Here’s what I saw when opening up Google Reader a few minutes ago:
That’s the McClatchy feed, and the stories are here and here.
Good Money After Bad
by $8 blue check mistermix| 121 Comments
This post is in: Foreign Affairs, War on Terror aka GSAVE®, Assholes
General Stuck
Since I am too fucking lazy to write something new on this obvious travesty of American imperialism, I will repost my comment from last thread. It is less than 5 minutes old, so should be good to go.
It is fairly amazing to me that good well scrubbed progressive betters are now complaining about the bad ass US of A launching butter instead of guns at our detractors. A few billion to win hearts and minds seems like a good idea to me. I agree with ceasing the droning of occupied dwellings based on half ass intelligence. Maybe it won’t make any difference, but the richest nation of earth could do worse ponying up what amounts to American pocket change to build a few schools and whatnot. But what do I know being an Obot.
As far as the stoning goes. Maybe building those new schools will allow some of these neanderthals to learn something better.
Davis X. Machina
Headline should read:
JWL
Bullshit.
There’s no such person as Saeed Shah. You made all this up.
kdaug
@Davis X. Machina: Close, but I think this is closer:
Davis X. Machina
The bad news is, Pakistan’s gov’t has some serious popular support and legitimacy issues. The really bad news is the hypothetical Pakinstan government that would have a 70%+ approval rating.
kdaug
@Davis X. Machina: Methinks there might be some fail-safes there, though, already in place. Our boys, the Pakistanis and the rest of the world know the risks – I wouldn’t be surprised to discover there’s some serious armament prepositioned and aimed at certain coordinates…
Brachiator
Corner Stone had posted a very useful CNN story about this in another thread, but this is very informative stuff, but maybe not in a good way.
Another story link below the foreign aid article indicates that there is little here that is about winning the hearts and minds of the people of Pakistan (Pakistan military moving to undercut Zardari over his close U.S. ties).
But this is money down a rathole for a lot of reasons. Pakistan is not a poor country, or it wouldn’t be if many in the government and the military did not make it into a kleptocracy, and if the ISI and other governmental institutions gave up its pointless political and military intrigues against India.
Some of the money appears to be earmarked to go to the tribal areas. But since the Pakistan government has no effective control over this region, there is no reason to believe that the money won’t end up being diverted to corrupt officials.
As to the other aid components, Zadari is a two-bit crook. He used to be called “Mr Ten Percent” because of his habit of taking a pinch out of every financial deal that the government approved.
I understand that the Obama Administration wants to pursue more of a butter not guns strategy, but they seem to be doing nothing but continuing past stupid policy from a different perspective. And once again, the State Department appears to be absolutely clueless with respect to what is going on internally in Pakistan.
Polish the Guillotines
Now this is a stoning we can believe in.
Sometimes — like now — I wish it would happen, Deep Impact style. I mean, we’ve got the black president for it and everything.
Ponder this: Dinosaurs ruled the Earth for almost 200 million years. We’ve only been around (in roughly our current incarnation) for less than a million, and we’ve fucked things up nicely.
(+1 and climbing)
Chad N Freude
How very biblical. If you scroll down the adultery story, you come to this:
This is our custom. Our tradition. Cue Zero Mostel.
Keith G
So mistermix what is your point? Are you implying a relationship?
I note in my local news, a twenty something African American male has been charged with sexual assault on his infant step daughter. What does that imply about the worth or stability of our society?
El Cid
There may be many reasons to announce an aid package to Pakistan. That this may be to ‘win the hearts and minds’ of the ordinary Pakistani is simply ludicrous and should be no part of any sane discussion of issues. It’s absurd.
kommrade reproductive vigor
Emergency Squawking Point Update Alert:
Substitute “Mooslim Terrist” for “Welfare Queens” in Economic Policy scripts #1 – 238.
/fReichtard.
slag
Darn. When I saw the title I thought you all had finally given to my demands for a midterms Act Blue page. Disappointed. On so many levels.
Davis X. Machina
Some day I’m going to finish my musical — can’t say ‘musical comedy’ musical tragedy? — about 1947 and the end of British India.
The only problem is, I’m stuck at this big scene where everyone has to move, and my main character, a very pious and observant Muslim milkman, starts to sing “Partition! Partition!”, and then Jerry Bock’s and Sheldon Harnick’s lawyers come in, and oy….
gypsy howell
Gotta bomb somewhere after the ‘drawdown” (hahahah) begins in Afghanistan next year. Think those two stories appearing in the same feed are a strange coincidence?
No, those horrible awful brown Pakistani people STONE loving couples to death! Just like Saddam would do, or the Iranians, or the… whoever it is we want to bomb this time. We’re being teed up with the old “hearts and minds” bullshit again, soon to be followed by the “we HADDA go in there.”
The military industrial complex must have a new shiny target in order to siphon money from the American public. Sorry Pakistan, looks like it’s you.
WereBear
@Chad N Freude: And yet people apparently still do it.
