Editor's note: Filling in for David Horsey this week is Rick Steves, author of the "Europe Through the Back Door" books and host of the popular public television travel program, "Rick Steves' Europe."
...On Sept. 11, 2001, the World Trade Center towers collapsed and angry clouds of dust chased U.S. citizens through the streets of New York City. The world was outraged. And the United States was outraged. So much so that -- three long years later -- many Americans still refuse to even dignify the attack by asking, "Why did they do it?..."
...So, why did they do it? Because "they hate freedom?" Come on -- that's ridiculous.
A billion Muslims throughout the world have three serious concerns: Palestine needs security and self-respect; they want the American military out of Islam; and they want control of their natural resources (to charge whatever they like for their oil). These are three basic foreign policy questions that any U.S. president could address without compromising the security and interests of America or Israel... "We want all Americans to die. Can't you just meet us halfway?"
The writer is a moonbat, personified. Here's his quote at the end of the article:
Could we more effectively fight terrorism by understanding what motivates it and then taking away the source of the anger? Wouldn't it be cheaper and wiser to just face our enemy, ask "Why?" and respond constructively?
Ladies and gents, this fellow is a lemming. He wants to roll over and die. The 'moose has it right: this fellow would meet them halfway, no further than that. He'd toss you and me into the funeral pyre as long as he could keep his public radio broadcast, his latte, and his eco-friendly SUV. He wants to be the last one eaten by the bear.
Posted by: Anonymoose ||
12/05/2004 9:56:46 AM ||
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#1
I don't even know where to start with this idiot. I'm sick of this self-loathing "we made them do it" crap. Someone whack him with the clue bat.
#3
I encountered this exact same sort of mindset last month at a weekly dinner party I attend. After carefully explaining the difference between high-context and low-context societies, this one person then asked; "Why is it that we can't come up with some sort of win-win solution with the Arab cultures."
I did my best to explain that there were few aspects of most authoritarian Arab cultures we could leave in place (i.e., wife-beating, theocracy, abusive capital punishment, terrorism, etc.) without having completely compromised our own goals or, conversely, remove (even individually) without deeply offending the Arab culture involved.
Mind you, this same moron is someone who proclaimed that "America deserved 9-11" and how "we shouldn't go sticking our nose where it doesn't belong." I then asked him how it was that America going into the Middle East and providing oil extraction technology that increased regional wealth one thousand-fold (if not greater) constituted some sort of dire affront.
Right about that time this person became verbally abusive and I was left to speculate as to exactly how he had already lost several teeth in his upper jaw, right about where a solid left-hook should land.
PS: Someone here at Rantburg posted a link to an excellent article on high and low context cultures. If they see this request, I hope they will post the link again. I did a site search and was not able to find it.
#4
We've bought tour guide books from Steves in the past (one trip to the UK) and have watched his numerous PBS programs. No more. What a complete idiot! Is he trying to score points in some Muslim country where he hasn't been able to get a visa? Stuff it, Steve, and I don't mean in your backpack!
#5
Crap, I used to like his books and programs.
Ok, Mr Steves, I have asked myself why they hate me. I think I have figured it out.
I, a mere woman, dare to drive my own car and have my own money. No man controls what I do with that. Get this....my crazy father had this bizarre idea that he should leave an equal portion of his estate to me as he left to my brother! He even made me the executor of his estate!
I have traveled overseas without male permission on my own passport. I talk to males every day who are not my relatives. My husband is not the first man I have ever kissed, and I am not the least bit ashamed of that. As a matter of fact, I think he's damn lucky to have me. I've talked back to him on occasion (and, he doesn't think he has the right to beat me when I do. If he even tried, I'd deck his ass and he knows it.)
I worked for a police department once upon a time, so I worked in close contact with men. I even ordered some of them around and touched other men (try and put handcuffs on without touching someone. Believe me, there were a couple I would have really not wanted to touch.)
I walk around with my head uncovered. In the summer, I have strolled down the street in shorts and a tank top. More men have seen my bare ankles than I can count. The only two times I wore a veil were on my Communion and wedding days....and they weren't opaque.
I fly kites, listen to music and read any book I please. If I want a beer with my BBQ pork ribs, dammit, I'm having one. Or two, if I'm not driving.
Although I do not share the beliefs of atheists, Jews, Shias, Voodoo priests, Wiccans, Buddhists, or that crazy guy down the street who worships citrus, I believe with all my heart that they have every right to worship whatever gods they want as they see fit (or in the case of the Buddhists and atheists, no gods). My god does not demand that I kill them to give him glory. If my god wants 'em dead, he, being all powerful, does not need my help to accomplish this.
I will never say Muhammed is a prophet. I believe him to be nothing more than an illiterate trader who married well.
I refuse to live the way they demand that I live.
