Mesopotamia. Babylon. The Tigris and Euphrates, by Arundhati Roy

[Griff]

If from the heights, you watch the sea,
O little darky, slave among slaves,
You’ll see, dreamlike, many ships approach,
And a flag that billows o’er the waves.

Little black face, wait and hope,
For the hour nears, beautiful Abyssinian,
Once we have reached you and stand at your side,
A new law you’ll have, and a brand-new king.

We are merely the slaves of love,
And our watchwords are Duty and Freedom!
Our Pillars of Righteousness we shall avenge,
Which falling, have freed you from serfdom.

Little black face, petite Abyssinian,
We’ll bring you, free at last, to Rome;
Then you too shall wear our homeland’s garb,
You too shall be kissed by our golden sun.

Little black face, you’ll Roman be,
And our proud flag your own will be.
And proudly together we’ll march and sing,
Before the Duce, before the King!

Fascist Italy's conquest of Ethiopia in 1935-36

[Uryoces]

I kept having this Kiplingesque phrase run through my head: "White man's burden", but I shook it off and went with a Star Trek metaphor: Non-interference. Do not interfere in the growth process of a less-techincally advanced culture. Don't intervene unless invited, and even then ever-mindful of screwing things up.

My job will end up in India. They will provide my replacement with a house and a car, pay him $3.50/hr, and he'll live better than I do. However, I'm not sure who's getting screwed in this exchange.

Quote found on Slashdot: --My name is George W. Bush. You tried to kill my father. Prepare to die.

[Count Zero]

Originally posted by Undertoad
Instead of documenting what's wrong with the essay, try to find things that are accurate and correct that she doesn't say by accident.

Let's see...

Nope. Not one thing. The whole thing is a big ol' stinking steaming turd.

Wow, that's certainly convenient for you.

Try debunking this then:

Ramachandran :You have written that this war of aggression has dangerous
consequences with respect to international terrorism and the threat of
nuclear war.

Chomsky : I cannot claim any originality for that opinion. I am just
quoting the CIA and other intelligence agencies and virtually every
specialist in international affairs and terrorism. Foreign Affairs,
Foreign Policy , the study by the American Academy of Arts and Sciences,
and the high-level Hart-Rudman Commission on terrorist threats to the
United States all agree that it is likely to increase terrorism and the
proliferation of weapons of mass destruction.

The reason is simple: partly for revenge, but partly just for
self-defence.

There is no other way to protect oneself from U.S. attack. In fact, the
United States is making the point very clearly, and is teaching the
world an extremely ugly lesson.

Compare North Korea and Iraq. Iraq is defenceless and weak; in fact, the
weakest regime in the region. While there is a horrible monster running
it, it does not pose a threat to anyone else. North Korea, on the other
hand, does pose a threat. North Korea, however, is not attacked for a
very simple reason: it has a deterrent. It has a massed artillery aimed
at Seoul, and if the United States attacks it, it can wipe out a large
part of South Korea.

So the United States is telling the countries of the world: if you are
defenceless, we are going to attack you when we want, but if you have a
deterrent, we will back off, because we only attack defenceless targets.
In other words, it is telling countries that they had better develop a
terrorist network and weapons of mass destruction or some other credible
deterrent; if not, they are vulnerable to "preventive war".

For that reason alone, this war is likely to lead to the proliferation
of both terrorism and weapons of mass destruction.

While you're at it, try debunking the rest of the text :

http://www.zmag.org/content/showarti...15&ItemID=3369

And good luck !

[jaguar]

I'm not usually a fan of Chomsky but he has a pretty damn good point.

[Undertoad]

I would not have thought anyone would pay attention to the man after he was so completely wrong about Afghanistan. I would have thought anyone paying attention would find him to be consistently contrarian and unable to speak or think in any other terms. But it would seem that consistency is not a requirement to be king of the lost anti crowd.

If one needs to disprove Chomsky, one need only wait for the pages of history to repeatedly show him to be wrong. In the meantime, we can scold him for not displaying a pinch of original thought in these remarks. He's supposed to be a serious thinker, a Big Man of Academia, and he's repeating the same old crapola, albeit in Ivory Tower terminology.

Frankly I don't know how anyone can stand to read shit like this:

Ramachandran :How do you think the U.S. will manage the human - and humanitarian - consequences of the war?

Chomsky : No one knows, of course. That is why honest and decent people do not resort to violence - because one simply does not know.

