My post doesn't exactly follow this thread's content, but since it'd have the same title, I'll post here. <center>"American Ignorance"</center> Why is the American public, as a whole, less keen on 'world' issues than, say, the rest of the world. Sure, we may have more knowledge than a child in an pygmy tribe but we have every source of media available while the pygmy has his elders. Ask your best European-descended friend where Kabul is. Don't be too surprised if they say Iraq. Ask them why Kashmir could have the biggest impact on our lives. Once again, don't be surprised if they say it'll determine the coming year's fashion. Ask them who Saddam is, they might say that terrorist in Iraq or Osama's buddy. That might be their closest answer that'll be correct, he is from Iraq and he did terrorize the rebelling Kurds in the north. Ask him what why the Palestinians and Israelis are feuding. Are they fighting over a 'rock'? Again, show no surprise. Tell someone you are a follower of Judaism or Islam, are they going to know you are a Jew or Muslim? This ignorance has many faults. The school plays the biggest role. History is majorially taught from the viewpoint of a textbook company. This company will make their book appealing by leaving out the 'boring' stuff and uneuropean sectons. Afganistan might be mentioned if the book goes into great detail of European imperailism. Face it, we were taught about the leaning tower of Pisa before if ever learning what/where the wailing wall/Mecca was. To some, Mecca is just a clothing brand. I would like to say there is positive geography inforcement, but then again some learned the <b>name</b> of a country by the US heading in for war. <center>"My Solution"</center> My solution is my ideology and isn't required to be adopted by any one. If you don't like it, make a better solution. In High School there MUST be mandatory Geographic History. They need to learn of the non-European cultures: their lands, their past achievements and faults, and their society. If one knows their stuff, give them a National World History exam and they have to get over a 90%. Think of the exam as an AP test except for high school classes. Feel free to critic this post. One only becomes smarter through criticism.
In the beating a dead horse argument... there still is no link between Al Qaeda and Saddam for 9/11 among the other exaggerations and stretching of the truth the Bush adminstration continues about Gulf War 2. Bush Speech Overstated Iraq Report Hussein-Al Qaeda Link Wasn't Definite http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/articles/A19822-2003Jun21.html?nav=hptop_tb By Walter Pincus Washington Post Staff Writer Sunday, June 22, 2003; Page A01 In a nationally televised address last October in which he sought to rally congressional support for a resolution authorizing war against Iraq, President Bush declared that the government of Saddam Hussein posed an immediate threat to the United States by outlining what he said was evidence pointing to its ongoing ties with al Qaeda. A still-classified national intelligence report circulating within the Bush administration at the time, however, portrayed a far less clear picture about the link between Iraq and al Qaeda than the one presented by the president, according to U.S. intelligence analysts and congressional sources who have read the report. The National Intelligence Estimate on Iraq, which represented the consensus of the U.S. intelligence community, contained cautionary language about Iraq's connections with al Qaeda and warnings about the reliability of conflicting reports by Iraqi defectors and captured al Qaeda members about the ties, the sources said. "There has always been an internal argument within the intelligence community about the connections between Saddam Hussein and al Qaeda," said a senior intelligence official, who like others interviewed for this article spoke on condition of anonymity. "The NIE had alternative views." Similar questions have been raised about Bush's statement in his State of the Union address last January that the British had reported Iraq was attempting to buy uranium in Africa, which the president used to back up his assertion that Iraq had a reconstituted nuclear weapons program. In that case, senior U.S. officials said, the CIA 10 months earlier sent a former senior American diplomat to visit Niger who reported that country's officials said they had not made any agreement to aid the sale of uranium to Iraq and indicated documents alleging that were forged. Details of that CIA Niger inquiry were not shared the White House, although the agency succeeded in deleting that allegation from other administration statements. Bush, in his speech in Cincinnati on Oct. 7, made his case that Iraq had ties with al Qaeda, by mentioning several items such as high-level contacts that "go back a decade." He said "we've learned" that Iraq