Puts quite a dent in the Conservative “Up the Penalties” Plan.
It’s like having a diet plan based on being hungry all the time. That doesn’t seem to work, either…
mistermix
@Keith G: My point the simple absurdity of plowing money into a region to “win hearts and minds” when stoning is considered a proper punishment for adultery there. I have no faith in our ability to win 14th century hearts and minds.
Keith
I am somewhat surprised that we aren’t sending them surplus electric chairs to go with the stingers and m16s we normally hand over.
General Stuck
@Brachiator:
Then, what would you suggest? It is not a huge sum of money and no doubt some or a lot of it would end up wasted or stolen by corrupt officials. But sometimes it is the effort that counts. It does appear that the Obama administration is attempting to create a direct communication with the non militant people of tribal areas that doesn’t include bombs. Maybe that is naive and useless, but the basic idea isn’t a bad one. IMO.
Corner Stone
The idea that this is guns and butter and schools and water treatment and etc is one of the funnier things I’ve read.
This is a straight bribe. One of many in the past and one of many more to come.
The hilarity that it will be used to benefit infrastructure in the “tribal” areas is so funny I can’t think of a word for it.
Chad N Freude
@Davis X. Machina: I got there first. Sort of. @Chad N Freude:
General Stuck
@mistermix:
This sounds like a moral objection, which is okay. But our only interest in these lands is to possibly convince people we aren’t their enemies. That is it. Whether or not their social ills and practices offend us is not the issue here. But I agree it is rather far fetched, but why not try, if for no other reason to say we did try something that didn’t involve killing them.
Chad N Freude
@Corner Stone: How about “tragic”?
Kyle
@mistermix:
Decades of massive federal investment and subsidies and it still isn’t working too well in the American South.
Svensker
@General Stuck:
Just for the novelty alone!
Chad N Freude
We’re not going to win any hearts or minds by saying
“We find some of your customs and traditions loathsome, so we’re not going to give you any money.” Perhaps we could levy a requirement that none of the money we give them can be skimmed off to subsidize the killing of women. Sort of like no health care money can be used to pay for abortions.
Davis X. Machina
We should collaborate. For act I, I’ve got this Mungo-Jerry-ish number: ‘Jinnah summertime, when the weather is high….
robertdsc-PowerBook & 27 titles
Can we list this package as waste, fraud, & abuse under the Recovery.gov watchdog guidelines?
Corner Stone
As I’ve cited here before:
…
This is after untold billions, in an environment with a semi-functioning infrastructure pre 2003.
And now we’re supposed to believe they are going to air drop in under $2B into a place with little or no infrastructure? And zero national government control?
Shit, we just tossed our hands in the air on a sewage treatment plant in Iraq:
Say byebye
Keith G
@mistermix: Yeah, and no doubt that stoning someone is a discusting behavior.
Yet your statement:
implies that it is widespread and generally accepted. I see no such evidence of that, in fact the story indicates attempts of “saner minds” to intervene. Saying that Pakistan has a society that is highly diverse and very complex would be so obvious as to seem moronic.
I do not know if continued aid to Pakistan such as that mentioned is the article is wise, but I hope that the decision-making rubric is thorough and well thought out.
Cat Lady
@Polish the Guillotines:
Walking in Your Footsteps
Hey mighty brontosaurus
Don’t you have a lesson for us
You thought your rule would always last
There were no lessons in your past
You were built three stories high
They say you would not hurt a fly
If we explode the atom bomb
Would they say that we were dumb?
+4
Chad N Freude
@Corner Stone: Well, at least we have the choice of completing or abandoning. I suppose anticipation of the massive infrastructure improvement was one of the reasons that we were greeted with candy and flowers.
I really liked this bit:
Polish the Guillotines
@Cat Lady: I’ll + to that.
Chad N Freude
@Davis X. Machina: Lerner & Loewe, Bock & Harnick, Rodgers & Hart, Rodgers & Hammerstein, Machina & Freude.
BTW Bock & Harnick wrote “Tenderloin” which has a wonderful song about political corruption that contains the lines “Ev’rybody’s happy, that’s the way she stands, just as long as the money changes hands.” (I haven’t been able to find the lyrics to the song on the intertubes.) That neatly summarizes the financial relationship between the US and Iraq. And just about every other country whose hearts and minds we subsidize.
mikey
Dood. It’s South Asia. They are not Americans, nor are they Europeans. Trying to make them something they are not is a waste of time and money.
We’d like them to behave in a certain way. But we don’t pretend to try to understand what THEY believe, we don’t grant them the right to have their own culture. In Saudi they’ve built strong enough institutions to say “fuck you” to America and the West, but honestly, at what point are we going to engage in south asia with a little more understanding than Rudjard Kipling?
