For those of you who don't like our political posts, now's the time to jump ship. I haven't posted in a while, and I plan on posting something like pictures and recent happenings in our lives, but again, I am just too lazy to upload photos at this moment.
I have been reading a book called Blowback by Chalmers Johnson which I wish every American would read. It was published in 2000 and is about the dangers and follies of US Foreign Policy. Again, note the year - 2000, and yet he could see problems arising from, at that time, a relative unknown guy named Osama Bin Laden. He could also see we weren't done with Saddam Hussein yet. He didn't make any specific predictions, but he mentions them as something to watch for in the future. Why? Because he's been studying our imperialistic foreign policy, specifically in the Far East but also around the world, and he could see problems a mile away that us, as casual CNN-watchers, had no clue about.
I haven't gotten far enough in the book yet to know for sure, but I wouldn't be surprised if he mentions Iran in there at some point. Boy, are the war drums beating for a war there! I'd be shocked and extremely elated if we didn't go to war there. However, I fear that no matter who is elected it is inevitable, although completely unnecessary. I encourage you, if you don't take the time to read Blowback, to at least read this short article on why Iran isn't a threat to us. Please consider an alternate opinion if you think Iran is a threat. Just consider it. You don't have to change your mind if, after research, you still think they are a threat. However, please don't brush off other sides of the story without investigating.
It's true that Iran's president (don't know how to spell or pronounce) is a pretty big nut job, but I don't think he's a big enough nut job to try to to take out the US. There is virtually no nation on this planet that can do that at this point. However, if we keep being the bullies of the world, there could be some uniting against us that could be much more costly than the pockets of terrorism we are currently trying to defeat, and then we'll experience some major "blowback".
5 comments:
Minor point on Osama:
Osama's first terrorist killings were likely in 1992 (2 dead in a hotel bombing). In the next decade he paid help start a war in Algeria (150-200K dead), funded the Luxor massacre (62 civilians dead), co-signed a fatwa which declared the killing of the North Americans and their allies an "individual duty for every Muslim" and bombed US Embassies in Tanzania and Kenya resulting in 212 dead and 4,000 injured. In response President Clinton launched a series of missile strikes on targets in Sudan and Afghanistan.
In 1998 bin Laden was indited by a US grand jury for killing 5 americans and 2 indians in 1995 and in 1999 Bin Laden was added to the FBI's 10 most wanted list.
All this information comes from wikipedia. I remember the Embassy bombings and the missile response. Anyway, all this is just to support my point that while Bin Laden was relatively unknown when compared to his infamy today, it's not as though the world woke up September 12th, 2001 and said "Osama who?"
Sabrina:
1. LewRockwell.com is the kind of source that will make people think your nutty. It's not mainstream and you should consider that when linking to it. Not that that implicitly rules out value in the article, just that it merits noting.
2. Assymetrical warfare is a concept that you should consider as you completely disregard that article.
3. Israel is more threatened by Ahmedinijad than we are at present. But you can just follow that through to it's logical conclusion with Poland more threatend by the National Socialist's than England. Isreal does of course have Nukes.
4. See Clark's point and realize that a little further, our non-responsive techniques encouraged what happened. Responsiveness has led to no further attacks. Coincidence, that is left to the gentle reader to decide.
Clark:
Yes, as I recall it was a pharmaceutical factory with a school next to it that we hit in Sudan. I recall a lot of fuss about it.
I have to agree that the LewRockwell.com article was an oversimplification of the "threat".
I think the complete hands off approach to foreign relations is very dangerous and lacking a certain sense of humanity. Hitler never posed any more of a real threat to the US than Iran does but I think most would agree that it was a justified use of our military.
An aside, prompted by Ben's comment, point 1:
I find it intriguing that a certain percentage of people believe that if something is NOT from the mainstream media it isn't to be trusted. It must clearly be from some crazy weirdo.
On the other hand, many people believe that if something IS from the mainstream media then it isn't to be trusted, as the media has a secret (or not so secret) agenda that they're pushing and they're everything that is wrong with the country.
I would like to emphasize that I am not meaning to imply that either Sabrina or Ben belong to either of these two groups. I only mean to point out the sharp disagreement between some people (no one specific) on whether being in the mainstream media is a good thing or a bad thing.
So, the ironic thing is that in spite of my comment, I'm much more in the avoid mainstream media camp then the avoid alternative media approach and this is a particular aberration.
To explain it by analogy, just because a person favors major newspapers for news doesn't mean Pravda has any news nor Izvestia any truth.
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