trained al Qaeda members "in bomb-making and poisons and deadly gases." Although the president offered essentially circumstantial evidence, his remarks contained none of the caveats about the reliability of this information as contained in the national intelligence document, sources said. The presidential address crystallized the assertion that had been made by senior administration officials for months that the combination of Iraq's chemical and biological weapons and a terrorist organization, such as al Qaeda, committed to attacking the United States posed a grave and imminent threat. Within four days, the House and Senate overwhelmingly endorsed a resolution granting the president authority to go to war. The handling of intelligence on Iraq's banned weapons programs and its links to al Qaeda has come under increased scrutiny on Capitol Hill, with some leading Democrats charging that the administration exaggerated the case against Hussein by publicizing intelligence that supported its policy and keeping contradictory information under wraps. The House intelligence committee opened a closed-door review into the matter last week; its Senate counterpart is planning similar hearings. The Senate Armed Services Committee is also investigating the issue. Bush has defended his handling of intelligence before the war, calling his critics "revisionist historians." "The intelligence services of many nations concluded that he had illegal weapons, and the regime refused to provide evidence they had been destroyed," Bush said in his weekly radio address yesterday. He vowed to search for "the true extent of Saddam Hussein's weapons programs, no matter how long it takes." Questions about the reliability of the intelligence that Bush cited in his Cincinnati address were raised shortly after the speech by ranking Democrats on the Senate intelligence and armed services panel. They pressed the CIA to declassify more of the 90-page National Intelligence Estimate than a 28-page "white paper" on Iraq distributed on Capitol Hill on Oct. 4. In one of the more notable statements made by the president, Bush said that "Iraq could decide on any given day to provide a biological or chemical weapon to a terrorist or individual terrorists," and added: "Alliance with terrorists could allow the Iraqi regime to attack America without leaving any fingerprints." Bush did not indicate that the consensus of U.S. intelligence analysts was that Hussein would launch a terrorist attack against the United States only if he thought he could not stop the United States from invading Iraq. The intelligence report had said that the Iraqi president might decide to give chemical or biological agents to terrorists, such as al Qaeda, for use against the United States only as a "last chance to exact vengeance by taking a large number of victims with him." And it said this would be an "extreme step" by Hussein. These conclusions in the report were contained in a letter CIA Director George J. Tenet sent to Sen. Bob Graham (D-Fla.), then the chairman of the Senate intelligence panel, the day of Bush's speech. While Bush also spoke of Iraq and al Qaeda having had "high-level contacts that go back a decade," the president did not say -- as the classified intelligence report asserted -- that the contacts occurred in the early 1990s, when Osama bin Laden, the al Qaeda leader, was living in Sudan and his organization was in its infancy. At the time, the report said, bin Laden and Hussein were united primarily by their common hostility to the Saudi Arabian monarchy, according to sources. Bush also did not refer to the report's conclusion that those early contacts had not led to any known continuing high-level relationships between the Iraqi government and al Qaeda, the sources said. The president said some al Qaeda leaders had fled Afghanistan to Iraq and referred to one "very senior al Qaeda leader who received medical treatment in Baghdad this year." It was a reference to Abu Mussab Zarqawi, a Jordanian. U.S. intelligence already had concluded that Zarqawi was not an al Qaeda member but the leader of an unaffiliated terrorist group who occasionally associated with al Qaeda adherents, the sources said. As for Bush's claim that Iraq had trained al Qaeda members in bomb-making and use of poisons and deadly gases, sources with knowledge of the classified intelligence estimate said the report's conclusion was that this had not been satisfactorily confirmed. "We've learned," Bush said in his speech, "that Iraq has trained al Qaeda members in bomb-making and poisons and deadly gases." But the president did not mention that when national security adviser Condoleezza Rice had referred the previous month to such training, she had said the source was al Qaeda captives. The CIA briefed congressional committees about the National Intelligence Estimate but did not deliver the classified version until the