You hate what they are doing? Until you understand why they hate what YOU’RE doing, this will never be a productive conversation…
Have you ever been to south asia? Have you ever tried to see their world through their eyes? And if you have, do you think the diplomatic contacts are advancing some kind of cultural awareness? Or just imperialism? Because, until you can have a conversation where they are the arbiters of their own culture, you are nothing but an occupier. Can you understand that? Even a little bit?
mikey
That's Master of Accountancy to You, Pal (JMN)
@Chad N Freude:
I prefer the custom that everybody ought to have a maid.
yutsano
@mikey: This.
GregB
What if we made guns out of butter? Would that help?
Bill E Pilgrim
I agree with Mikey.
Better than sending the money there in the form of drones to kill people from high above, getting uncounted civilians in the process. That’s some good money after bad, if you ask me.
There aren’t “14th century minds” unless you’re speaking of people actually living in the 14th century. There are minds living now and influenced by fundamentalist religious fanatics. We know a little something about that ourselves, by the way.
Aid may not influence anyone to adhere to our view of things but it stands an infinitely better chance of doing so than raining down missiles on their villages, and it’s a lot less expensive per person affected by the way.
Brachiator
@General Stuck:
I am not sure that this is the case on the level of international politics. I just can’t think of too many examples where just the effort or a symbolic gesture has made a practical difference.
But I think that you make a good point when you note that Obama is trying something different. And as is indicated in the other story link I posted, the Obama Administration is trying to shore up the Pakistan civilian government. The only problem with this is that Zadari is weak, corrupt and lacks broad support. And the military is looking to take him down. If he is ultimately toppled, I don’t know who from the civilian side might rise up to attempt to take his place.
And the US probably doesn’t have much choice but to try this, as long as they are continuing operations in Afghanistan.
General Stuck
@mikey: Agree with this. I don’t care how other cultures do things, it is their business if they prefer stoning to alimony. And I don’t care if they cut each others heads off for fun. My only request is that they don’t hijack our airplanes and fly them into large buildings, or small ones. They can have that freebee on 9-11 for revenge and we can call it even steven, I don’t care. But no more.
If they want theocracies to govern them, fine by me. I would be cool pulling all our shit out of the mideast and central asia and make moonshine to power me and my car. If their mullahs get a nuke, we can just build better bomb shelters and such. We invented the bomb, it was naive to think one wouldn’t be used on us.
I don’t want to fight asians no more. Cracker head tea baggers, now that’s another question.
Bill E Pilgrim
@General Stuck: Just to be clear, I care a lot if people are stoning women. I just don’t think that withdrawing aid and bombing the fuck out of them is the way to influence change in tribal regions that practice this sort of thing.
Not saying you have to feel the way I do, to each his own, I just want to make it clear what I mean by agreeing with Mikey’s post.
PurpleGirl
@robertdsc-PowerBook & 27 titles: I would. It upsets me that we are prepared to give these people a whole bunch of money and yet we won’t help our own unemployed people. I heard the reasons for years, and I’m tired of the bribes to foreign officials. I want my tax money spent here on our own problems.
sherifffruitfly
Note that if we refused to give any money to any country where an atrocity happens, we wouldn’t give any money to any country, including our own.
Martin
I don’t see the problem here. Take away the national media and they’d be stoning people for adultery in several parts of the U.S. as well. Backwater U.S. is only more humane than backwater Pakistan because there are enough people here that will speak out against it, and feel safe enough to do so. Not much less shocking than what took place openly in the south pre-1964.
Brachiator
@mistermix:
But this would be like saying that Canada should cease trade with us because there are Americans who believe in creationism, and states which recently sought to pass stupidly draconian laws restricting a woman’s right to choose.
Pakistan is not just the tribal areas, and it is more complex than a society with a 14th century mindset.
And Americans in particular continually make mistakes in underestimating Pakistan. Bush/Cheney thought that Pervez Musharraf was the pliable head of a supplicant client state, but he played them like the rubes that they were.
kdaug
@sherifffruitfly:Note that if we refused to give any money to any country, period, we’d have a shitload more for ourselves.
matoko_chan
@General Stuck:
.guess what?
its not our bidness stuck.
if big white christian bwana had stayed the fuck out of MENA we’d all be a lot better off.
Did you know for example that Ibn Arabi and al-Ghazali pioneered Many Worlds theory four centuries before the troglodyte xians tried to burn Galileo?
Did you know that 5000 american kids DIED because that retarded WEC Bush was too stupid to know that when muslims are empowered to vote they vote for shariah?
We spent 1 cool trillion on a meaningless war that made the world LESS SAFE for Americans.
GTFO, white boi JAFI.
work in your own garden, and stay the fuck out of theirs.
Chad N Freude
@That’s Master of Accountancy to You, Pal (JMN): You’ve seen my home.
BR
OT: Wikileaks is apparently doing a big release tomorrow. Anyone know what’s up?
http://twitter.com/wikileaks/status/18785390278
mikey
@General Stuck:
See, here’s the thing. They’d like us to stop blowing up their houses and cars, killing their children and confusing their weddings with terror plots. If we’re going to genuinely find some kind of answer, it’s going to be one that considers that they might have a real culture too, and even if we don’t agree with it, we grant them the right to have it.
