"the president led us in [to iraq] with the background music of american culture."
chris matthews, i hardly knew ye.
of course, matthews still licks the boots of congressional and administration republicans on a nightly basis -- ahem -- but he has it right, at least in this instance.
it wasn't just bush and his buddies who led us into iraq -- it was everyone who thought after 9/11 that we should just kill arabs indiscriminately, that our problems were best solved militarily, that the whole arab world deserved payback. it was the country music, it was our overmilitarized mindset, it was our anti-intellectualism.
oh, i know, i'm blaming america first. i don't blame america for our getting attacked -- we can lay that directly at the feet of fundamentalist islam and the idiots in charge of our security in the bush administration. but i damn sure blame america for the ways in which we've completely trashed any kind of productive response to 9/11.
two days after 9/11 i taught a regularly-scheduled course in american culture at a private school here in DC to a young japanese woman. we were talking about the attacks and our possible military intervention in afghanistan. my student was against attacking afghanistan, since she (correctly, we can now see) reasoned that even if we remove the taliban it is unlikely the country's woes will be fixed in any way. and while i honored and respected her hesitation, i told her there is no way american culture will allow for a non-military response. and so we removed the taliban, installed a pro-western oil man to run the country, but with what results? afghanistan is as dangerous as ever.
i'm not saying i have the answers, or that i would have been satisfied with non-military options regarding afghanistan and 9/11. i am not even saying that a pro-western government in every part of the world would be a bad thing -- it'd probably be good, on the whole. but i still wish, as i did even then, that this country would consider in a serious manner a foreign diplomacy alternative that didn't have as its foundation american culture's fascination with violence, destruction, and revenge.
chris matthews, i hardly knew ye.
of course, matthews still licks the boots of congressional and administration republicans on a nightly basis -- ahem -- but he has it right, at least in this instance.
it wasn't just bush and his buddies who led us into iraq -- it was everyone who thought after 9/11 that we should just kill arabs indiscriminately, that our problems were best solved militarily, that the whole arab world deserved payback. it was the country music, it was our overmilitarized mindset, it was our anti-intellectualism.
oh, i know, i'm blaming america first. i don't blame america for our getting attacked -- we can lay that directly at the feet of fundamentalist islam and the idiots in charge of our security in the bush administration. but i damn sure blame america for the ways in which we've completely trashed any kind of productive response to 9/11.
two days after 9/11 i taught a regularly-scheduled course in american culture at a private school here in DC to a young japanese woman. we were talking about the attacks and our possible military intervention in afghanistan. my student was against attacking afghanistan, since she (correctly, we can now see) reasoned that even if we remove the taliban it is unlikely the country's woes will be fixed in any way. and while i honored and respected her hesitation, i told her there is no way american culture will allow for a non-military response. and so we removed the taliban, installed a pro-western oil man to run the country, but with what results? afghanistan is as dangerous as ever.
i'm not saying i have the answers, or that i would have been satisfied with non-military options regarding afghanistan and 9/11. i am not even saying that a pro-western government in every part of the world would be a bad thing -- it'd probably be good, on the whole. but i still wish, as i did even then, that this country would consider in a serious manner a foreign diplomacy alternative that didn't have as its foundation american culture's fascination with violence, destruction, and revenge.
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