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Originally posted by Hero:

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Originally posted by chrisisall:
I bow to you, Hero, your comedic talents are growing faster than your lightsabre skills, that was gorram funny.

Still wiping away the tears Chrisisall

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And I was just over in Court, this young woman walks in wearing the shortest skirt, I mean Ally Mcbeal would have blushed, it was part of this sweet business suit thing. First thought was "DAMN!". Followed by, "DAMN, I hope she's a lawyer!" Follwed by "DAMN, I hope she's a stripper!" Followed by "Oops, did I say that out loud?"

My point is this my friends. WE CAN'T LET THE TERRORISTS WIN. We can't. Imagine a world with no stripper/lawyer micro-miniskirted business suits. Thats just not a world I want to live in.

H

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Originally posted by SergeantX:
Who knows, they might even get us to participate in some bullshit religious crusade pitting Christianity against Islam. Armageddon for everyone!

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Originally posted by HKCavalier:


So, how would they do it? How they gonna pull it off? I'm not looking for a fight; I'd really like to hear how folks see it going down if our worst fears were to come true.

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Oh, and anybody who does not do what they say, wear what they allow you to wear, pray to their version of God, and generally do anything they disapprove of up to and including just for the hell of it, BANG, you dead, they win.

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Originally posted by Hero:

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Originally posted by HKCavalier:


So, how would they do it? How they gonna pull it off? I'm not looking for a fight; I'd really like to hear how folks see it going down if our worst fears were to come true.

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How would they win? Thats easy, let me demonstrate: BANG, your dead, they win.

Hey stripper/lawyer micro-miniskirted business suit Lady, BANG, your dead, they win.

Oh, and anybody who does not do what they say, wear what they allow you to wear, pray to their version of God, and generally do anything they disapprove of up to and including just for the hell of it, BANG, you dead, they win.

We can't let that happen. We have to protect the lives and the rights of HKCavaliers, stripper/lawyer micro-miniskirted business suit ladies, and our children from the scourge of fascism, reality TV, the Democratic Party, and religous extremism.

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the lynch pin of the argument for a "Global War on Terror" is the idea that "the Terrorists" have the real ability to defeat the U.S. ... that our enemies pose not just a criminal threat, but a political threat as well

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He knows he can't defeat us militarily

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Originally posted by HKCavalier:
The single most difficult thing for me to understand coming from "the right" is this idea that the terrorists can win. That they can somehow destroy our way of life and take away all the stripper/lawyer micro-miniskirted business suits.

So, how would they do it? How they gonna pull it off? I'm not looking for a fight; I'd really like to hear how folks see it going down if our worst fears were to come true.

HKCavalier

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Originally posted by InevitableBetrayal:
I read a recent article that posited that the only way to defeat Islamic extremism is to make it heinous to Muslims. If Muslims don't believe in the cause, then Islamic extremism will die, just like the communist terrorist organizations did (as with the Red Brigades of Italy).

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This is THE key component that the Bushies can't seem to embrace. It seemed to me that after 9/11 we had a golden opportunity to work with Muslim communities diplomatically and marginalize the movement. Instead, it seems, we've done everything imaginable to give them cause to endorse it. From your experience/knowledge, what can we do at this point to convince them we're not the great Satan that Osama would have them believe?

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Originally posted by InevitableBetrayal:
All the Islamic extremists need do is hang in there. They are depending on western resolve to wane (which it almost certainly will) while simultaneously keeping up the pressure in Afghanistan and Iraq.

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SHELDRAKE: Let’s talk a little bit about London. One of things I read in the press that really struck me, someone said that one of the first casualties of the bombings was the BBC documentary THE POWER OF NIGHTMARES, a 3 hour documentary that tracks in parallel the rise of the neoconservative powerbase in America in tandem with the founding of extremist Muslim ideology, also, strangely enough, in America, both movements a response to a perceived decay in American morality. I’m sure you’ve seen it.

TIM: Oh my God, yes. Powerful.

