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

[Steve Alm]

Brad,
Interesting stuff, and I see myself in some of those descriptions.  Heading
off to wurk now.  More later.
Slim

On 5/18/05 7:34 PM, "brad haslett" <flybrad at yahoo.com> wrote:

> Slim,
> 
> You're a bad, bad boy.  I had that one coming!
> 
> Speaking of ghosts, I'm in the middle of a great book
> "Ghost Wars" that specifically deals with the whole
> lead-up to this Islamic extremism issue we're
> discussing.  It dove-tails neatly with "Charlie
> Wilson's War", another book about Afghanistan.  Here's
> another article along the same vein as the one this
> morning.
> 
> 
> 
> 
> 
> 
> May 17, 2005, 1:07 p.m.
> The Smug Delusion of Base Expectations
> Count me out of the Newsweek feeding frenzy.
> 
> 
> 
> We're in the grips of a pathology. And it's not media
> bias.
> 
> Here's the late-breaking news (you'll want to be
> sitting down for this): The mainstream media is
> ideologically liberal and instinctually hostile to
> George W. Bush, U.S. foreign policy, and the American
> military. 
> 
> No kidding. Really. If you want to throw the
> off-switch for the cognitive part of your brain ? as
> many conservatives seem only to happy to do this week
> ? then, by all means, that is the story you want to
> run with in this latest media scandal.
> 
> Newsweek, in reckless pursuit of a scoop that might
> score the daily double of embarrassing the Bush
> administration while heaping more disrepute on the
> Left's favorite punching bag, Guantanamo Bay, falsely
> reported a martial toilet-flushing of the Koran. Oops,
> I'm sorry, I mean the Holy Koran ? after all, I don't
> want to be left out of the new, vast right-wing "we
> can be just as nauseatingly pious as they can"
> conspiracy. 
> 
> The false report, according to the New York Times,
> instigated "the most virulent, widespread
> anti-American protests" in the Muslim world
> since...well, since the last virulent, widespread
> anti-American protests in the Muslim world ?
> particularly in Afghanistan and Pakistan, where at
> least 17 people have been killed.
> 
> That's right. The reason for the carnage is said ?
> again and again, by media critics and government
> officials ? to be a false report of Koran desecration.
> The prime culprit here is irresponsible journalism.
> 
> Is that what we really think?
> 
> Here's an actual newsflash ? and one, yet again, that
> should be news to no one: The reason for the carnage
> here was, and is, militant Islam. Nothing more.
> 
> Newsweek merely gave the crazies their excuse du jour.
> But they didn't need a report of Koran desecration to
> fly jumbo jets into skyscrapers, to blow up embassies,
> or to behead hostages taken for the great sin of being
> Americans or Jews. They didn't need a report of Koran
> desecration to take to the streets and blame the
> United States while enthusiastically taking innocent
> lives. This is what they do.
> 
> The outpouring of righteous indignation against
> Newsweek glides past a far more important point. Yes,
> we're all sick of media bias. But "Newsweek lied and
> people died" is about as worthy a slogan as the
> scurrilous "Bush lied and people died" that it
> parrots. And when we engage in this kind of mindless
> demagoguery, we become just another opportunistic
> plaintiff ? no better than the people all too ready to
> blame the CIA because Mohammed Atta steered a hijacked
> civilian airliner into a big building, and to sue the
> Port Authority because the building had the audacity
> to collapse from the blow.
> 
> What are we saying here? That the problem lies in the
> falsity of Newsweek's reporting? What if the report
> had been true? And, if you're being honest with
> yourself, you cannot say ? based on common sense and
> even ignoring what we know happened at Abu Ghraib ?
> that you didn't think it was conceivably possible the
> report could have been true. Flushing the Koran down a
> toilet (assuming for argument's sake that our
> environmentally correct, 3.6-liters-per-flush toilets
> are capable of such a feat) is a bad thing. But
> rioting? Seventeen people killed? That's a rational
> response?
> 
> Sorry, but I couldn't care less about Newsweek. I'm
> more worried about the response and our willful
> avoidance of its examination. Afghanistan has been an
> American reconstruction project for nearly four years.
> Pakistan has been a close American "war on terror"
> ally for just as long. This is what we're getting from
> the billions spent, the lives lost, and the grand
> project of exporting nonjudgmental, sharia-friendly
> democracy? A killing spree? Over this?
> 
> In the affirmative-action context, conservatives have
> written trenchantly about the "soft bigotry of low
> expectations" ? the promotion of a vile
> dependency-ethos that says "you don't need to strive
> for better," as a result of which many people who
> might, don't. Our cognate sense of the Islamic world
> has become the smug delusion of base expectations.
> 
> Someone alleges a Koran flushing and what do we do? We
> expect, accept, and silently tolerate militant Muslim
> savagery ? lots of it. We become the hangin' judge for
> the imbeciles whose negligence "triggered" the
> violence, but offer no judgment about the societal
> dysfunction that allows this grade of offense to
> trigger so cataclysmic a reaction. We hop on our high
> horses having culled from the Left's playbook the most
> politically correct palaver about the inviolable
> sanctity of Holy Islamic scripture (and never you mind
> those verses about annihilating the infidels ? the
> ones being chanted by the killers). And we suspend
> disbelief, insisting that things would be just fine in
> a place like Gaza if we could only set up a democracy
> ? a development which, there, appears poised to
> empower Hamas, terrorists of the same ilk as those in
> Afghanistan and Pakistan who see comparatively minor
> indignities as license to commit murder.
