|
|
Joined: Jun 2001
Posts: 2,636
Carpal Tunnel
|
Carpal Tunnel
Joined: Jun 2001
Posts: 2,636 |
I am at a loss to understand why you say American military procedure, when in my opinion, any nation at war will kill innocent people to acheive their aims. I wasn't aware of it being an exclusively US'n thang.
|
|
|
|
|
Joined: Oct 2000
Posts: 197
member
|
|
member
Joined: Oct 2000
Posts: 197 |
high-priority component of American military procedure once the battle has started and the bullets, flamethrowers, iron bombs, chemical agents, napalm, air-fuel cells, shells, shrapnel and claymore mines have started flying.
My God! You boys make me sick! Sick, I say of hearing you over simplify, over analyze, and over dramatize this mess we're ALL in right now.
I know I'm not exactly the most politically savvy person around, and I'm sure that CapK or mav or TEd or someone will come up with a way of pinning all the blame on ME PERSONALLY because I've bothered to open my mouth right now, but Good Lord!
Yes, each of us Americans fundamentally believe that the right thing to do right now is go drop a whole load of napalm on every innocent Afghan child we can find. [/end sarcasm]
In this time when TEMPERS RUN HIGH through most of the country and much of the world, people are likely to say things that are more than what they mean. That's no reason to take the words of some zealot preacher on the 700 Club and turn them around and spit them back at us as if you think that Jackie or Helen or I AGREE with everything that man said just because we're Americans.
Yes, I feel patriotic right now. I get a little teary when I see a flag at half mast. I also think that it would be a terrible thing to go to war with an unknown enemy before careful consideration. And as much as I disapprove of Bush, I sincerely believe that, despite all the postruing the government's doing right, now he won't 'bomb Afghanistan back to the stone age' without careful consideration, and without justification (evidence that they really know who/what/why about their targets).
I actually had something apropos (and nice) to say, but if I post it someone will find some way to turn it into "America is evil" "America's going to bomb Norway" "Years ago, America tortured babies" so I'm not going to post it.
|
|
|
|
|
Joined: Apr 2000
Posts: 10,542
Carpal Tunnel
|
|
Carpal Tunnel
Joined: Apr 2000
Posts: 10,542 |
>Sick, I say of hearing you over simplify....
I hear you, xara (it's what i've been nattering about with my 'nothing is simple' epigram). I'm getting very tired too of all the bombastic (forgive me) rhetoric and I want our AWADtalk site back. but I don't know how we get it....
you know, for all of you who think that you're the only ones talking sense, all -- each and every one -- of these viewpoints are now being discussed 24 hours a day here in the US on CNN, talk radio, op ed pages, etc. (now that the horror of those scenes is etched in our mind's eye forever).
|
|
|
|
|
Joined: Aug 2000
Posts: 3,409
Carpal Tunnel
|
|
Carpal Tunnel
Joined: Aug 2000
Posts: 3,409 |
|
|
|
|
|
Joined: Mar 2001
Posts: 2,379
Pooh-Bah
|
|
Pooh-Bah
Joined: Mar 2001
Posts: 2,379 |
A lover's colors, could you see her sprite on virgin memory. If time passes or no, the rift between a week ago and now is limitless. And if the world adopts a phase of ordinary, it is only because you've forgotten it. You'd expect the terror if it weren't for that.
Sometime between viewing the gallery of pictures Nancyk so kindly linked and running in tertiary parallel from the devouring sky yesterday, I began to watch myself become overwhelmed by the terror growing in me. Even to articulate it to myself helped. But it helped more finally to embrace a friend and say it, "I am terrified."
Terrorism has never been a part of my experience before. In some categories of experience, human nature may follow the rule of the inverse cube, and it was always far away. There may be a general, if not mathematically precise, correlation between psychic states and volumetrics. At any rate, terrorism was a newsprint phenomenon. Of the many things ended last week, not least among them is that innocence.
It is important to bear the methods of terror in mind.