SHELDRAKE: Incredible piece, brilliantly formed and conceived. It depicts how Leo Strauss and Sayyed Qutb BOTH came out of 1940s America and both responded to it with strident ideological utopian visions: Qutb with a utopian vision of a pure Islam, one that would respond to and drive out the Western elements already forming in Egyptian society, specifically in response to the Westernizing forces of Nassir; and in America, Leo Strauss with neoconservativism, he had the idea that American society had become lax and was falling apart morally, and that shows like GUNSMOKE and PERRY MASON provided USEFUL MYTHS. Useful, okay. Useful for what? For motivating large numbers of people to do things. Lots of different things. Go to work. Go to school. Go to war. It provides useful myths for forming a populace and for getting them all to do something that needs to be done and isn’t pleasurable. In a way it’s the collapse of the Pleasure Principle, the pursuit of happiness, as being a sufficient motivator...

TIM: Yes, absolutely.

SHELDRAKE: Strauss also believed, and the neocons believe, that American society was/is tiered intellectually. We’re back to The Republic, right, with the Gold, Silver and Bronze men. And the bronze men, the lowest order, get the myths to motivate them, because they don’t have the mental equipment or training to effectively deal with the real situation. They’d rather watch Perry Mason, or anything, American Idol, The Apprentice, whatever. Only the philosopher kings can manage things with their trained minds. But, “Quis cusotdiet ipsos custodies,” who manages the managers? This was all in the POWER OF NIGHTMARES.

TIM: Yes, that’s it. That documentary blew my mind. That’s some SERIOUS shit there. It’s really important filmmaking.

(Shellie says don’t believe us, read the transcripts yourself: http://web.telia.com/~u70316236/tpon/)

TIM: ...But it makes sense, what that documentary suggests, that what Al Quaeda WAS was a fledgling organization until WE empowered it. And NOW I’m sure it exists, and NOW I’m sure it’s more powerful than ever, beCAUSE they have the most powerful recruiting tool that you could possibly have dreamt of—the war in IRAQ. Now they have a place to go and fight! And a REAL war they can recruit for. London’s interesting though, and it relates to POWER OF NIGHTMARES—the timing of it. You have to look at what the result is—and, what was about to happen? That day, the ensuing two days after that, the West was about to get positive press for relieving debt and for increasing aid to Africa, including countries many countries with enormous Muslim populations.

SHELDRAKE: So the technique is, drive it off the front page.

TIM: Well Yes and the deeper technique is, how does a fundamentalist worldview take hold. It can’t take hold in a free and open society. It simply cannot. Just imagine a fundamentalist in the middle of a rock concert. “I see the light! You guys are being decadent!” In the midst of that freedom, that voice is unheard. But once you start regulating things… In a way, I think, what they want to do when they do things like that, they WANT the British government to overreact, to start rounding up young Muslims indiscriminately, so that they can say, “See? This is Western Society! They hate Muslims. They just round them up indiscriminately. Look at Guantanamo Bay. Look at Abu Graib.” Falling into that…

SHELDRAKE: It sets up a whole machinery that has a life of its own, generates a certain kind of press…

TIM: A fundamentalist ideology—CAN take hold—in a fascist state. When Putin overreacts and starts cutting back on Democratic reforms, it’s the worst thing he can do, because its now setting up an environment of oppression for a certain section of the population, and once that oppression starts happening, then those ideologues can come into the vacuum and say, “you see this is not a free society, that’s an illusion” –

SHELDRAKE: Which, by the way, was Leo Strauss’s message, that our perceived freedom was an illusion, very Horkheimer and Adorno, Frankfurt School, if you come at it from the other side, the fear of authoritarianism that Europeans brought here after the war. We live under the Veil of Maya and at night all cows are black.

TIM: (continuing) “—it IS about our mindset, Western society IS an attack on us, we SHOULD rebel against it.” When we make the mistake of torturing people, when we make the mistake of not living by our code.

SHELDRAKE: I forget which philosopher, maybe John Rawls in his Theory of Justice—no, that’s not it, it’s Richard Rorty, the neopragmatist – who notes that one thing you do when you make a society, you define yourself by saying, these things we do not do. Americans don’t torture people. It’s not a statement of fact: it’s part of our code. We don’t do things like that. It’s not like us to do that. It’s unlike us.

TIM: That’s right. Real Americans don’t torture people.