It’s kind of funny. We’ve been arguing with China about human rights for fifty years, but we never invaded them. Why? Oh, the fact that they were powerful probably had something to do with it.
Can you imagine a role for a powerful, rich nation that actually advanced rights, funded health and infrastructure instead of war, and supported governments that worked for regional peace rather than endless warfare? I can. But it isn’t us. It might be China, or Europe, or India/Brazil/Turkey, and it might never happen. But this is just madness….
mikey
matoko_chan
@Corner Stone: this is just Bush Doctrine 2.0.
Even after 5000 dead american soljahs and a trillion taxpayer dollars in blood and treasure the retards still don’t get that when muslims can vote, they vote for shariah.
Chad N Freude
@Brachiator: While I agree with paragraphs 2 and 3, I think
is nonsense, unless, of course, you equate denialist stupidity and making women’s lives difficult with killing people. Creationism isn’t a tradition of killing, nor is restricting women’s rights. The analogy is wrong.
Chad N Freude
@mikey:
Yeah, but they started it.
/snark
matoko_chan
@General Stuck:
but they had damn good reasons for that……reasons like Operation Ajax, the Tyrant Shah, propping dictators to fight a proxy war with the sovs on their turf, the ameri-euro holocaust guilt ridden partitioners of muslim lands, the enforcers and arms suppliers for Israeli genocide on the Palestinians…..
Do you know the tradition of Students Day in Iran?
It commemorates the day the Shahs goons murdered students and cracked skulls to clean up the Tehran University campus in advance of his buddy Nixon’s visit.
El Cid
@GregB: What if we made guns out of soap?
mikey
@Chad N Freude: But here in enlightened America we have a ‘tradition’ of denying women a right to make reproductive decisions, so they often make bad, unhealthy and unsanitary decisions and die hard and bloody. We force children to try to live under unrealistic abstinence rules and ruin their lives when they turn out to be human beings. We insist that people believe in a certain god, obey the word of a certain set of scriptures and lemme ask you – have you ever tried to get a job as an avowed atheist?
You all need to step back and think about what we actually ARE, not what you imagine us to be. The press isn’t going to help you, and neither is the rest of the world living in desperate fear of our unpredictable hatred. But all you have to do is travel to a place where Americans unleash their hatred and tribal fear, and you’ll begin to see that it’s nothing but two sides of the same fucking coin….
mikey
That's Master of Accountancy to You, Pal (JMN)
@yutsano: What happened to your capital?
matoko_chan
@mikey: like ive said to TNC many times…..control over our own bodies is a basic human right.
without that we are slaves.
Mark S.
@BR:
I don’t know, but I hope it involves Hiatt, Krauthammer, Will, and a herd of goats.
Yutsano
@That’s Master of Accountancy to You, Pal (JMN): Posting from work, now WP won’t let me correct it back. FYWP.
EDIT: Oh sure, NOW it will. Jeez. Maybe you intervened on my behalf with the WP gods or something.
Corner Stone
Speaking of Good Money after Bad, H/T Atrios for bringing the funny:
Pakistan’s Elite Pay Few Taxes, Widening Gap
That’s some Grade A Shit right there.
Chad N Freude
@mikey:
I’ve never been asked about my religious beliefs or lack thereof when applying for a job. (I’ve never tried to get a job with a religious organization.)
Yes, there is a lot of evil in American history and American civilization (for lack of a better word), and one could say that our incredible array of powerful, sophisticated weapons of “defense” supports the claim of American exceptionalism in a negative way, but making people miserable is not the same as executing them. If you want a comparable “tradition”, use lynching for the analogy.
ETA: I don’t want to be overly critical or insulting, but your comment seems a bit rant-like to me.
Chad N Freude
@Corner Stone: Sounds a bit like the US.
Corner Stone
Damn! No wonder our government loves Pakistan so freakin much. Their rulers are our kid sociopathic klepto brother:
…
Bill E Pilgrim
@mikey: I liked your first post without the lecture better.
@matoko_chan:
Are you serious with this?
mikey
Yeah, ok, Lynching works too. But I think you missed the point. When have Americans (or Brits, for that matter, or frenchmen) had people come into their lives and tell them all that they believe is suspect, that their sons have to be imprisoned and every now and then we’ll just accidentally kill some of their family because, frankly, we’re scared of them and we have more and more powerful weapons.
From where we sit, we don’t get it because we don’t have the CONTEXT to get it. I’m fortunate, I did a tour in vietnam and then spent a lot of years in foreign lands. Although, I’ve got to say, to this day I don’t consider myself fortunate for any of that. It just was, and it just needed to be. But that’s not the point here.
