usually
see things in shade of gray but it seems that one has to "take sides" in this
situation.
Why? I don’t see why “in this situation” we
must take an either/or perspective.
Going
back in time seems a waste. We'll end up at Plymouth Rock and our role
vis a vis aboriginals. And then we can move on to how we "won the
West." I agree that the West has blood on its
hands.
Viewing historical precedents for human
behavior is wasteful? To omit review is to limit success. Why comply with
failure?
We
live in the West. Our present lives and futures are tied in with the
West.
We live in an increasingly globailzed West. Our present is changing
and our future is less certain to be tied to the
West.
In
a Khmer Rouge situation all those on this list with smooth hands and glasses
would be classified as enemies.
???
I
don't think we should give in so easily.
Agree. But review of strategy is not only
traditional, but part of the military discipline. Politics and society must,
too.
Maybe
OK for some, but doesn't get us far (I don't think) in the current
situation.
The Marshall Plan rebuilt what military
imperialism and bigotry destroyed. What can we learn from that in the ME and
global south to undermine the roots of
terrorism?
arthur
karen
-----Original
Message-----
From: Lawrence
deBivort [mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED]
Sent: Friday, July 8, 2005 10:56
AM
To: Cordell, Arthur: ECOM;
'Karen Watters Cole'; futurework@fes.uwaterloo.ca
Subject: RE: [Futurework] More thoughts
on the London attacks
I see the
attacks on the US (Sept 11) and UK, now, as just further steps in the long and
slow denouement to European colonialism. Until the West starts treating the
‘third world’ with respect, we can expect to continue to have these kinds of
incidents.
To call
this a declaration of war on the West seems incorrect, to me. If anything, the
West declared war on the third world, going back to the beginning of the
20th century. To the extent that we haven’t corrected the
egregious policies the West adopted back then, we will continue to find
resistance to them. Nor was there a declaration of war on us by a
‘network’ – there was an attack (Sept 11), and our reaction to it give special
impetus to the emergence of a network of militant resistance to some of the
policies of some Western countries. Now there is such a network (two
significant ones, in fact), and the capabilities of some of their members to
take action against the US, UK, and Spain is greater than before the US-driven
‘war on terror.’ (Australia next? Italy? Poland? Russia?) This war on
terror was a massive political, strategic, and linguistic mistake, and I have
no reason to believe that the US government will be able to pull back from it
– too many politicos have hitched their stars to
it.
The time of
the West has come and gone; it is time for Westerners to start behaving like
responsible and equal members of the world community. It is also time
for white people to stop thinking that we are superior to people with darker
skin; this has been an integral part of the European colonialist
problem.
I should
point out that the US State Department’s own numbers on the number of
terrorist attacks has shown a steady decline over the last decade. Sept 11,
Madrid and London are not typical, and that is what makes them so
interesting.
Clearly,
keeping the UK and US military ‘strong’ will remain irrelevant to the security
of the civil populations of those countries, so long as the those countries
fail to both understand and address the root causes of the matter. But
it will cost those two countries a lot of money, and for many that seems to be
sufficient reason to do so.
Any country
participating in the US invasion and occupation of Iraq can expect to be
targeted. Why should it be otherwise?
