance with the PNAC agenda which it would otherwise have been politically impossible to implement.
The overriding motivation for this is that the US is beginning to run out of secure energy supplies driven by the big oil and gas controls. By 2010 the Muslim world (portrayed as Radical Islamic nuts, or our new "enemy") will control as much as 60% of the world's oil production and, even more importantly, 95% of remaining global oil export capacity. As demand is increasing, supply is decreasing, continually since the 60s.
This is leading to increasing dependence on foreign oil supplies for the US. The US, which in 1990 produced domestically 57% of our own total energy demand, is predicted to produce only 39% of its needs by 2010.
A report from the Commission on America's National Interests in July 2000 noted that the most promising new source of world supplies was the Caspian region, and this would relieve US dependence on Saudi Arabia. Bye bye to bases there, too. Hello Iraq. To diversify supply routes from the Caspian, one pipeline would run westward via Azerbaijan and Georgia to Ceyhan. Another would extend eastwards through Afghanistan and Pakistan and terminate near the Indian border. This would also rescue Enron's (who....?) struggling power plant at Dabhol on India's west coast, in which Enron had sunk $3bn investment and whose economic survival was dependent on access to cheap gas.
The conclusion? A "global war on terrorism" has all the hallmarks of a political myth propagated to pave the way for a wholly different agenda - the clearly stated US goals of hegemony, built around securing by force command over the oil supplies required to drive the whole project. Is participation in this a proper aspiration for US foreign policy? If not, what else?
Posted by: paulie | September 8, 2003 07:34 PM
All well and good, paulie.
But I've got to be blunt: unless you can provide the links to each primary source you cite, I'm forced to conclude that you were spoon-fed them piecemeal by one of the dozens of PNAC/nefarious cabal/oil-conspiracy related sites with which the Net is currently very well-populated. I have neither the time nor the inclination to get involved in a Google-based pissing contest.
Good research means doing it yourself. You're parroting someone else's conclusions.
Posted by: --iaw | September 8, 2003 09:27 PM
bluntly put, sir ian.
just sources of information - all reviewable, on statements made and written and actions observable, and researched and reported on in multiple major global news sources that do check -- unless like others you believe the nefarious news media/info-conspiracy related sites with which the Net is currently very well-populated. :>)
these are some conclusions that seem intriguing and which seem to fit, with my own research, history, feelings and observations on power and the military and economic systems, thinking on the matters and feelings about what I see. these may not be yours -- but you dismiss them based on what then? POV? if you're over it all, I understand completely. and I will not insist and have not insisted that I am right. (and by debating and being wrong I have come to other conclusions, some good ones)
I offered that it 'could' be so...or that 'if' this is so, what then...? sorry if you feel this somehow forces you into a pissing contest or refusing to consider the possibility this view fits with what you see as correct.
* however, insisting we're fighting (again) evil terrorists....is this a better conclusion, even if it turns out to be wrong and we spend the next 20 years funding and fighting....? I personally don't think that's a good conclusion to draw so I choose another view.
Why is war (against terrorists, in this case) so wonderful? Because it creates artificial demand . . . the only kind of artificial demand, moreover, that does not raise any serious political issues: war, and only war, solves the problem of inventory! and we are a market-based economy. and Bush or the next puppet will probably get his billions.
what would happen if mass peace were to break out?
is light a wave or a particle? both, it depends on your POV. is life creation or destruction? is it both?
honestly, I much prefer your recent post on real life and the everyday that becomes lost in the polarization of these issues. eloquent - a page out of my own current focus, and a feeling which people all over this globe clamor for. leaning towards creation rather than away from it. focusing on creation and bliss.
amen to that.
Posted by: paulie | September 9, 2003 10:16 AM
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