> 
> "Minor indignities? How can you say something so
> callous about a desecration of the Holy Koran?" I say
> it as a member of the real world, not the world of
> prissy affectation. I don't know about you, but I
> inhabit a place where crucifixes immersed in urine and
> Madonna replicas composed of feces are occasions for
> government funding, not murderous uprisings. If
> someone was moved to kill on their account, we'd be
> targeting the killer, not the exhibiting museum, not
> the "artists," and surely not Newsweek.
> 
> I inhabit a world in which my government seeks
> accommodation with Saudi Arabia and China and Egypt,
> places where the practice of Christianity results in
> imprisonment...or worse; in which Jews have been
> driven from almost every country in the Middle East,
> and in which the goal of destroying their country,
> Israel, is viewed by much of the globe as legitimate
> foreign policy; and in which being a Christian, an
> animist, or the wrong kind of Muslim in Sudan is
> grounds for genocide ? something the vaunted United
> Nations seems to regard as more of a spectator sport
> than a cause of action.
> 
> In my world, militant Muslims, capitalizing on the
> respectful deference of others, have been known
> tactically to desecrate the Koran themselves: by
> rigging it with explosives, by using it to secrete and
> convey terrorist messages, and, yes, even by
> toilet-flushing parts of it for the nuisance value of
> flooding the bathrooms at Guantanamo Bay. Just as they
> have used mosques as sanctuaries, as weapons depots,
> and as snipers' nests.
> 
> There's a problem here. But it's not insensitivity,
> and it's not media bias. Those things are condemnable,
> but manageable. The real problem here is a culture
> that either cannot or will not rein in a hate ideology
> that fuels killing. When we go after Newsweek, we're
> giving it a pass. Again.
> 
> ? Andrew C. McCarthy, a former federal prosecutor, is
> a senior fellow at the Foundation for the Defense of
> Democracies.
> 
> 
> 
> And one more interesting little tidbit -
> 
> 
> 
> 
> 
> 
> 
> MAY. 17, 2005: MISCHIEF MAKERS
> Imran's Con
> 
> Newsweek is taking a pasting over the Koran abuse
> story, and surely the magazine was indeed careless,
> even reckless. But is the pasting quite 100%
> justified? A number of readers have written to make
> the point that ultimately the blame for the rioting
> has to be fixed on the rioters. I'll quote just one:
> 
> "When a college basketball team loses (or wins, it
> doesn't much matter which) and some students from that
> school use that as an excuse to riot, is the
> basketball team to blame?
> 
> "Newsweek doesn't have 16 deaths on its hands, the
> rioters do.
> 
> "I think the real question is, why should Koran
> desecration be such a big deal anyway? If a book that
> important to me were desecrated, my response would be
> more along the lines of a defiant 'fine, there's
> plenty more where that came from.'"
> 
> That last question is a powerful one. But something
> needs to be understood here: The riots in Afghanistan
> were not a spontaneous response to the Newsweek item.
> It did not happen that some pious Afghan spotted the
> offending story while reading Newsweek at his coffee
> house. The riots in Afghanistan were incited for
> political gain.
> 
> Readers of the British gossip press know the name of
> Imran Khan, the one-time Pakistani cricket star and
> international playboy. In 1995 Khan made headlines in
> Britain by marrying Jemima Goldsmith, daughter of the
> late British billionaire Sir James Goldsmith. In
> recent years, Khan (who also happens to belong to one
> of Pakistan's largest landlord families) has turned to
> politics. Unfortunately for him, his background is not
> exactly a sure-fire vote winner in the Pakistani
> context. Unbearded, Oxford-educated, a notorious
> skirt-chaser, Khan has lacked appeal to the Pakistani
> values voter. The fact that Khan's wife was Jewish by
> background and socially acquainted with Salman Rushdie
> did not help either.
> 
> So in 2002, Khan divorced Jemima and set about
> reinventing himself as the devoutest of the devout. He
> has fiercely criticized the Musharraf regime's working
> relationship with the United States, and repeatedly
> criticized the war on terror as an attack upon Islam.
> Unlike the Afghan rioters, he probably does read
> Newsweek or anyway employs people who do. And when
> that item appeared in the May 9 issue of the magazine,
> Khan saw a political opportunity. He staged a press
> conference on May 6 and denounced the article in
> blood-curdling language. He announced that he had
> introduced a motion in the Pakistani National Assembly
> to condemn desecration of the Koran.
> 
> Khan's words, broadcast on Pakistani television, were
> taken up by Taliban sympathizers in Afghanistan,
> inspired by their own political agendas.
> 
> Whatever one thinks of the reactions of the poor and
> probably uneducated Afghans who rioted in response to
> this incitement, from a political point of view it's
> important to keep one's eyes on the motives and
> actions of the sophisticated urban politicians who put
> the mob in motion. The story of the Afghan riots - and
> Khan's role in them - is one more reminder that much
> of the extremism and violence of Middle Eastern and
> Central Asian politics is the handiwork of cynical
> local power-seekers pursuing selfish advantage.
> 
> 
> 
> 
> 
> 
> ------------------------------------------------------------------------------
> --
>   
> 
> 
> --- Steve Alm <salm at mn.rr.com> wrote:
> 
>>> 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
>> 
> === message truncated ===
> 
> 
> 
> 
> Discover Yahoo! 
> Stay in touch with email, IM, photo sharing and more. Check it out!
> http://discover.yahoo.com/stayintouch.html
> __________________________________________________
> Use Rhodes22-list at rhodes22.org, Help? www.rhodes22.org/list