[Rhodes22-list] what is list etiquette? Ignore That!

[brad haslett]

Oh Dear Slim,

You've left such jucy low hanging fruit!  If only I
had the discipline to resist!  You're not sailing
because of the weather and I'm not sailing because of
house boy/Mr. Mom duties, so what the hell, here goes.

You wrote, "Violent reactions are as predictable as
the sunrise when some country half way around the
world strips you of your entire life/value and crams
their own ideology down your throat.  What did we
expect?"

Who were you referring to  Germans or Japanese?  Did
you gain your insight interviewing Holocaust survivors
or Chinese at Nanjing?

Frankly I'd like to click my heels and make the
evening news go away as much as anybody.  Yet, even
Bill Clinton sees progress in Iraq.

http://news.yahoo.com/s/ap/20050518/ap_on_re_mi_ea/clinton_iraq_1

Ok, I'll go back to cooking now.

Brad

--- Steve Alm <salm at mn.rr.com> wrote:

> Brad,
> 
> Thanks.  I mostly agree with the article however
> calling for "perspective
> and objectivity" is a waste of breath.  By
> definition, "extremists" are
> incapable of that.  (And I don't just refer to
> Muslim extremists.)
> 
> As I understand it, Islamic fundamentalists object
> to Democracy because it
> puts men in charge of the law instead of Allah and
> the Koran--(Qu'ran?)  So
> if the shoe were on the other foot, it would be like
> flushing the Bible AND
> the Constitution.  That's the perspective WE need to
> keep in mind.  It's
> easy for us to sit back and condemn the Muslim
> extremists for over-reacting
> to a tiny little blurb that may or may not have been
> true, but if the Koran
> IS your whole world, how could you not protest? 
> They already view
> themselves as the losers and they're getting
> desperate.  Violent reactions
> are as predictable as the sunrise when some country
> half way around the
> world strips you of your entire life/value and crams
> their own ideology down
> your throat.  What did we expect?
> 
> What bugs me is what Don Rumsfeld had to say: "Oh,
> you've got to be very
> careful what you say..."  WHAT?  Look who's talking?
>  Frankly, I wouldn't
> doubt that the story was indeed true and Newsweek
> was pressured to retract
> it.
> 
> Slim
> 
> On 5/18/05 11:01 AM, "brad haslett"
> <flybrad at yahoo.com> wrote:
> 
> > Ric,
> > 
> > I was responding to your post when my daughter put
> her
> > elbow on the keyboard (I'm home all week playing
> Mr.
> > Mom.)  Ignore that first post.  At least she
> didn't
> > call 911 like she did when she was 1 1/2.  Those
> cops
> > still think I'm lying.
> > 
> > Anyway, I've been too busy to make any pithy
> political
> > comments but not to busy to read.  Here's an
> article
> > from today's Chicago Tribune.  Not only is it
> funny in
> > its own way but dead on the money correct.  This
> is
> > neither left nor right folks, just a fastball
> straight
> > down the middle.
> > 
> > Brad
> > "CoraShen"
> > 
> > 
> > Seeking sanity in the asylum
> > 
> >   
> > 
> > By Kathleen Parker
> > 
> > May 18, 2005
> > 
> > Reaction to an inaccurate Newsweek report that led
> > recently to rioting and death in Afghanistan
> suggests
> > that hysteria is, indeed, contagious.
> > 
> > To briefly recap, Newsweek reported in a small
> blurb
> > May 9 that American interrogators at Guantanamo
> Bay
> > had flushed a Koran down a toilet in attempts to
> get
> > Muslim terror suspects to talk. Once the Newsweek
> > story was broadcast abroad, the usually reticent
> > hate-America crowd erupted in mass pique. Havoc
> > ensued. At least 15 Afghans died and many more
> were
> > injured.
> > 
> > All because of a story that may not have been
> true.
> > The "knowledgeable U.S. government source" who
> told
> > Newsweek's Michael Isikoff and John Barry about
> the
> > flushing apparently wasn't so knowledgeable. At
> the
> > risk of seeming insensitive, may I suggest that
> c'est
> > la guerre and urge everyone to follow Dr. Lamaze's
> > always-useful advice: Breathe deeply and focus.
> > 
> > What we need here is a little perspective.
> > 
> > First, we all can agree that flushing a Koran down
> a
> > toilet, if physically possible, would be both
> > insensitive and rude, though Westerners generally
> have
> > a higher tolerance threshold for such offenses.
> Put it
> > this way: You could flush a Bible down the toilet
> in
> > front of Goober in Kabul, and it's unlikely that
> > Mayberry suddenly would be awash in blood.
> > 
> > Without disrespecting true believers of Islam, one
> > also could debate the relative miseries of seeing
> our
> > favorite scripture disappear into the plumbing
> versus,
> > say, watching airplanes fly into buildings,
> killing
> > thousands of innocents. Remember, these are
> terrorist
> > suspects captured after 9/11, not kidnapped
> members of
> > an Afghan boys choir.
> > 
> > The apparent Newsweek mistake was regrettable, but
> we
> > should beware of allowing ourselves to mirror the
> > emotional reactions of people who were by no
> measure
> > justified in their response--even if the story had
> > been proven true.
> > 
> > The same people foaming over a reported act of
> > blasphemy didn't flinch while executing women for
> > stepping outside sans burqa. I'm afraid my moral
> > outrage in favor of the morally outrageous is
> tapped
> > out.
> > 
> > While the world was reacting in righteous
> indignation
> > to the Newsweek report, another story was
> circulating
> > about Turkish women in Germany being executed by
> > family members in "honor killings" sanctioned by
> > certain interpretations of the Koran. Their
> offense?
> > Acting like Western women. Or, in the pithy words
> of a
> > 14-year-old Turkish boy who was justifying an
> > execution: "The whore lived like a German."
> > 
> > Before the good Muslim world objects, let me
> assert
> > what shouldn't need saying: Islam isn't the
> problem
> > here. The problem is ignorance and the right-wing
> > Islamist faction that will use the Koran for its
> > purposes, whether to incite a riot or murder a
> woman
> > who refuses to wear her headscarf. The enemy is
> > extremism.
> > 
> > I have no interest either in defending Newsweek or
> in
> > justifying interrogators' methods, but let's be
> blunt:
> > Those rampaging in Afghanistan didn't need a
> reason to
> > riot; they needed an excuse. That the media
> provided
> > one is regrettable, but that regret needs to be
> > tempered by perspective and objectivity.
> > 
> > Instead, much of the anger the past several days
> has
> > been directed not at the Islamist extremists who
> went
> > berserk, but at the reporters who apparently got
> the
> > story wrong. What if they'd been right? Should
> > Newsweek not have reported it? Would the riots
> have
> > been justified if someone had flushed a Koran?
> > 
> > We might debate those questions, but meanwhile we
> > should resist the urge to overreact as some have
> in
> 
=== message truncated ===


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