[lit-ideas] Re: with or without Bush
- From: "Stan Spiegel" <writeforu2@xxxxxxxxxxx>
- To: <lit-ideas@xxxxxxxxxxxxx>
- Date: Tue, 3 Aug 2004 01:23:15 -0400
Robert Paul says:
"The original unanswerable question was (I thought) whether Bin Laden would
have
been captured (or killed?) had Bush not been in office on 9/11. As
counterfactuals go this is a dilly, as they say in Memphis"
Curious comment. You yourself say that Afghanistan has been sorely neglected
by this President. Imagine if Bush had spent the 151 billion he's spent so
far in Iraq intead on pursuing OBL and his terrorists in Afghanistan. It
doesn't seem farfetched to me that we'd have brought bin Laden to heel and
made Afghanistan a safer place, if not a model of Democracy. Certainly
Doctors Without Borders wouldn't be pulling out. Women wouldn't be pushed
back indoors. The Taliban wouldn't be showing their heads any more.
Stan Spiegel
Portland, Maine
----- Original Message -----
From: "Robert Paul" <Robert.Paul@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx>
To: <lit-ideas@xxxxxxxxxxxxx>
Sent: Tuesday, August 03, 2004 12:59 AM
Subject: [lit-ideas] Re: with or without Bush
> Eric writes:
>
> By this metonymy, "Bush" has come to mean, not Dubya's particular
directives
> or policies, but everything that happens. "Bush" becomes our scruples
about
> the Pakis. "Bush" becomes FBI bureaucrats covering their butts. "Bush" is
the
> PhD sweeping Walmart floors. "Bush" is the tacky, anti-intellectual,
> antipopulist fill-in-the-blank.
>
> That can't be right. If everything is "Bush," then we can't really
complain
> about "Bush" because there's nothing but "Bush" out there, and hence
nothing to
> which we can compare "Bush." It's "Bushes" all the way down.
> --------------------------------------
> The original unanswerable question was (I thought) whether Bin Laden would
have
> been captured (or killed?) had Bush not been in office on 9/11. As
> counterfactuals go this is a dilly, as they say in Memphis. It has the
form, but
> not the clarity of 'Had Ichiro not caught it it would have gone for at
least a
> double.'
>
> What seems to me relevant and answerable though is whether Bush (and by
'Bush,'
> I mean that whole neocon, empire-fixated crew), had not been hell bent on
going
> into Iraq even before 9/11, Afghanistan would be, as it is now, on the
verge of
> chaos. For those who get their news (no one here, surely) from the usual
> mainstream sources, it is as if everything was cool in Afghanistan, with
only a
> few recalcitrant war lords yet to be converted to democracy and Walmart.
>
> No. The Taliban are back. The mandatory burquas are back. Women are
> back--inside. Westerners are not safe outside Kabul. Doctors Without
Borders,
> which has been engaged in Afghanistan for 24 straight years has pulled all
of
> its personnel out of the country, after five of its workers in a plainly
marked
> vehicle were assasinated last week. There is no 'war against terrorism' in
> Afghanistan. There is no active pursuit of anybody important, let alone
OBL.
> (I'm discounting the phoney Pakistani 'sweep' of that fictitious hotbed of
> hardcore bad guys last month, a raid telegraphed so long in advance that
an
> entire WW II division could have ambled unmolested through the 'trap.')
And it
> is Bush's fault. He was never--they were never--serious about Afghanistan.
And
> "Some truths there are so near and obvious to the mind that a man need
only open
> his eyes to see them."
>
> Robert Paul
> relaxing near
> Reed College
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