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| WRONG 9/11 QUESTIONS | ||
| 2004-07-26 | ||
READING the 570-page "The 9/11 Commission Report" is like going through a French nouveau-roman. It starts with the promise of uncovering an ingenious plot but offers nothing but re-heated platitudes served with a pseudo-philosophical garnish. The commissioners tell us that they had three aims: * To offer "the most complete narrative" of the 9/11 events. But that, in fact, is the task of historians and may not be possible for years, if not decades to come. What the report offers is a collage of numerous articles and books that have already covered the "event" side of the 9/11 event. One more narrative adds little that is useful.Normally, this should have been the "meat" of the report. It is not. It is, in fact, its Achilles heel. The reasons are not hard to imagine. The commissioners have a politico-technocratic mindset. They are the products of a political culture that assumes that all problems have technical and bureaucratic solutions. Such solutions are standard: create a new layer of bureaucracy, and spend some more money. But that is certainly not going to put the fear of God in Osama bin Laden and his like.
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| Posted by:tipper |
| #2 We can have 50 attacks and 50 commissions, but until we recognize that jihadis have dissected our society and will exploit its weakest links, we have learned nothing. Our weakest links? Our commitment to upset no one's rights (including the rights of jihadis who plan our deaths and that of our beloved country happily), our economic dependence on oil (no we're not alone in that), and a dangerous kind of guilty altruism that is willing to surrender itself piece by piece in order to be liked by the world. |
| Posted by: jules 187 2004-07-26 2:48:56 PM |
| #1 "This enemy does not want to give and take, to compromise, or to triangulate. He wants you to obey him in every detail or he will kill you." I submit that this enemy wants you to obey him in every detail and he will kill you. I am reminded of Winston Smith, dutiful officer in the Ministry of Information, dutifully rewriting history, dutifully lying on orders from the state, as a matter of course. Along the way, he witnesses, along with all the other proles, state "criminals" confessing their "crimes" against the state, and asking for warranted punishment, all on tv, Leading up to the two minutes hate. Then Winston Smith finds himself in the same position; the state makes a case against him, and despite his denials, is broken and confesses before all, his crimes, his confession that he turned against the state. And then ultimately executed. IOW, he is prosessed like a sausage. There is video, of Saddams Baathist regime members, meteing out punishments, in the form of mutilations: beatings, amputations, and executions, on Iraqi citizens, but also on Sadam Feyadeen, for precisly the same reason. That these Saddam Feyadeen, failed, or as they put it, "betrayed" their mission. (which I take it to mean that they didn't kill enough people, or they killed no one.) All this punishement delivered, invoking the name of "alllahh", and quoting the appropriate Koranic order for killing in Allahs name. Ones only option in Islam, is to take part in the killing of "infidels", and therefore mark yourself as a killer for allah, all with no guaratee that your number won't come up, despite everything you for and in the name of allah. |
| Posted by: Annie Moose Annie Moose 2004-07-26 12:36:33 PM |