As long as we see everything in terms of ‘we’re right and they’re stupid peasants’ we don’t have a prayer of ‘fixing’ anything, even assuming something might be fixed. And if you think that the American viewpoint overseas is just that simple, you’re either lying or you just don’t know. Because that IS what we think we’re doing – Fixing the mud people. And they’ll fight us forever, as would you, as would I….
mikey
Chad N Freude
@mikey: Rereading your comment, a thought occurred to me (a rare event): Your use of the first person plural implies (says, actually) that the madness, barbarism, and general nastiness of a part of the American populace extends to the whole. This is clearly not true, and I suppose it’s also untrue of the Middle East.
KG
@General Stuck:
I’d say we’re half way there on that.
In all seriousness, I’m not exactly cool with cultures that think stoning people for having sex outside of marriage is a good thing. Really, I would just prefer we decide whether to shit or get off the pot when it comes to being an empire. If we’re not going to be an empire, then yeah, let’s pack it up and come home. If we’re going to be an empire, than let’s just say fuck it and drag them kicking and screaming into the 21st century.
Yutsano
@Chad N Freude: It’s easier to encapsulate a populace as a whole in order to create generalities about them. Then one can maintain a professional distance and abstraction in order to feel better about one’s position. If one gets into the texture of cultural and individual variation, then the more the abstraction becomes harder to maintain. We can’t analyze the Pakistanis as a monolithic structure just as we cannot do the same to Americans.
General Stuck
@matoko_chan:
No they don’t, any more than we had reason to do a lot of the shit we have done. You don’t get justice by hijacking a bunch of fucking airliners and plow them into buildings full of civilians. And don’t give me the shit that OBL did it to get even. He did it because he wants the world to be like him and his followers, to believe what they believe, or else die. He is no better than any other tin pot wannage king that does mass murder to further their messianic wonts.
Corner Stone
@KG:
I don’t think it’s even about Empire anymore, or at least not how I’ve understood the term to be defined.
It’s more like an expansion of the Global Kleptocracy.
Not really about nationalistic power, but a loose and interchangeable cabal of hyper-wealthy and powerful. Don’t the people in the Pakistan taxes story sound just like the very wealthy in the US, Russia, China, etc? I’d bet that anyone can join if they have the buy-in fee. Access to a scarce resource, or profitable renewable resource like a population that can be fleeced year after year.
If you control access to something like that then you’re protected to some more or less degree.
It’s probably why Saddam didn’t really believe we were going to invade Iraq, right up to the last minute.
Chad N Freude
@mikey: The Moors did something like this to the Spanish a while back.
I agree with idea that “we”*, like the British, the French, the Spanish, and the Belgians, see it as our duty to bring Western civilization, enlightenment, democracy, and prosperity to those who don’t have the smarts to do it on their own (and get a few natural resources as a side benefit). I just think you express it more angrily/shrilly than I would.
*Yes, it’s the first person plural. I know, I know, I’m a hypocrite.
General Stuck
@KG: I admit my sarcasm and snark were oblique in my comment. But seriously, did you really think I seriously don’t care about women getting stoned to death for whatever reason. geesh.
The rest of your point was the point I was making. Either engage all the fucking way or get out all together. But I would settle for people just living and let live without murdering one another for this or that reason. Possibly justified, or not.
Chad N Freude
@Yutsano: Generalization and abstraction are so much better at justifying acts of aggression and rationalizing plundering of natural resources than variation and nuance.
GregB
El Cid with the Virgil Starkwell reference. Score.
waldenpond
@General Stuck: First, the Pakistanis must work on improving the collection of their own taxes instead of taking ours?
via Atrios:
Those Wacky Pakistanis
Crazy what goes on in that country!!
But behind the opulence lurks a troubling fact. Very few of these households pay income tax. That is mostly because the politicians who make the rules are also the country’s richest citizens, and are skilled at finding ways to exempt themselves.
That would be a problem in any country. But in Pakistan, the lack of a workable tax system feeds something more menacing: a festering inequality in Pakistani society, where the wealth of its most powerful members is never redistributed or put to use for public good.
matoko_chan
@General Stuck: Nope.
OBL’s message was USA GTFO off the arabian peninsula.
Kinda backfired on him, dint it?
we just swarmed in there like mindless stupid angry bees and spent blood and treasure like the WEC retard spendthrift that dreamed this failsauce misadventure up.
and it just made more muslims hate us and resent us.
the correct response to “why do they hate us” is “why the fuck wouldn’t they?”
we turned all of MENA into a reaver factory because that dumbass Bush was too stupid to get that when muslims can vote, they will vote for more islam, not less.
gobsmackingly obvious to anyone with an IQ over room temperature.
Chad N Freude
All this talk of empire! We are not an empire. We do not seek to subjugate foreign peoples. We have a duty to enlighten those who are less advanced than we are.
General Stuck
@matoko_chan:
OBL is full of shit. period. And so are you for dropping this tripe here.
Chad N Freude
@matoko_chan: Democracy is democracy only when non-Muslims are elected. Otherwise, it is religious tyranny.
