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

[Steve Alm]

> You've left such jucy low hanging fruit!

Jeez, if I had a nickel for every time I've heard that...  8-)

The Germans and the Japanese attacked with the full force of their sovereign
nations' military.  Yes, I acknowledge we were attacked on 9/11, but it was
conducted by a small handful of unseeable "ghosts" rather than a sovereign
nation.  Your point is taken but I don't think your comparison is useful in
this case.  I'll bet their motives are the same as mine:  I just want to be
left alone and go about my life.

Slim

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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