From today's A Small Victory, discussing Ted Rall (And this is a woman who thinks I'm obsessed with her. Ha.):
[quoting Rall]If we're attacked by a foreign power, as we last were in 1941 at Pearl Harbor
So, is Rall saying that 9/11 never happened, or is that an innuendo that he thinks we attacked ourselves? Either way, that has to be the most powerfully corrupt thought Ted has come up with so far, and that's no small feat. This from a New Yorker who walked through the debris and saw the destruction up close.
So, okay— this is the kind of shit that's just fucking rampant in the pro-war crowd, and it really bugs me.
Because, obviously, what Rall's talking about is that we were not, in fact, attacked by a "foreign power" on 9/11; we were attacked by some guys, who were foreigners. And I'll take this back to an analogy I used recently in an argument with Ryan: when the Oklahoma City bombing took place, the guys who did it ran back to Montana. That wasn't a declaration of war against the United States federal government by the state of Montana. Furthermore, if Montana had insisted that the Fed observe laws and statutes governing the investigation of federal crimes while operating within the state of Montana, that still wouldn't be an act of war.
Afghanistan didn't have an extradition treaty with us. They were in no way bound to turn bin Laden over to the United States. Bin Laden wasn't a citizen of their country. They didn't fund the 9/11 attacks. Legally, it wasn't their problem. The United States may have been able to negotiate a settlement anyway, but we chose to invade instead.
And, in deference to the reading comprehension problem that seems endemic to the right wing, let me be clear about what I'm not saying: I'm not saying that we shouldn't have gone in after bin Laden, I'm not saying that the Taliban should have stayed in power, I'm not saying that I think women should be confined to burkas. I'm not saying any of that shit.
What I'm saying is that we were not attacked by a foreign fucking power. We were attacked by some guys. Legally and diplomatically, our beef was with those guys. We didn't have to go to war to handle that situation.
Allow me to reiterate: I'm not saying that Afghanistan shouldn't have been invaded. The Taliban needed to be removed from power, and I think the U.N. should have done it. But, in the immediate context of 9/11, the need to remove the Taliban was a separate issue.
Now, if Michele disagreed with that perspective, that'd be one thing. But you read that paragraph above, you'll notice that Michele doesn't even seem to be capable of grasping that perspective.
Ted Rall wants you to boycott the military. He wants the rolls to diminish. He wants the enlisted numbers to wane. Only then will he be happy. Imagine if Ted's dream came true and no one re-enlisted and no one volunteered. Imagine then another large scale attack on our country.
Here again: cognitive disconnect.
September 11th was not a "large scale attack on our country". It was one attack, carried out by 19 guys with box cutters. Nineteen guys. Box cutters. If you throw in their training budget and the price of the plane tickets, the whole operation probably cost less than $50,000. That's, like, the food budget for an aircraft carrier for one day. It was a fairly small-scale attack. It's like that famous "shot heard 'round the world". It's a big deal. It signified that something very important had happened. The consequence —the immediate human cost— was terrible. But, on the scale of war, it was a pretty small thing. The U.S. government has killed more civilians than that by accident since then and, at least at the policy level, shows very little inclination to feel bad about it.
A man who believes that believes in lies. It's no wonder he now subscribes to the myth that Vietnam veterans were never spit on or treated badly.
And just as a point of order: I think Ted Rall sucks. I am often amused by his cartoons, but the guy's politics make me want to hit someone. Whatever happened in the past, there's a documented record of self-righteous liberals calling a U.S. veteran "baby killer," during this war. In any event, Ted Rall's compulsive historical revisionism is just appalling. His analysis of the "myth" of Vietnam vets having been spit on has the stink of Holocaust denial to it— that stupid shit about, "it doesn't say anywhere, specifically, in writing, to kill all the Jews." Fuck that. It happened. We know it happened. Not everything that's said about the Holocaust should be accepted without commentary, but the bare fact of it isn't something that can be debated with integrity. Ditto "the spitting incident". If the exact thing was never recorded, the spirit behind it is clear on the face of contemporary accounts from the anti-war camp during the Vietnam war. Rall's attempt to lever his political agenda on the backs of soldiers who have risked their lives for their country is unconscionable.
Ted Rall is a piece of shit. Like Michael Moore, he's an ideologue who's enriching his own career by stoking hatred and widening divisions. But, while Moore's failures seem to stem largely from a kind of doctrinaire incompetence, Rall launches his attacks with malice aforethought, and a wanton disregard for the collateral damage inflicted by his viciousness.