evening of Oct. 1, just before a Senate intelligence committee hearing the next day, congressional sources said. At that closed-door session, several senators raised questions about qualifying statements made in the report, which was circulated only among senior national security officials. On Oct. 4, three days before the president's speech, at the urging of members of Congress, the CIA released its declassified excerpts from the intelligence report as a "white paper" on Iraq's weapons programs and al Qaeda links. The members wanted a public document to which they could refer during floor debates on the Iraq war resolution. The white paper did contain passages that hinted at the intelligence community's lack of certitude about Iraq's weapons programs and al Qaeda ties, but it omitted some qualifiers contained in the classified version. It also did not include qualifiers made at the Oct. 2 hearing by an unidentified senior intelligence official who, during his testimony, challenged some of the administration's public statements on Iraq. "Senator Graham felt that they declassified only things that supported their position and left classified what did not support that policy," said Bob Filippone, Graham's deputy chief of staff. Graham, now a candidate for the Democratic presidential nomination, opposed the war resolution. When the white paper appeared, Graham and Sen. Carl M. Levin (D-Mich.), an intelligence panel member and at that time chairman of the Armed Services Committee, asked to have additional portions of the intelligence estimate as well as portions of the testimony at the Oct. 2 hearing made public. On the day of Bush's speech, Tenet sent a letter to Graham with some of the additional information. The letter drew attention because it seemed to contradict Bush's statements that Hussein would give weapons to al Qaeda. Tenet released a statement on Oct. 8 that said, "There is no inconsistency between our view of Saddam's growing threat and the view as expressed by the president in his speech." He went on to say, however, that the chance that the Iraqi leader would turn weapons over to al Qaeda was "low, in part because it would constitute an admission that he possesses" weapons of mass destruction. On Oct. 9, the CIA sent a letter to Graham and Levin informing them that no additional portions of the intelligence report would be made public. © 2003 The Washington Post Company
Largely alone as in a 50 country coalition. Yep, that sure is 'largely alone.' None of these were unique to the US. The 'world' practiced each of these as well, and in many places still do. Don't remember reading about a big 'world opinion' poll on whether or not we should use nukes in Japan. Oh right, there wasn't one since the whole thing was a secret before it happened. Yep, the rest of the world sure does think that's funny. Oh except for all those Muslims out there that STILL have prohibition! Again it is simply misinformation to say the US was alone against world opinion in their decision to become militarily involved in Vietnam. The Domino Principle was accepted principle by many of our allies, including West Germany (West Germany as opposed to Germany because the Communists had East Germany) and France. Protecting French interests, I might add, were the primary reasons for our involvement. Strange that you think they opposed that. They didn't need the internet. They could walk outside and see the Jewish shops being smashed. They stars they were forced to wear on their clothes. The Jews losing their jobs and homes and money. And finally the Jews being shipped out in cattle cars. I think its a damn bit easier to may a mistake when discussing whether or not there is WMD in Iraq than to ignore what is right in front of your face. It seems your assumption is that a country that has made a mistake cannot critique, nor take action, against any other country/culture. I find that to be laughable, for if we actually used that to guide policy we would NOT have one at all. And it seems a bit odd to lambast the US populace for 'following the majority' while using the 'majority of world opinion' as your justification! Quite a circle there. Not saying the American populace has no room to improve. That is obvious, and I agree that no system is perfect. But I believe our system IS the best out there. If we had less worldwide responsibility we would certainly be able to dump more into education, but woudld the world really be a safer place? I don't think so. Who are we to point fingers? Well, we are the only country to put a man on the moon. We are the country that invented the internet on which you are reading this forum. We are a country that often acts in contradiction with 'world opinion' to the benefit of those starving (Ethiopia - 80s), those being exterminated (Kosovo & Bosnia), and those being overrun by rowdy neighbors (Persian Gulf 1). Not a bad box score IMO.