Brachiator
@Chad N Freude:
I take your point that the analogy is not a perfect fit, although it is not the case that anti-choice people simply make women’s live difficult. They put women’s lives at risk, and the worst of them sanction the killing of abortion doctors.
And when you get down to it, creationism is a pre-14th century mindset. But I stumbled in crafting my objection to the arrogance in the implication that Pakistan society is monolithically primitive.
General Stuck
@waldenpond: Hey, I have no illusions what Obama is doing will make a lot of difference on the ground in Pakistan. And I doubt he does either. This is a gesture, an effort to reach out with something other than drones killing civies by mistake. That is all it is.
matoko_chan
@Bill E Pilgrim: are you as braindead as bush?
yeah, Iraq is an islamic state with shariah in its constitution, religious political parties, and that declared a national holiday when american troops left its cities. The islamic jurisprudent elite still call the shots.
Its happening in Turkey too…..Turkey is evolving from a kemalist militaryjunta/dictatorship to an islamic republic like Iran. Post Musharraf, Islamic parties are on the rise in Pak, and when Mubarak goes the Muslim Brotherhood will be the biggest political party in the new government. Theres two reasons for this— in islamic culture there is no separation of church and state– the lawyers ARE the clergy, and vice versa. There are no secular lawyers, no secular universities, no substrate for secularism. The second reason is that muslims like Islam. It is why they are muslims.
KG
@General Stuck: sorry, my bullshit meter is all fucked up today. Glad we’ve got some common ground.
matoko_chan
@General Stuck:
/shrug
read it your bigself, General.
matoko_chan
You know what else Stuck?
Bush killed more americans than OBL did.
For nothing.
Cacti
@Chad N Freude:
Take up the White Man’s burden–
Send forth the best ye breed–
Go bind your sons to exile
To serve your captives’ need;
To wait in heavy harness,
On fluttered folk and wild–
Your new-caught, sullen peoples,
Half-devil and half-child.
General Stuck
@matoko_chan: When 9-11 happened, his reason was the standard trope over Palestine and our support for Israel and the fact the Saudi Royal family let us have troops on Saudi soil of the sacred ground of Mecca and Madina etc etc…../
The fact that Bush is a fool that gave him and the muslim world a much better excuse to hate and attack us with their bullshit adventure into Iraq and wholesale torture and permanent detention in Guantanamo and elsewhere around the world , came after 9-11.
OBL has stated many times that he and his followers goal is to create a Pan Arab Islamic State and then a world islamic state. That is his motivation. That and expression of Islamic power. All the other shit reasons are propaganda. Not unlike what we get from our neo cons and wingnut imperialists in gold ole Murrica.
Chad N Freude
@Cacti: We’re so damned erudite here! I can hardly wait for “Gunga Din – The Musical”.
ETA: Yes, I know, two different poems. I would hate to be thought to have krippled Kipling.
Bill E Pilgrim
@matoko_chan: Nice response.
I actually agree with most of what you wrote earlier but “when Muslims are empowered to vote they vote for sharia law” was idiotic.
Your second much more watered-down version (“they vote for more Islam, not less”) was less objectionable and closer to reality, but still too blanket a statement. In Iraq, to some degree that’s what happened, but Islam encompasses a huge population around the world.
Wrong.
Turkey as it stands now has a separation of church and state. You can’t let religion influence law. It may change, but that’s the system now. Other countries with Islamic cultures have the same, like Mali and others. To state that “Islamic culture” has no separation of church and state is not correct.
Other countries have a mixture, like Indonesia, Pakistan, and many others. In any case stating that “when Muslims are empowered to vote they vote for sharia law” as a blanket statement is moronic. In fact it sounded like something from RedState.com, that’s why I was sincerely asking if you were maybe snarking with it.
You really might try being less arrogant especially when getting so many things wrong.
Bill E Pilgrim
@matoko_chan:
Check this out for some background facts, this is just Wikipedia but it gets the basics right.
matoko_chan
[email protected]Bill E Pilgrim:
nope. it is not. you think shariah is stoning and hijab.
Ataturk forced occidentalism, just like Uncle Saddam.
my point is true….when muslims can vote, they vote for shariah.
dictators are the only way to prevent that.
WTF is Mali?
and who’s the moran now?
kdaug
@mikey: Excellent point. What’s more humane? 1.) Stoning a person for being unfaithful, 2.) Lynching a person for being black, or 3.) Burning a person at the stake for being a witch?
Whose hands have the most blood?
matoko_chan
@Bill E Pilgrim: all those countries had secularism IMPOSED by a dictator.
it is artificial.
and it is going away.
are you some retarded western culture chauvinist like that moran Bush?
;)
Bill E Pilgrim
@matoko_chan: I know very well what Sharia law is, and stating that Muslims always vote for it is false and uninformed.
Your having never heard of Mali, while not surprising, was not as impressive as you seem to think.
