freecounterpoint: guajira guantanamera

Sunday, March 25, 2007

guajira guantanamera

16 comments:

Mr roT said...: Gail Collins is still on the job? I thought that by now she'd be in the Pakistani border regions porting dialysis machine parts around.; 3/26/2007 12:19 AM
Anonymous said...: what is this about?; 3/26/2007 9:10 AM
Mr roT said...: NYTeditoirial page editor. She was a wacko and quit I thought. Maybe she's still in charge.
If we're hated throughout the world for gitmo, why are the Palestinians so adored?; 3/26/2007 12:36 PM
Pepe le Pew said...: Perhaps because trhey are the victims of a huge post-wwii injustice and have been treated like 2nd class citizens on their own land ?; 3/26/2007 1:07 PM
Arelcao Akleos said...: Uh huh, as opposed to those victims of a huge postwar injustice such as all those millions treated as chess pieces in eastern europe after the second ww? Ask the Poles how they felt, for example, while you were cheering on the heirs of Mr. Steel back in the 80s. Nevermind, of course, those "Neocon" victims of a huge war and postwar injustice in a Europe which through today revels in making sure they understand they are barely citizens, never mind second class ones. Just ask Chirac.
But then, if Petain had had his way, there would have been no need for Good Muslims to live in the shadow of stinking sons of apes and pigs. And Planet Pepe would have been Dar al Islam all day.; 3/26/2007 3:27 PM
Pepe le Pew said...: ah, so you advocate wiping out an injustice with another, aa?; 3/26/2007 4:01 PM
My Frontier Thesis said...: The Guantánamo operation was central to Mr. Cheney’s drive to expand the powers of the presidency at the expense of Congress and the courts, and Mr. Gonzales was one of the chief architects of the policies underpinning the detainee system.

Still, the current administration is Sponge Bob Square Pants compared with how F.D.R. handled Nazis, or how Abe Lincoln handled Confederate terrorists. All three presidents during time of war sought to expand the powers of their office.; 3/26/2007 5:12 PM
Pepe le Pew said...: Without the geneva convention, the HR standards were different, and considerably lower back then.

In addition, there was a well defined enemy whereas there is an somewhat arbitrary quality to what constitutes the nemesis du jour. Suffice it to say that the steady stream of innocent people have been ill-treated or tortured at guantanamo to raise questions as to its place in association with a country that purports to still respect human rights. I really don't see how they can have it both ways, mft.; 3/26/2007 6:58 PM
My Frontier Thesis said...: Without the geneva convention, the HR standards were different, and considerably lower back then.

One could make that argument. Yet the Human Rights standards back then were "normal." There was no future to judge what would have been their contemporary standards (even though I admit this, I still condemn slavery and slave-owners throughout history — but I can back it up). Any sort of romanticizing about a former Golden Age (as is often found in much late-19th century American Western literature) of the past was just that: romanticizing.

In addition, there was a well defined enemy whereas there is an somewhat arbitrary quality to what constitutes the nemesis du jour.

At a glance, it may have seemed that way, Pepe. But that's clearly an inaccurate statement. With all of the German-American, Japanese-American, and Italian-American immigrants in America during the Second World War (even the First Great War!), things were really, really, really confused. To simplify (which academics and governments do in order to move in some direction with scholarship or policy), there was anything but clarity. That's why Internment Camps were created in the first place, even in light of the abuses.

If we get into matters of the Civil War, the issue becomes that much more confused. Look at Missouri, for example, a state that, at the very least, has to be busted up county-by-county to determine who was abolitionist and who was pro-slavery (OH, WHAT A PECULIAR INSTITUTION!). Furthermore, that clusterfuck spilled into the West (Bloody Kansas due to those border roughians), into Kansas, Texas, and the American Southwest. Clarity? Please, please, please, don't accuse the past with any sort of notion that there was "clarity." You're slipping into the notion of myth and romanticism.

Suffice it to say that the steady stream of innocent people have been ill-treated or tortured at guantanamo to raise questions as to its place in association with a country that purports to still respect human rights. I really don't see how they can have it both ways, mft.

Pepe, we're sort of shooting for an Ideal, here. Although very much intertwined, reality and Ideals are two different things. Abraham Lincoln understood this, which is why he didn't issue the Emancipation Proclamation at the outset of the war (he needed momentum first). Abe waited. F.D.R. also understood this, and his most desperate pleas to enter the war early in Europe were answered with unashamed isolationist responses — from the American Senate and Congress no less! Only after Admiral Yamamoto awoke the sleeping Giant (to use his own words) at Pearl Harbor did America get pissed (minor sidenote: I believe Yamamoto was Harvard-trained in the 1920s).