No one knows -- that is, except for the logistics experts offloading shipping containers of food and medicine on the docks that haven't seen food or medicine despite years of UN programs allegedly meant to deliver nothing else.

But at least ol Noam is effectively shown to have been reduced to his component parts: 99% babbling nihilism coated with 1% academic schlock. Think about that quote, people. You don't resort to violence, because you simply do not know what will happen. What the fucking fuck?

You can be absolutely, positively certain that Saddam Hussein and his thugs won't be in charge. Chomsky may not know that. But you and I do, because we're smarter than he is.

Quod erat demonstrandum, Chomsky remains a dolt.

[juju]

Originally posted by Uryoces
Fact: The US may have created Sadam Hussein in the early 1960's when is supported the Baath party's rise to power.

Hey, let's all speculate, precede it with the phrase "Fact:", and then pass it off as irrefutable truth!

Jesus, is it really that easy? I'm adding this technique to my repertoire.

[Uryoces]

Fact: The US may have...

Yeah, that does sound goofy; not contructed well...
Lemme start that over: Some folks have suggested that we created the situation which allowed Sadam to rise to power by supporting the Baath Party. I personally view that as an unintended consequence.

No I don't think you wanna add that one. I was going for more of a bullet-point or little star effect, kind of Power-pointy.

No "Fact:"'s for you!!!

[Whit]

     Debunking??? Oh boy! Let's go with the whole thing from the beginning shall we?

Iraq is a trial run Chomsky interviewed by Frontline by Noam Chomsky and VK Ramachandran

     This is kinda neat, the interviewee get's top billing for writing the interview? I like this, let me try.
Me: This seems like a ridiculously one sided conversation to everyone capable of thought, would you agree?
Myself: Of course, by asking questions with a ludicrous slant I can sound much more reasonable with silly-ass responses.
     Hey, I like this... Oops, I haven't actually gotten to the, heh,"interview" yet.

The trial run is to try and establish what the U.S. calls a "new norm" in international relations. The new norm is "preventive war" (notice that new norms are established only by the United States).

     Go us! Um, by the by, has anyone actually heard any references to the "new Norm" or is it just him? Seriously though, bare with me on this one.

This is not pre-emptive war; there is a crucial difference... The doctrine of preventive war is totally different; it holds that the United States - alone, since nobody else has this right - has the right to attack any country that it claims to be a potential challenge to it. So if the United States claims, on whatever grounds, that someone may sometime threaten it, then it can attack them.
The doctrine of preventive war was announced explicitly in the National Strategy Report last September...

     Really? Let's see this explicit "doctrine of preventive war." In fact, here's a quote from it. Quote taken from here: http://www.whitehouse.gov/nsc/nss5.html

The United States will not use force in all cases to preempt emerging threats, nor should nations use preemption as a pretext for aggression.

     Ah but Chomsky read that, see?

The National Strategy Report said, in effect, that the U.S. will rule the world by force, which is the dimension - the only dimension - in which it is supreme. Furthermore, it will do so for the indefinite future, because if any potential challenge arises to U.S. domination, the U.S. will destroy it before it becomes a challenge.

     Hey, that's virtually a direct quote of the same words... Oh wait no it's not...It's virtually the opposite.

It is important to establish such a norm if you expect to rule the world by force for the foreseeable future.

     Rule the world? But wasn't the point of what did get posted directly onto the Celler amount to "The U.S. doesn't have the nut's to attack people with nukes or effective terrorism, so you better get 'em quick?" Maybe I misread, because that contradicts. Run with one or the other, but we can't be intending world domination and be to afraid to attack these other country's. So which is it?

Acheson said that "no legal issue arises when the United States responds to challenges to its position, prestige or authority", or words approximating that.

     Approximating?I like this too. Hey, didn't UT say that the original piece was aromatic and warm? Or words that approximated that? Hmm, stinking and steaming, that's close enough.

That is also a statement of the Bush doctrine.Although Acheson was an important figure, what he said had not been official government policy in the post-War period. It now stands as official policy and this is the first illustration of it. It is intended to provide a precedent for the future.

     That's the statement? Where? Damn, I must be getting old 'cause I just read that boring ass paper and I didn't see that. Wow, official policy. I guess it's been openly claimed though, since it's official. I wonder where?
     Holy morning sunshine, it almost 3:30 am here. I need to get some sleep. I could go on if anybody wants to read more of these stupidly long posts though.
     Oh yeah, one more thing. Sorry, UT, I know what you said about how to handle this kind of thing earlier, but please forgive me on the grounds that I really did have fun doing this.