None of that changes the fact that Michele is a delusional hack who, as nearly as I have ever been able to tell, aspires to be Michael Moore. Ah well. Good luck to her with that, I suppose.
First things first. I agree with your diagnosis of ASV and with your decision to step away from the blogfight. I say this as someone who's done my share of blogfighting with Michele.
But I also think that your political blogging is valuable. The latest installment over at Whimsy is a case in point.
What I'm saying, I guess, is that I wish you'd keep the red pages going. I know Whimsy is your main blogging outlet, and it's great, but political junkies like me, we read Whimsy every third weekend after a night at the bars. The red pages? That's something I'd check while stuffing my face with Grape Nuts. Even if all you do is cross-post the occasional political entry from Whimsy, that'd make me happy.
Posted by: zwichenzug at August 16, 2004 11:39 PMJust a small point - a side point - which doesn't really say anything about your main argument...
...but ... uh
The whole "19 guys, box cutters" point is kinda weak in some respects. Yes, technically there was no foreign power attacking us. But how many wars are going to have an official declaration? Just war theory seems to be about making up rules & expectations about how war can be fought in a "just" way, defining escalation, justified force... and then... well... in order to win, get around those rules without causing the general public or world opinion to freak out.
Or you just win and get to decide what was or wasn't war crimes.
Anyway... one way to get around those rules is to set up lone guys to attack your enemy. Our own government does it all the time. We don't declare war and our enemies can't declare war back (they'd be nuts to do so, since we have such a big, expensive army).
I agree that how you phrase these things is important, especially when there is a lot of law about what is or isn't a nation going to war. I just am bringing out another side point that there are pretty big grey areas when it comes to "lone guys" and how tied they are to nations.
Posted by: Rowlf at November 16, 2004 07:35 AMRowlf—
This is all pretty semantic, but the differences between the kind of covert attacks you're talking about and an actual "war" are significant.
So, for example, the Pearl Harbor attack was part of an effort to disable the U.S. military in the Pacific Theater and force a settlement with the U.S. government. These goals were fairly above-board, and Japan did declare war in the process. Germany invaded the rest of Europe with the intention of capturing territory, manufacturing capacity, etc. In both cases there was a possibility, however remote, that the antagonists could achieve a material victory over their targets and thus advance their goals. In that respect, the character of the war had less to do with "rules" and more to do with goals for governments, where the governments were taken to be duly empowered representatives of their constituency, etc etc.
It is possible for a small group of "lone gunmen" to overthrow the government of a country like Iran or Guatemala, because those countries have a great deal of internal instability. Other factions are present that are willing and able to take control of the machinery of government and the population isn't really capable of resisting them—especially not when the new government receives shipments of arms and supplies from the United States which, while they are insignificant to the scale of the U.S. military budget, can often outstrip the entire GNP of the country they're being used to control.
This is not the case for the United States: no attack on the United States short of a coordinated thermonuclear bombardment of Congress, the White House, and the Supreme Court, would be able to derail the machinery of the federal government for more than a few weeks. And even then, no force on earth could hope to actually invade the country and force the nation to capitulate.
As far as the United States is concerned, 19 guys with box cutters will always just be 19 guys with box cutters. Any collapse that occurs as a result of that kind of attack will have to be self-induced and, even then, is likely to be only partial in nature.
You like telling me I'm being semantic.
I totally agree that there is a world of difference between terrorist acts and a declaration of war between countries. But I also think below-the-radar warfare in the United States could be effective (without total collapse) because we'd freak out if anything happens on our soil. I can envision the panic when more white powder goes into the mail... simple things, done well, which grind things to a halt or make people turn on eachother. I worry more about our culture/politics turning ugly really fast more than what a few guys with box cutters would directly accomplish.
And so we agree that the problem would be self-induced.
I also don't see utter revolution resulting from what could amount to guerilla warfare within the US. I think any country would consider going to war well before it looks like there is a risk of collapse. There probably would be other reasons to attack someone: an election year, economic ideas, balance of power... so the box cutters might even just end up as an excuse... whatever the scenario...
I guess I just spun out the argument in my head, while you wrote it down. Guess that is why you have a good blog.
Posted by: at November 17, 2004 08:37 PM