In the first place, during the critical phase of the attack-seizing control-hope of survival must be extended. Without it, the cooperation of the victim is less to be counted on. Witness the actions of the passengers of the plane that went down in Pennsylvania.
In the second, terror turns the resources of the opponent against the opponent. Not just its airplanes and buildings, but its people. As impressive the display of the terrorists tactics and drama of his self-destruction, he is intrinsically too weak to destroy his opponent directly. He relies on his opponent to destroy himself.
Because terror is so heavily thematized as a media phenomenon, we are dissociative in encountering it. The experiential terror which terror[ism] engenders is, in the context of its broadcast, something generalized to the population at large. Its personal impact is somewhat vague. But that is because the specific danger we encounter 'in print' is not immanent-whether the actual terror event was physically near to hand or not, it is 'volumentrically' remote.
BUT TO BE EFFECTIVE, TERROR MUST BE HIGHLY PERSONAL. If the terrorist seeks to destroy the culture he does this by aiming for the individual. Witness the passengers being forced to call their loved ones to bid them farewell. Witness any cognizant person in this city.
Because the terrorist is intent producing terror in the individual, it is incumbent on the individual to rise above that terror. If there is a moral imperative, this is it. For one's own sake, for the sake of one's community, one's culture, one's declaration of commonness with humankind. That is, it is imperative for the sake of the good.
All of us living here have been shattered by the attack last week. You wish an end to grieving, but none is in sight. But there are likely many of us who recognize that not only was fortress America breached on the 11th, but so was the old volumentrics of terror. In principle, the attack of September 11 was as near to any one-and, therefore, to any member of the AWAD community, as it was to us.
I recognized, yesterday, in the very moment of my conviction that I would within days be incinerated in a nuclear flash, terror possessing me.
In the case of this particular possession, the terror was grounded on something more than illusion. The situation facing us is perhaps the most dangerous in history.
But it was still terror. And in ceding to it, I cede to my mortal opponent.
I will not yield.
I count no one out of humanity. Not even last week's murderers. For in doing so, I yield to division-And that is what the terrorist wanted. Badly enough to die for.
In exchange, a thing is evaluated by the good for which it is traded. For my destruction, the terrorist was willing to pay his life.
He wants me to fear. But he is really telling me, "see how precious your life is, that I would sacrifice mine to destroy it." That is his gift to me.
Each of us must look into their heart and examine for themselves what the crisis brings there. And if it is destruction, you can tell it first by the way it divides you from friends.
And we are friends.
I pray we disagree. That is the substance of discourse. And that in discourse, we nourish the unity of our friendship.
Kol HaOlam, Kooloh, Gesher Tsar Meod. V'Haichar: lo lefached klal
--All the world is a very narrow bridge, and the main thing is not to fear. Not to fear at all.
Or, as someone else once said, "We have nothing to fear but fear itself."
I love you all. For who you are, and for your humanity.
These are very hard times, and we will live through them and survive.
IP
|
|
|
|
|
Joined: Apr 2000
Posts: 3,065
Carpal Tunnel
|
|
Carpal Tunnel
Joined: Apr 2000
Posts: 3,065 |
because it came through twice.
Bingley
Bingley
|
|
|
|
|
Joined: Apr 2000
Posts: 3,065
Carpal Tunnel
|
|
Carpal Tunnel
Joined: Apr 2000
Posts: 3,065 |
In reply to:
Next to the despicable attack against the United States, perhaps the most hateful, unspeakable act against all of us was the words spoken by Reverend Jerry Falwell:
Being gay myself, I have absolutely no time for Jerry Falwell, but to give credit where it's due, he has publically admitted that he was wrong to say what he did and apologised:
Last Thursday during an appearance on the 700 Club, in the midst of the shock and mourning of a dark week for America, I made a statement that I should not have made and which I sincerely regret. I apologize that, during a week when everyone appropriately dropped all labels and no one was seen as liberal or conservative, Democrat or Republican, religious or secular, I singled out for blame certain groups of Americans.