[juju]

Originally posted by Whit
Go us! Um, by the by, has anyone actually heard any references to the "new Norm" or is it just him? Seriously though, bare with me on this one.

I have. I watched a frontline episode just recently that described the security strategy views of the people in Bush's cabinet. Here.

Really? Let's see this explicit "doctrine of preventive war." In fact, here's a quote from it. Quote taken from here: http://www.whitehouse.gov/nsc/nss5.html

You've taken this quote completely out of context. Did you happen to catch the pages of material that came before it, or maybe the stuff that came after?

[Undertoad]

The thing is, both Chomsky and Roy fail to offer any suggestions on how to manage Hussein otherwise. They prefer the status quo:

http://www.cnn.com/2003/WORLD/meast/...lex/index.html

US/UK forces found a UN complex that was bulging with undistributed food - in Basra, the very city in which Roy claims a humanitarian disaster created by 4 days of US/UK "siege", which has in fact been starving for ages.

CZ, you paying attention? Every morning's news disproves these numbnuts further. Or is it all just more propaganda?

[Count Zero]

Originally posted by Undertoad
The thing is, both Chomsky and Roy fail to offer any suggestions on how to manage Hussein otherwise. They prefer the status quo:

http://www.cnn.com/2003/WORLD/meast/...lex/index.html

US/UK forces found a UN complex that was bulging with undistributed food - in Basra, the very city in which Roy claims a humanitarian disaster created by 4 days of US/UK "siege", which has in fact been starving for ages.

CZ, you paying attention? Every morning's news disproves these numbnuts further. Or is it all just more propaganda?

Undertoad, this is not dialog. You act like everything you say it's pretty obvious and people that say otherwise are dolts and numbnuts.

You're turning what could be a good debate into a flamewar, and that's pretty useless.

Both texts I posted contain some very serious and interesting points, and the fact that you, being obviously pro war and pro US government, chose to make ridicule of it and react in a very angry way suggests that It must have hit a nerve.

Know only one thing (and this I can tell you from experience): The great majority of the world disproves the war and US policy in general.

Simply ignoring that with such an obnoxious attitude doesn't improve things. What Bush is managing to do is amazing. He's singlehandedly uniting the world against the US. That alone shows that his principal motive is not stopping foreign terrorism (American and American-supported terrorism was always OK. Keep in mind I come from a country where the elected president was deposed by the CIA, and the following dictatorship killed many people in my parent's generation).

So go ahead and call me a dolt, a moron, whatever you like. It doesn't mean much coming from you. I just hope you wise up eventually.

"What's right is not always popular; what's popular is not always right."

[juju]

Originally posted by Count Zero
Know only one thing (and this I can tell you from experience): The great majority of the world disproves the war and US policy in general.

Damn, the war AND U.S. policy have both been disproven? And I was so sure of their existence!

(I know, I know. You meant 'disapproves of'. Just having a little fun. )

[russotto]

Originally posted by Uryoces

Quote found on Slashdot: --My name is George W. Bush. You tried to kill my father. Prepare to die.

Independently re-invented several times. My own contribution (on Usenet, not /. ) was

"My name is George W. Bush. You took a shot at my daddy. Prepare to die."

[Whit]

     Juju, okay perhaps I should have said, "Has anyone heard of this from a different source?" Both are frontline. I also didn't hear the term "New Norm." But it might be there as I only listened to the fourth and fifth parts because I'm on an archaic dial up connection ... during the middle of the day...
     I now know from an IM with you that you thought I meant the idea, not the phrase, sorry if I was unclear. My point was to illustrate that Chomsky seems to have made it up, since it wasn't in the doctrine that I could find, and applied it directly to the administration. As if it were their words not his. I joked last night about using this kind of misrepresentative slanting techniques but it's not really funny. If you only read this article would there be any question that this was the Bush Administration's name for it's policies? I really doubt it. I was asking to see if maybe someone in the admin did use it before I accused Chomsky of putting words in their mouth.

You've taken this quote completely out of context. Did you happen to catch the pages of material that came before it, or maybe the stuff that came after?

     Yup, sure did. Now, consider the context of my posting. I was responding to the idea Chomsky was putting forth that this is a US doctrine of world domination. Was the rest of the doctrine more aggressive than this quote suggest, yes. I just think that this line was in the doctrine to address people like Chomsky that would take it to the extreme. Therefore, it's not only not out of context, but present to make this very point.