I do realize the dangers you speak of, Pepe. As a Libertarian I understand them all too well. Yet while I acknowledge this danger, I'm also willing to acknowledge the grand abuse of humanity taking place in the world of Islam Militant. Chopping off hands, heads, and feet in public squares because Allah said it's okay (over 1,300 years ago)... WTF is that all about, and how come you're so silent about it!?! (of course, I don't want to rummage too far into the fallacy of ripping on someone for what they don't say — but seriously, Pepe, you'd have to be a neo-Hermit to not even take a little bit of notice.

Your turn.; 3/26/2007 8:59 PM
Pepe le Pew said...: mft, I am not romanticizing the past - on the contrary: we are all benefiting from the end of the HR dark ages that the GC brought about. If anything, the XXth c saw the normalization of the practice of using civilian populations as hostages to achieve military and political purposes (pretty much the definition of terrorism): Stalin's purges, the IIIrd reich, the bombing of dresden, hioroshima & nagasaki, killing fields, etc... I realize attila was no different, but in previous centuries many, perhaps most wars happened on a battlefield. The GC made such practices illegal and it is disastrous for all of humanity that this administration take it so lightly by creating an institution for the sole purpose of evading its responsibility under the GC, as well as its own laws.

aa, ai, and possibly jj like to think of this stance as supportive of terrorism. The rationale goes something like "if you do not approve of the way we are conducting our "wot", than surely, you must be worshiping obl and root for the multiplication of terror acts". In reality observance of the GC is the best tool we have against terror and i do not see how it is the case that guantanamo does much to combat islamo-terror. it is like shooting a rabbit with a bazooka. save for the fact that it harms the shooter considerably, and that the rabbit gets away.; 3/26/2007 10:00 PM
Pepe le Pew said...: Chopping off hands, heads, and feet in public squares because Allah said it's okay (over 1,300 years ago)... WTF is that all about, and how come you're so silent about it!?!
mft, i don't cry either against child rape, wife-beating and animal buggery. There's a good reason for this: we all agree. now you must have noticed that we already have on this board an attentive vigil which, any time a muslim spits on a sidewalk, alerts our attention to it and calls for a new mission for the ebola gay.
We obviously all agree that there is a problem (although aa finds it impossible to argue convincingly without characterizing me as semi-closeted obl supporter). Where we don't agree is on the magnitude of the problem and on the method to address it.; 3/26/2007 10:09 PM
Pepe le Pew said...: After all, 1.3 Billion Muslims and .7 Million Neocon hating Socialists cant be wrong says the D of PP
you mean 7 billion, aa. When you emerge from whichever hole you like to isolate yourself into, you will find that most aren't socialists either.; 3/26/2007 10:21 PM
Pepe le Pew said...: Jews in Israel is indeed a terrible injustice
Throwing palestinians out of palestine is unquestionably an injustice.; 3/26/2007 10:23 PM
Pepe le Pew said...: Now how are the occupied territories of Alsace-Lorraine doing?
i say give it back to the krauts: the weather is for shit, the food undigestible, the women pale, and they all vote for le pen.; 3/26/2007 10:24 PM
My Frontier Thesis said...: Minor side-note: Marc Bloch was from that Alsace-Lorraine region. He was Jewish, a French Patriot, a pretty darned good historian (co-founder of the Annales School), and executed gestapo/SS-style about four days after the Allies stormed Normandy. He was actually participant in the French Resistance unlike the 98% (give or take) who claim today to either particpated in it, or have ancestors who partook in it.

Pepe: you've ignored nearly every one of my historical specifics (F.D.R. and Lincoln). Just pointing that out. Respond how you see fit, and when time allows.; 3/27/2007 12:23 AM
Arelcao Akleos said...: Pepe le Pew said...
"After all, 1.3 Billion Muslims and .7 Million Neocon hating Socialists cant be wrong says the D of PP
you mean 7 billion, aa. When you emerge from whichever hole you like to isolate yourself into, you will find that most aren't socialists either."

Actually, I meant .7 Billion

Your claim is that most of the .7 Billion Neocon Hating Socialists are not socialists?; 3/28/2007 8:37 PM

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