SHELDRAKE: And I think we really have to insist on that. Gentlemen, find another way. I was raised, in part in tent revival fundamentalism in the South. Fundamentalist was for me, my family and the people we knew, an expression of the poor’s complete disconnect from the mechanisms of power in the society. Why vote, it won’t help me, the people I choose won’t vote for what I need. Why go to school, it won’t get me a better job. Heaven is my hope, not this earth which is—what?—yes—an illusion. Fundamentalism was the empowerment mechanism we sought. I think what’s new for me, and Americans in general, is the marriage of violence to fundamentalism.

TIM: Well, it’s scary. As hell. How do you fight terrorism. Well, it seems like the way they operate is…I dunno…manipulative, clever, big statement kind of event kind of thing. In other words, I dunno who made this statement, it’s in POWER OF NIGHTMARES, At no point, even 9/11, nothing was going to tear apart the character of the American people. Nothing. It’s about chess, really. They’re playing chess. They don’t have the REAL power to take over our country.

SHELDRAKE: Well, we’re the white pieces, we have the initiative, and they’re playing the black pieces. So they’re playing for the draw, or waiting for us to make a cataclysmic mistake. But realistically, the best they can hope for is not victory, but avoiding defeat. Stalemate, in chess speak.

TIM: Right. Now, they HAVE the ability to reduce us to a state of fear—IF we go along with that. But think about it in terms of—what kind of damage are they going to do to us.

SHELDRAKE: Hmm, well, you know, the attack downtown had a profound effect on NYC that had nothing to do with fear. It had a profound economic impact on New York City, we’re still recovering from it. I’m one of the ones who was deeply affected by it economically and mentally. They CAN have a sort of limited and local effect that isn’t simply about fear.

TIM: Oh, yeah, and they can have a far larger MENTAL impact.

SHELDRAKE: Psychotraumatic disorders.

TIM: But I think we have to think in terms of strategic response, rather than military response. You see, this is NOT war on the old paradigm, this not an invading country and then we go conquer the country that invaded us. The people that invaded our country are DEAD. All right? So how do you respond to four suicide terrorists? Or nineteen? They’re dead. They come from an organization—yes, go dismantle that organization. Find ways to do that. But it wasn’t a STATE, see, that was behind it. Now when we went into Afghanistan, by the way, and because they seemed to be showing some evidence that Al Quaeda was operating in that state—I had NO problem with going in there. I wanted to see us go in and very cleverly dismantle that terrorist organization. So I didn’t protest when I was asked to about that war. I AM sure now, that Iraq was a mistake. It just…seemed like going to the old paradigm in the wrong situation, to fight a war that’s operating in a whole new way…

SHELDRAKE: And the Bush Administration has just never understood that. They just don’t get it. It’s like Nixon at the Lincoln Memorial talking to “the kids,” only its 24-7 for eight years straight.

TIM: And I think what I was trying to get to with EMBEDDED was that, ideologically they THINK that what they’re doing is a good thing.

SHELDRAKE: Yes, they’re men of good will in many ways, as you show in EMBEDDED. Genuinely caring, engaged people. But if I may wax Straussian here, they have neither the training, the gifts nor the moxy to handle this situation.

TIM: Yeah, you’re right, they just don’t get it. This overwhelmingly negative message that we’ve already sent to the rest of the world.

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Originally posted by SergeantX:
By the way, IB. I discuss these things a fair about at the Universal Board, do you mind if I re-post your article over there?

SergeantX

"Dream a little dream or you can live a little dream. I'd rather live it, cause dreamers always chase but never get it." Aesop Rock

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Originally posted by rue:
Sorry to grind on this point. Given how much it annoys my coworkers when I do that, I'm guessing it's doing the same to you.

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Originally posted by GinoBiffaroni:
Many here have asked what is the objective of Bin Laden and other group who oppose the US, some like IB and SergeantX have put forth very good points on the subject...

But I don't feel the story is really complete unless we also ask what has been the objectives of the United States in the region ( particularly the last fifty or so years ) and those of the European powers following the first world war.

Some same stability, some say control, some say exploitation.....

I would suggest that much of this fight is a more or less a direct response to Western actions... Taking religion out of the equation for a moment, I believe that the people of our respective countrys, particularly the US, would not stand to be treated as we have collectively treated the people in that part of the world...

and yet it goes on ?

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