On Monday, November 19, 2001, at 08:00 , Ted Morgan wrote:
[..]
> I'm not sure there isn't a kind of short-circuited cognitive
> development going on here. It is fatuous to say, in effect, those who
> attribute some 'responsibility' to the United States are in effect
> absolving the terrorists of their crime. I realize this isn't Brad's
> point per se, but it is often heard in the letters-to-the-editor columns
> of local papers all over the US.
[..]
Ted,
Where, tragically, you and I find common ground here, is that the
simplistic
approach that you note in so many of the blithely naive letters to the
editors
are, well - STONED! We may actually share the common ground that we were
critical
of various governmental policies, and hence view the current state of
affairs
with the negative emotional reaction of 'We Tried To Tell YOU!' - which
complicates
my position in the current 'flag waving festival' - since getting the
history of
'low intensity warfare' into people's heads tends to CONFUSE them that for
me it
IS a professional argument, 'this is bizniz, strictly bizniz'.
I feel it would be safe to presume that in the last 30+ years your
opposition to
these governmental policies would fall under the category of your
obligation as
a citizen of the republic, rather than my 'defending my union card' - uh
model.
The problem then decays into how do we do 'legitimate' analysis of
governmental
and NGO policies, without the 'flag wavers' of either the left or right,
discounting
the boring parts, which they wish to avoid, and hence tend to respond back
with simply
the knee jerk 'party line'. I fear that we will not be able to stop 'them'
from
attacking upon their great valiant pet hobby horses the straw men that
they see
'across the aisle'. The best that we will be able to do is wave those
attacks
aside like matadors and return to the process at hand.
I like your commentary on the problem of 'showing the flag' and the
naivete of
those who stream it all down into sound-byte units. I have the ongoing
problem
that as a part of 'keeping in touch with my cultural heritage' - I wear my
'pinky
fingernails' long - in deference to the 'mandarin caste thing' - and have
to
time and again explain this to the 'round eye community' that it is not a
'coke
thing' - but a 'culture thing'. So I can empathise with general problem of
how
personal symbols get squashed in the mass culture. Maybe the solution then
is
to simply put a stake in the ground and 'show the flag' and when people are
confused by it as a 'symbol' - help them understand what that symbol means
to
you as a person. As a 'militarist' we've been trying to get the flag out
of the
hands of 'the right' - or at least the Capitalist Class - who do not
understand
that you ONLY fly a flag at night while under siege - and that while the
current
economic down turn may be 'hard' on them - it is clearly not what we
'militarists'
would call a 'siege'.
Clearly we must steal back from 'main stream pop cultural iconography' the
substance
if not the symbol. At which point we would be well advise to work on
dealing with
the substances, and not merely the symbols. Inside of my tribe I gave them
back
the 'word' WarMongerBabyKiller[vn[tm]] - as a way of taking back that
attack, and
ending its use as a word aimed at hurting - since, well, that IS what we
are. We
are the craftsmen of that trade, and irregardless of their ages, those we
kill
are still, in their parent's heart of hearts 'my little baby'.
As a country, I really wish that people spent more time worrying about
things like
how DO we get Osama bin Laden, et al, into court - and then how do we
maintain the
standards needed to both protect 'intelligence means and methods' { eg:
not get
any of the people who were a part of the information acquisition KILLED
because
someone opted to BLURT out the info, that fingers the source, that
triggers the
hitmen, who make one more person DEAD. } while at the same time
maintaining all
of the Legal Obligations that a Military Tribunal, Under their obligations
as
American Military Officers, must uphold as men of honor, and those who are
under
the UCMJ, and hence by extension all of the laws and customs of
international law.
{ This is not going to be easy, especially making sure that no one in the
government
decides that for 'domestic political reasons' that they want to pull a
nixon/kissinger
leak - that gets field operatives killed. }
We have the whole process of how do we get a stable government up and
running
in Kabul, and how much 'western cultural imperialism' - like allowing women
jobs and education - should we support, over and against defending their
right
to their own indigenous cultural heritage.
But that would also mean understanding a whole bunch of history about the
region as well.
Let's see, law, history, oh dear, that means that one of the critical
first steps would seem to be how DO we improve the educational standards
in america to a level where the arguments rest upon reasoning, and not
merely ideology.... not merely the smooth laxative sound bytes.
--If I were the education Czar, I of course would mandate that people understand the history of 'citizen v. professional' armies, and hence the questions of the history of the draft, as well as the general problems involved with making a profession of war - and its ongoing problems of defining 'the laws of war'.
ciao drieux
---
This archive was generated by hypermail 2b30 : Wed Nov 21 2001 - 19:46:22 EST