Sorry to interrupt, but Hayes, it is good to see that you are back! [size=1/2]Although you may have never left in the first place, just posting in this forum but not the hangout...[/size]
What would a world dominated by the Chinese, by a Franco-German-dominated European Union aligned with Russia, or by the United Nations look like? "Let's go down the list here. Let's use the Iraq crisis as an example. Or let's use the Balkans in the 1990s. In these cases, removing a terrible oppressive dictator was the primary aim—and remember, Saddam Hussein is responsible, directly or indirectly, for killing two to four times as many people as Slobodan Milosevic. The Europeans claimed that they could handle the whole problem in the Balkans at the end of the Cold War. They wound up calling upon us. It took the United States to get rid of Saddam Hussein. I think a world operated by the French, the Germans, and the Russians would have a kind of realpolitik that is more of the seventeenth century than the twentieth century. It would be so cold-blooded, and yet it would be dressed up with self-righteous moral statements, like the "world community" and "every country is sovereign." The result would be that some horrible dictators would flourish. And remember, Russia is not really a democracy. Germany has never really exhibited much wisdom in foreign affairs. If you look at how the French have operated in sub-Saharan Africa, how they operated supporting the Serbs in the Balkans, you will see that despite all the statements, their actual operations on the ground in many parts of the world have been, by any moral standards, worse than ours. And the problem I have with the United Nations is that it can only make decisions on broad consensus. And it's like any bureaucracy: the more people that are involved, the more mediocre and diluted the decisions are. Tough decisions tend to be made by small groups of people willing to take risks. The European Union and the UN Security Council certainly aren't designed that way. If you look back, the UN Security Council didn't give its stamp of approval for Bosnia, for Kosovo, for almost anything in the post-World War II world, except for the Korean War and the first Gulf War."- Robert Kaplan
Then there's "american ignorance and lying" http://slate.msn.com/id/2084730/ Can Bush Be Both Ignorant and a Liar? Yes. There's no reason for Bush-bashers to choose between the two. By Timothy Noah Posted Monday, June 23, 2003, at 2:31 PM PT
I don't have an argument with all of your points just some. The 50 country coalition isn't reality. How many of those countries had troops involved? How many of those countries even gave money? Less than 20%. They just wanted their name's on the record as supporting the US. That's not a coalition in any real sense of the word. Your argument goes under the mistaken principle that the Holocaust started when Jews were forced to wear stars and had their shops taken, or were shuttled off to camps in cattle cars. The Holocaust began when disinformation started being spread about the Jewish population. It started when people like Henry Ford gave a free copy of the book 'The Jewish Peril' and his own anti-semitic book with every Ford car that a person bought. It started with bogus scientific studies about the differences in races and brain capacities. It started with propoganda about the Jews running this, and ruining that. By the time shops were smashed and stars were forced to be worn, it was too late.
Hey Manny. Thanks. I disagree. For a comparison lets use the 'coalition' from the first Gulf War. Keep in mind that even MacBeth agrees with the legitimacy of GW1. There was a large coalition. Did all those in the coalition commit troops? No. Did all of the members of the coalition give money? No. Did Egypt get some debt forgiveness for their participation? Yes. Was Syria told we would wipe the slate clean of their past transgressions for their support? Yes. Tell me please how THAT coalition was any more legitimate. Please explain how Entrea's goverment's opinion is worth less than France's. What you'll find is that all of the normal points you make about 'world opinion' contradict your basic attack on the legitimacy of the 'Coalition of the Willing.' It was and is just as legitimate as any other recognized multilateral action. It is in every facet a coalition in the 'real sense of the word.' Uh, no. My argument says the German populace has much more culpability in the 'Final Solution' than Americans do in deciding whether or not there are WMDs in Iraq. It was right in front of them. Iraq is not right in front of Joe Q. Public. The 'Final Solution' did not start until '42, so to remove culpability from the Germans is just plain historically incorrect. That does not mean the Germans held ALL the culpability. For instance, many holocaust theorists are now concerntrating not on the Nazis, but on those who stood aside while genocide was committed. In the end I'm not really sure what you're disagreeing with, or why. Bur we do rock. I'm not really sorry if that peeves some people in some other country. If most of the public doesn't have the time to spend studying where every country in the world is, I don't think that is armageddon. We elected and appoint people to actually control policy. If Joe Q thinks Iraq was connected to Al Queda, who cares. Iraq has conclusively been shown to have provided training and money for terrorism. All terrorists are enemies and so are lumped together. That conclusion does not seem incredible to me. Generally they spend their time learning to be a better programmer or real estate agent or nurse or garbage man, not studying international relations and geography so that they can point to Kabul on a map when Jeopardy starts at 8pm.
Great clarifications! Thanks and I'm so relieved for this final conclusion although I sometimes watch Frasier instead.