This was insensitive, uncalled for at the time, and unnecessary as part of the commentary on this destruction. The only label any of us needs in such a terrible time of crisis is that of 'American.'
....
In conclusion, I blame no one but the hijackers and terrorists for the barbaric happenings of September 11.
http://www.falwell.com/
Bingley
Bingley
|
|
|
|
|
Joined: Mar 2000
Posts: 1,981
Pooh-Bah
|
|
Pooh-Bah
Joined: Mar 2000
Posts: 1,981 |
>But it was still terror. And in ceding to it, I cede to my mortal opponent.
Yes, I've been thinking a lot about terrorism and its effects. The world is well chosen. The point of terrorism is not only the dreadful act itself, it is the terror that it creates in all who witness it and all who feel that they could be a victim. Anyone who travels or goes to work, anyone who has a family member working in a vulnerable place or has to travel away from home, anyone who has had a child or has been a child ...
Margaret Thatcher in the immediate aftermath of one of the UK-IRA bombs talked about the "oxygen of publicity". As we all know the oxygen itself adds to the explosive. With modern communications we have no hope of throwing a blanket over the fire. The media circus adds fuel to the fire, it is inevitable, it is part of the way we live. We can see a pin drop by satellite, we can feel the suffering of someone starving in a drought in a distant land or made homeless from freak weather conditions in our own continent.
The fight or flight instinct is very strong in us and terror manipulates our behaviour.
|
|
|
|
|
Joined: Sep 2000
Posts: 4,757
Carpal Tunnel
|
|
Carpal Tunnel
Joined: Sep 2000
Posts: 4,757 |
I can’t agree there has been much simplification going on in these discussions – I have seen lots of very thoughtful and heartfelt views being shared. There seems a clear consensus that there are a host of almost impossibly difficult issues we are all being made to face by this tragedy. And if we differ in our views (as we are bound to), as IP says, that is the nature of discussion… no-one here is likely to have either a unique view or any monopoly on truth or logic, which is surely why we want to compare and contrast our opinions. All we have to do to preserve our sanity is to agree to differ, where we must, without undue rancour – and if the discussion bores or distresses us, to avoid it completely (with participants conversely expected to not spread it cross-threaded all over the board!)
Perhaps I should articulate one other view: this is not an American discussion board, being addressed to Americans. It is international, both by Anu’s intent and by its participants’ practice. So when I held up Falwell’s words, I was certainly not intending to “spit them back at” anyone, least of all with any assumption about what others might think of this use of the English language we all share – I was saying to a mixed group of friends around the world “here is an abuse I deplore, and I endorse the plea for calm and careful use of language – what do you think?” Whenever making a statement, I intend a question implied, which you can use or lose as you see fit. fwiw, Mr B, I don’t give a tinker’s cuss for his retraction: all the subtext says to me is that “maybe I shouldn’t have said this right now (even tho’ it’s the God-fearing truth!)”
The plea for regaining the tree frog of previous discussions is probably well timed. Like previous occasions, the solution lies in all our hands – I have started a couple of purely word hares running in recent days, and anyone else can do the same.
|
|
|
|
|
Joined: Jan 2001
Posts: 275
enthusiast
|
|
enthusiast
Joined: Jan 2001
Posts: 275 |
Bingley>>>
I have absolutely no time for Jerry Falwell, but to give credit where it's due, he has publically admitted that he was wrong to say what he did and apologised
Jerry Falwell should not be given credit. This seems to be a premeditated act of evil itself. To spout out something so hateful so it would reach many more people than what his normal medium would be (he knows the press will give it an ever wider audience), and then he will apologise. Through the years that seem to be his modus operandi. All of us Americans should speak up against this kind of divisiveness and not let him get away with it.
|
|
|
|
Forums16
Topics13,915
Posts230,174
Members9,198
| |
Most Online4,606
Sep 17th, 2025
|
|
|
0 members (),
806
guests, and
2
robots. |
|
Key:
Admin,
Global Mod,
Mod
|
|
|
|
