[lit-ideas] Re: Victor Hanson in Iraq
- From: "Mike Geary" <atlas@xxxxxxxxxxxxx>
- To: <lit-ideas@xxxxxxxxxxxxx>
- Date: Tue, 12 Dec 2006 19:40:17 -0600
I'm not sure whether Brian agrees with Zinn or Hitchens. But it doesn't
matter. The Bushies so screwed up the war against Al Queda with their little
adventure in Iraq that nothing can save it. A decade or more of horrendous
civil war is all we have to look forward to now, a war that might well engulf
the whole of the Middle East -- as they world warned them before their illegal
invasion. I say the blood is on our hands as well as on all others who are
involved in the killing. I'm guilty by paying my taxes, but I don't have the
integrity of the brothers Berigan or Thoreau. It's not my loved ones being
killed. Feel terrible about it. Say so. Shrug it off. Go to work. Life of
a Liberal.
We started the murder in Iraq. I agree with Zinn that Bush should be tried by
an international court and I don't understand how anyone who believes in human
rights and international law could disagree.
Lawrence asks and answers himself: "What is the danger of Leftism today? They
represent a political position that is largely anti-American." Hmmmm. By
Lawrence's definition of anti-American. It's certainly not mine.
Mike Geary
Memphis
----- Original Message -----
From: Brian
To: lit-ideas@xxxxxxxxxxxxx
Sent: Tuesday, December 12, 2006 3:47 PM
Subject: [lit-ideas] Re: Victor Hanson in Iraq
One of the best books I read this year is Lawrence Wright's The Looming
Tower: Inside Al Qaeda And The Path to 9/11 and he traces its roots back to
Sayyid Qutb (who Lawrence Helm has been talking about for some time) and Hassan
al-Banna’s Muslim Brotherhood. He contends that Egypt is the cradle of modern
Islamic terrorism, and Ayman al-Zawahiri's al-Jihad, The Islamic Group
(responsible for Sadat's assassination) and the Muslim Brothers form the core.
The victory in Afghanistan against the Soviets emboldened the jihadis and
showed how many young men were willing to die for the cause. Martyrdom was the
product being sold and radicalism filled the gap, with Abdullah Azzam playing a
primary role on bin Laden's thinking about global jihad.
Shortly after al Qaeda is formed Azzam is killed and it was Azzam that was
"was in favor of forming a 'pioneering vanguard' along the lines called for by
Qutb. It was 'This vanguard constitutes the solid base for the hoped-for
society.'" Earlier Azzam helped create Hamas, based on the Muslim Brotherhood,
with small cells no larger than five people, as a counterweight to Yasser
Arafat's secular PLO. Bin Laden returns to Saudi Arabia a hero after being in
Afghanistan, a mythic figure. And though secretly he praised the U.S. for
their help in Afghanistan he tentatively started developing his anti-American
rhetoric that would eventually lead to plans of attack. He is deeply shamed
that the U.S. comes to Saudi Arabia's defense against Saddam Hussein and pleads
for an Islamic only defense, a ridiculous notion in a country that small
against a military of Iraq's size.
But maybe the most memorable part of the book is his portrayal of the FBI's
John O'Neil - brought to life by Harvey Keitel in ABC's The Path to 9/11 - who
was one of the first national intelligence figures who saw the threat of
international terrorism. O'Neill was thought crazy for his obsession with bin
Laden and capturing him and after becoming fed up with the bureaucracy in the
government he took a job in August '01 as head of security at the WTC and was
killed in the towers on 9/11. A good read that took Wright five years of
research to compile. The New York Times Review Of Books put it on their Top 10
of '06 as well.
One year ago, last September in New York City, Christopher Hitchens debated
George Galloway and one of their exchanges really sums up the beliefs of the
Left concerning the war on terror and how we brought it all on ourselves:
Galloway: "9/11 came out of a swamp of hatred created by us".
Hitchens: "You picked the wrong city to say that and the wrong month...This
is sinister piffle, masochism offered to you by a sadist."
Masochism indeed. Howard Zinn, who doesn't get as much press as Noam Chomsky
but is surely more read, and readable, was on Dennis Prager's show this year
and here is part of the exchange:
Prager: the idea that the United States is a force for the betterment of
humanity...what would you say on a report card—we have done more bad than good,
we’re in the middle or what?
Zinn: Well, probably more bad than good. We’ve done some good, of course;
there’s no doubt about that. But we have done too many bad things in the world.
You know, if you look at the way we have used our armed force throughout our
history...
Prager: Are you prepared to say that war is ever the best moral choice?
Zinn: No
Prager: so do you feel that by and large the Zarqawi world and the Bush world
are moral equivalents?
Zinn: I do. I would put Bush on trial along with Saddam Hussein, because I
think both of them are responsible for the deaths of many many people in Iraq,
and uh so yes I think that...killing innocent people is immoral and when Iraqis
do it, and when we do it it is the same thing.
~Brian
Birmingham, AL
On Dec 12, 2006, at 10:32 AM, Lawrence Helm wrote:
Many of the people referring to Al Quaeda don’t understand them. Al Quaeda
did not expect effective opposition. Osama argued (see Osama’s readily
available speeches, many of which were posted here) that the US would not be
able to stand against his fierce warriors -- that his Jihad was irresistible.
So it is absurd to say that it is only our resistance to Al Quaeda that causes
Al Quaeda. To say such things is to foster a mindless political slogan. It
doesn’t take much study to realize how false it is. I wonder why more people
in this vaunted information age don’t avail themselves of more accurate
information about Al Quaeda.
What is the danger of Leftism today? They represent a political position
that is largely anti-American. In any conflict, they side with the enemies of
the US. They make excuses for the enemy’s excesses and find ways to blame the
US for them. Something the US did caused these enemies to be enemies. They
have abandoned the traditional American viewpoint that our nation is the best
that the human race has yet produced.
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