Other than all that, Mr Steves, I don't think they have a problem with me.
p.s. Desert Blondie, you nailed it! We keep hearing about a "clash of cultures", but it's really a clash of OUR culture with their LACK of culture! Yes, they invented some cool stuff a thousand years ago...but have spent, at least, the last 100 hundred years making everyone wonder if it was worth it! (though I can't imagine a calculator with Roman Numerals!)
"The United States' overwhelming global dominance is unprecedented in human history. Many Muslims fear the Americanization of their culture. In addition, the United States declares natural resources (such as oil) in Muslim countries 'vital to its national security.' And our immense military -- as big as the rest of the world's combined and unfightable by means other than terrorism --defends U.S. access to markets and natural resources throughout the globe."
So, author dude, what exactly is the problem? Sounds like we're good to go.
Posted by: Matt ||
12/05/2004 13:04 Comments ||
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I'm almost close enough to bitch-slap him. I won't go out of my way, but I'll definitely give him a piece of my mind. Everybody else should feel free. I think LGF has contacts listed for the SeattlePI.
#13
Desert Blondie---Excellent comments. Now if any males among us have the energy to crank out one of those rants, we will combine them and ship them off to Rick Stevie Wonder.
What happened to Desert Blondie is what happened to my wife during her doctoral dissertation. The topic spoke to her, got the juices flowing, and it wrote itself.
RSW must have been reading the latest edition of the Dhimmi's Handbook. The topic spoke to him, and with a little White Slag, he cranked out this piece of drivel article and that brings us up to the present.
Posted by: Alaska Paul ||
12/05/2004 14:09 Comments ||
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#14
Did you notice how the AOS dove for cover just to avoid recochets? :)
The best news about the campaign to carry the Iraq war to the Sunni heartland is that the Bush administration has finally discovered, or admitted to itself, who the enemy is. It now remains to be seen whether this campaign has come too late to convince the Sunni-on-the-street that it's safe enough to stand up against the "insurgents" and to participate in the politics of Iraq's future by voting in the January elections. Given that the almost certain outcome is a Shia-led government, forward-looking Sunnis will need great courage. And the rejectionists can be expected to accelerate their own campaign of intimidation, execution, and terrorism, making it likely that the next two months will be very bloody ones, though much more so for Iraqis, and mostly Sunnis, than Americans.
Even if the elections are very far from perfect, they will be a watershed event in Iraqi politics. And the elections will be followed in a few months by perhaps a more important event, the writing of a new constitution. But in both cases, the process itself is the purpose; as in the United States, it may well be the second constitutional convention and the peaceful transfer of power in a subsequent election that mark the real maturity of Iraqi democracy.
It is a testament to both the thick-headedness and the bull-headedness of the Bush administration that we have been brought to this moment. It is quite true that we embarked upon the Iraq war more out of commitment to our own ideals than from a firm understanding of Iraq itself. But that's exactly the commitment and the kind of belief that has proven absolutely necessary to cast off the shackles of conventional thinking about the Middle East in general and Arab societies in particular. That conventional wisdom--promulgated by the foreign policy bureaucracy that's become a conduit for the views of the other Arab Sunni governments and remains traumatized by the Iranian revolution of 1979--was almost entirely blind to the rise of Sunni fundamentalism. Notably, Saddam Hussein was not; in his later years he became less Baathist and more Sunni.
Just as American policy sought for decades to make a deal with the dominant Sunni power structures throughout the region--an effort that not only failed but exacerbated the level of violence--so has American policy for post-war Iraq been too accommodating to Sunni power. Perhaps we have simply hoped that the Sunni leaders would understand that their days of rule were at an end without feeling the hard hand of war. Perhaps now the example of Falluja will serve. But perhaps not.
This insight--that the Sunnis are the central problem in Iraq--reveals too how the war in Iraq is intimately connected to the larger war in the Middle East. The real problem of Osama bin Laden is not that he is a terrorist but that he is a sectarian fascist. If he had tank armies and missiles, he would use them just as Saddam did. The enemy in Iraq is much the same as the enemy in Afghanistan, in Sudan, in Indonesia.
Indeed, many Sunni Muslims--the Iraqi Kurds, most obviously--recognize this problem and are anxious to see the old order in the region swept away. It may be that Americans have now begun to see the conflict for what it is: a civil war within Islam. Whether we understood it or not, we have long been a participant in this war. The campaign in Falluja may signal not only the end of the beginning, but perhaps an end to our strategic illusion.
Posted by: tipper ||
12/05/2004 6:31:58 AM ||
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A multi-volume chronology and reference guide set detailing three years of the Mexican Drug War between 2010 and 2012.
Rantburg.com and borderlandbeat.com correspondent and author Chris Covert presents his first non-fiction work detailing
the drug and gang related violence in Mexico.
Chris gives us Mexican press dispatches of drug and gang war violence
over three years, presented in a multi volume set intended to chronicle the death, violence and mayhem which has
dominated Mexico for six years.
Rantburg was assembled from recycled algorithms in the United States of America. No
trees were destroyed in the production of this weblog. We did hurt some, though. Sorry.