Ask them if Blue bell is the best ice Cream in the Country? Ask them where the astrodome is. . . and if reliant Stadium is the same thing. Ask them who Sheila Jackson Lee is? Ask them why black folx have a problem with Clarence Thomas? Ask them about Roe V Wade? Ask them about the difference between the Soiux and the Comanches My point is. . . . What u know. . is what affects you what is important to you To most americans. . .while YOU and the ENLIGHTENED may think the lowlies should know this stuff . . .the lowlies don't give a d*mn about it. There is no good .. . There is no best . . .there is only different Rocket River
The reason that most American's do not know European history etc, is that we are so far removed from it. In Europe, many countries are only a few miles apart, and thus people deal with them quite a bit. In the USA, we have Canada and Mexico on our borders, and Canada is really USA-light. While Mexico is still struggling with 3rd world status. The average US citizen is busy trying to live the American dream, whatever that is to each one of us, we are not worrying about Yugoslavia, or the United Arab Emiretes, unless it has a direct effect on us. While it seems the rest of the world is constantly worrying about us...but whenever war breaks out, who does the rest of the world come to for protection? Yep...the USA....we are the best, and we know it. DD
Well in the first coalition not every country fought, but many did, there was truly a very multi-national force involved here it was Spain, Poland, England and AUstralia. That's a far less percentage than in the GW1 coalition. I agree that the Germans don't hold all the culpability but do hold most of it. My argument was that it had originally been printed as if one day it was fine and the next day Jewish business were being destroyed while Jewish people were being shipped off to the camps. The truth is that gradually more and more restrictions were placed on them, and it was very subtle with many people buyint into the propaganda against them. I'm saying that everyone shares the blame.
Could you explain what you understand as the "Final Solution" and in what sense that affects the historical culpability of the Germans? Thanks. I am asking because deportation of jews started long before 1942.
Originally Germany was not planning to outright exterminate the Jews. They (by 'they' I guess I mean the Nazi hierarchy) wanted to get rid of them but not in the form it finally took. After much effort to do this with little success the 'Final Solution' (extermination camps) was hatched. It affects Germans moral culpability because the 'holocaust' does not refer to deportation or wearing stars of david or getting their money and property confiscated or shops smashed. It refers to the extermination camps. Germans had plenty of time (late 20s - '42) to stop the madness and didn't. Therefore to say they didnt know until it was too late does not make sense to me. Overall this hits on a theme I consistently advocate in many of these discussions, which is that genocide is NOT only the story of the criminal and the victim, but of those who say 'its none of our business' or 'we shouldn't be involved.' Many ships loaded with Jews came to American shores, for instance, and were turned back to Germany, where many of those Jews met their end. For that we also have some culpability in what became the 'Final Solution.'
You are just arbitrarily drawing lines. Is there a particular threshold that must be reached for a coalition to meet the 'real sense of the word?' How many countries have to participate? How do you draw the lines? If the threshold is 45 and a 'coalition' has 44 is it illegitimate? Why is percentage of combat participation important? If a country sends ten troops instead of 10,000 do we say they just didn't participate in the coalition? And again, why is there more moral force when France objects than when Entrea supports? It really is just a matter of wanting to say 'No, that was not a legitimate coalition.' Factually, it was/is a coalition with many members and contributing partners. Many of those anti-coalition want to talk about how we should respect other countries opinions, but then completely disregard the stated support by countries with a flurry of caveats: 'oh, they didn't commit troops,' 'didn't commit ENOUGH troops,' 'they did it to get the US's favor,' etc etc. These exact things can be said about the Gulf War 1 coalition, as I've pointed out.
Many jews were killed before 1942 already, it's not like no jews were killed before 1942 and just then, because the term "Endlösung" (final solution) was coined, the killings began. Many Nazis, including Hitler, wanted to "exterminate" the Jews long before, in fact, you can find many of Hitler's speeches and also parts of his infamous book where he describes this plan already long, long before 1942. I agree with the general idea, though, that not preventing evil can amount to being practically as bad as doing evil. However, you also need to take into consideration that trying to prevent evil can make evil turn against you and it is hard to judge how much one can blame someone for not daring to help because of that. There is probably no general answer to this, but it depends on the individual circumstances.