Bill E Pilgrim
Never mind. Enough of this. Ciao all.
matoko_chan
@General Stuck: no. muslims don’t believe in original sin. we are taught that mankind is not sinful, but forgetful. so all children are born muslim, in a sense, that they are already “saved”. Most muslims also believe that everyone will be muslim eventually. because we like being muslims. ;)
OBL’s rant is push back against colonialism, imperialism, missionariism, the whole Big White Christian Bwana schtick.
Just like the teatards want to turn back the clock 200 years, the salafis and wahhabis want to go back in time to when they ruled MENA.
Can’t happen.
Time travel to the past is impossible because of closedform timecurves.
heres my question….were 3000 lives worth 5000 lives and trillion dollars?
not to mention the 100000 muslim civilians that died when we turned their country into a warzone.
matoko_chan
@Bill E Pilgrim: i guess we shall see. less see what happens in Turkey, in Egypt, in Chad, in Somalia.
Like Iraq, when the dictator imposing secularism goes, the country becomes more islamic.
Most muslims LIKE shariah law.
what don’t you understand about that?
Yutsano
@Bill E Pilgrim: Ciao a tu mi amici. And trust me you were chasing a fool’s errand there.
matoko_chan
@mistermix:
you are a retard too.
in this country the religious right wants to make slaves of all women.
if we don’t have control over our own bodies we are slaves.
we lynched blacks and burned witches.
recently RIGHT HERE in this country 50 year-old men engaged in plural “spirit marriages” with 13 year old children and fathered children on them.
quit meddling and work in your own fucking garden Candide.
matoko_chan
@Yutsano:
yes, he is a fool. i agree.
;)
Bill E Pilgrim
@matoko_chan:
This is ridiculous, I have many Muslim friends who haven’t got the slightest interest in living under Sharia law.
There are huge Muslim populations in Europe for one thing, and if you’re one of those who believe that every single one of them or even a lot of them are trying to fight for sharia law in Europe then you’re listening either to the American right wingers or the Islamic extremists.
In fact, you seem a lot like a spoof of some Wingnut pretending to be Muslim, the more I read. Can’t be sure of that but who really cares.
Bill E Pilgrim
@Yutsano: Hi there.
trust me you were chasing a fool’s errand there.
Yes, I think I figured that out, and no offense taken.
Goodnight. Or good morning.
Resident Firebagger
If we wanted to win their hearts and minds, we could just stop programming the drones to rip through the Pakistani countryside.
Simple.
Yutsano
@Bill E Pilgrim: It was a caveat, not an insult. I think you are well aware of how that other one is. Here’s hoping you enjoy your café and your lundi.
Brachiator
@kdaug:
Is there a contest?
Yutsano
@Brachiator: He gives three different options, but of course there is no real choice. At the end of the day someone is dead.
Angry Space Cadet
Cashier: Welcome to Pakimart! How can I help you?
Bush: Um, yeah, I would like for you to cut diplomatic ties with the Taliban, let us use your airspace to bomb Afghanistan and move troops and supplies through your territory.
Cashier: That will be $9 billion in military aid and another $3.6 billion in economic aid over the remainder your administration.
Bush: Um ok.
Cashier: Thank you. Come again!
One administration later…
Cashier: Welcome to Pakimart! How can I help you?
Obama: Hi, I would like you to continue cooperating with us in the war in Afghanistan and keep those pesky Taliban insurgents that your military and intelligence services continue to aid in order to gain control of Afghanistan after we finally leave the country from gaining control of your nuclear arsenal.
Cashier: That will be another $7.5 Billion.
Obama: Um, is there anything cheaper?
Cashier: Well you could always withdraw.
Obama: Sigh, ok $7.5 billion it is.
Cashier: Thank you. Come again!
Yutsano
@Angry Space Cadet: I’ll have two from column A and two from column B…oh wait..that wasn’t the question huh?
befuggled
@matoko_chan: WTF is Mali? 90% Muslim is WTF Mali is.
Also to the south of Algeria.
Ramiah Ariya
@mistermix,
I am Indian and I just want to point out that I never heard of stonings in Pakistan prior to the partition or even recently. If your point is that the people are in 14th century, I think you are mistaken. Western Punjab and Sindh are relatively rich communities. The Pakistani areas had a tradition of sufism. What is going on now is an increasing radicalism – this is not a 14th century people – they are new fundamentalists, I would say similar to the fundamentalist Mormon communities. I don’t think you would call the Mormons 14th century would you?
Part of the reason for this radicalism, I suspect, has been the effect of the Taliban. The Taliban society was NOT the norm in India, Afghanistan or Pakistan even a few decades back.
matoko_chan
@Bill E Pilgrim: you know what?
we werent talking about Europe were we.
we were talking about how Bush spent 5000 lives in blood and a trillion in treasure trying to make a secular democracy in Iraq. Muslims in MENA like shariah. where there are secular states they ALL became secular by force, like with Saddam and Ataturk and Musharaff. Islamism is on the rise in MENA.
What don’t you understand about that? Every single secularized state in MENA had secularism imposed by force. And when the force is removed, they are returning to islamic culture.
,
In fact you seem more like some retarded western culture chauvinist, or maybe just a caricature of braindead white christian evangelism like Bush.
and sry, ive never heard of Mali.
matoko_chan
this too on Turkey.
Thank you Yasemin for your lengthy comment. I fully agree with you that darkness will never replace enlightenment…nor should it! It is just that I see democracy the expressed will of the Turkish people as enlightenment and Kemalist dogma which silences the voice of the Turkish people as darkness.
You have done an excellent job of memorizing Kemalist propaganda, but you need to do some critical analysis of this dogma. Remember the Turkish war hero Gen Kazim Karabekir said, “We won our independence, but lost our freedom through a single party regime.” when Ataturk took over.
Your whole defense of Kemalism boils down to your belief that Turkish people were/are ignorant and cannot elect the “correct” people to represent them. I think you are wrong. Turkish people have elected the AKP to govern the country, not the generals. If AKP doesn’t meet Turkish people’s expectations, they will be kicked out in the next election and replaced by some other party -that’s democracy and all Turks except hard-line Kemalists understand it very well. You should try to understand it, too.
You are saying, there were no empires when Ataturk took over. Well, there are still a lot of empires and kingdoms far more advanced than Republic of Turkey. It may surprise you to find out that England, Belgium, Sweden, Norway & Denmark are NOT republics but kingdoms, not despotic kingdoms, of course. People can get rid of the Kings & Queens through a peaceful referendum. On the other hand, Libya, Syria & Egypt are republics. Where would you rather live if you had a choice?
Ataturk changed the alphabet to cut off future generations of Turks from the 600-year heritage of the Ottoman empire and re-write history in line with his ego! You see you cannot read the massive Ottoman archives! There were other reasons, too.
Muslims are commanded to obey -not worship- legitimate authority in the interest of social order. In democracies, elected governments are legitimate authority, not generals armed to the teeth! You seem to think that the only choice in Turkey is Kemalism or Islamic teachings formed in the 6th century. That’s not right. The real options are despotic Kemalist dogma enforced by guns or democracy which is the free expression of the will of the people. I prefer democracy.
matoko_chan
this bears repeating……
Ataturk changed the alphabet to force Kemalist occidentalism on the people.
matoko_chan
Im pretty sick of people here sneering at “14th century” ideology.
You know nothing.
My Euro-friends were pretty amazed at YFZ and the mormon fundies’ chattel slavery of women and children. The polygs still have thriving communities here in colorado and the four corners region.
Do you know what one of my eurofriends favorite pastimes is?
Reading the Left-behind books out loud and rolling on the floor laughing at the american pre-trib fundie retards.
I have an Irish American lawyer friend that was reverted in part by the legal beauty of shariah law.
I thought Juicers were more intelligent than this.
Actually, you seem to believe in the intrinsic superiority of judeoxian culture, just like that WEC retard Bush, and that the small brown people are fools to reject our generous offer to “civilize” them.
matoko_chan
Bill E Pilgrim and Bush are isomorphic….Bush’s idiocy was that he thought once we had removed Saddam (who did oppress Islam like the good secular tyrant that we propped up against the Islamic Republic of Iran), that when Iraqis got to vote, they would naturally vote for Our Wunnerful Superior Judeoxian Democracy.
They voted for shariah.
Pilgrim thinks just like Bush, in crude ill formed constructs, based on his belief in the intrinsic “evil” of shariah.
Two retards.
Bill H
The “madness, barbarism, and general nastiness” is perpetrated by American leadership which is elected by a majority of the whole, and it is not protested by any meaningful number of the whole. They may say in polls that they are against it, but no meaningful number takes any action against it, including at the polls.
That’s harder to say of the Middle East, where the “madness, barbarism, and general nastiness” is perpetrated by self-appointed persons of religious fervor, and the populus is for the most part powerless to intervene.
matoko_chan
@Bill H:
no, its EXACTLY like the mormon polyg fundies here in the US that practice chattel slavery of women and children.
you need to stop thinking western culture is perfect.
i repeat!!!!!
when the Iraqis got to vote they voted for shariah.
what don’t you understand about that?
there are only 2 ways to to terraform a whole culture….occupation and reconstruction (like Japan post WWII) or genocide.
the Bush Doctrine and COIN are just recipes for expensive failsauce.
Svensker
@matoko_chan:
I would add reason #3, which is that the West has done a bang-up job of ridding the ME of secular leaders while at the same time pissing off huge hordes of ME-ers. I think that was the explicit Israeli plan to make it “impossible” to deal with those danged radicals. Not so sure it was explicit in the West — I think we just didn’t bother thinking about the consequences of what we were doing. But the result has been to drive Muslims to be less secular and more fundamentalist. Hoocoodanode?
BTW, has anyone done any studies on why the rise of Abrahamic fundamentalism in the last 50 years?
matoko_chan
@Svensker:
That was because we had White Jesus on our side.