A majority of Canadians believe U.S. foreign policy was one of the root causes that led to the Sept. 11, 2001 attacks, and Quebecers are quicker to criticize the U.S. administration for its international actions than other Canadians, a recent poll suggests.
Second, our cousins across the pond are also reaching the conclusion that the best way to avoid terrorist attacks is...distance themselves from the United States.
MOST people believe that the Blair Government’s foreign policy has increased significantly the risk of terrorist attacks and now want Britain to distance itself from America and set a timetable for withdrawal from Iraq, according to a poll for The Times.
Iranian nukes, Saddam Hussein's chemical weapons? Never heard of 'em. It's those damn yanks.
Well, polls are nonsense and all that, but I have no doubt we're losing the battle for hearts and minds and we're losing it big-time. That's because we're the safe devil. The prospect of a nuclear-armed Mullah with a Seventh-Century mentality is really too much to bear. Don't think about it. Attack that darned Bush, those darned Republicans, those darned Americans! Nobody will lock you up for that and maybe you'll escape the next terrorist attack after all.
24 comments:
david:
I had this argument re the Civil War with a European. Both Great Britain and France helped the Confderates. They ran the blockades to bring them supplies and the Brits threatened war against the US after the US boarded a British ship and captured a couple of spies.
The South had an aristocracy and cotten, both of which meant something to the Europeans. But it was more than that, it was the desire by the European powers at the time to see America humbled. They wanted to see the Republic fail. In truth the Russians were the least judgmental of the lot.
I have read those newspapers Skook talks about and they were indeed hoping to the United States get what she had coming to her. They looked down their noses at Lincoln and made fun of his speech, his mannerisms... everything.
Today the European left pats itself on the back, because after all they did not have slaves...well they did not need them, their Confederate friends had them.
The truth is the most supportive people in England were the poorest, the working people who had somehow what liberty and a lack of it was really all about.
As for MHA's contention, this is true to some extent. Especially when people are safely sitting at home talking to the polster on the phone.
It is not unlike the Centanni and Wiig ordeal, after which there were people ready and willing to pass judgment on those men for what they did and what they said etc. People like to think they are better than other people. Especially when the moral preening cost them nothing.
I also think it is the times we live in. That is what makes the hearts and minds so impossible to win.
For instance, what if the United States said that we are going to change policy and from this day forward we will not use our military in foreign places nor will we challenge any Islamist state and what is more Israel is on its own.
Fair enough.
So the genocide in Darfur goes on. Israel's enemies attack her and she fights for her survival without us. The North Koreans come over the DMZ. Iran invades Iraq and so on. When we sit back and do nothing in the midst of all that will these same people thank us?
No. Tony Blair said something once which is quite true. We expect America to deal with all the problems of the world and then complain about the way she does it.
BTW, when Great Britain threatened war against the United States, the invasion would have come from Canada. That is where the Brits were sending more troops.
The revenge of the Loyalists. Remember them? Just think at the time of the Civil War, the Revolution was less than a century in the past.
First of all, this is a poll commissioned by academics that allows respondents to choose from a list of "root causes", and everyone is taught nowadays that there are many causes needed to explain events - i.e. you are supposed to defer to "complexity" and the experts. So people choose many causes and then this somehow gives the pollsters the right to claim a majority of Candians blame US foreign policy. Well, don't a majority of people here think Clinton's foreign policy was a contributing factor to 9/11 if not a "root cause"?
Second, I think Skook is too pessimistic. Yes, a majority of people live under fantasy ideologies that seek to criminalize war, among other things. But this has been the reigning orthodoxy since 1945 if not 1918 and is not all about a refusal to face up to Islam. In fact, every day I see more and more people waking up to the reality of the Jihadist threat, and most of us knew *nothing* about Islam pre-9/11. Canadian and British papers are now frequently host to letters that are quite alive to the threat.
Still, it's true that fantasy ideologies rule because our culture - European, Canadian, and American - is Gnostic, in varying degrees. However, reality has a way of biting through fantasy when it must. I really don't think when push comes to shove that a majority of westerners will endlessly appease rather than fight. I could be wrong, I am not resting comfortably, but I have not lost hope. The idea that America is all alone, that it is the only true light in the world, is itself reminiscent of certain gnostic modes of thought.
There were many Confederate agents in British North American towns during the civil war, scheming in various ways. The people did not always accomodate them if a few stories in the back of my mind are any indication - but I'm willing to bet that Montreal was among the most friendly to the rebels (not unlike today!)
Wars are about power but they are easier to sell to the morons who will fight them if you tell them they are about morality.
-another example of gnostic thinking. Wars are about differences over the preferred order that should exist and rule parties in conflict. A desire for such and such an order is not simply a desire for power. Now it's true that some combattants always think it's just about power, but they fool themsleves if they dream of becoming supermen, replacing the gods.
A healthy desire for a healthy order entails a good dose of moral commitment. Anyone who thinks armies only march for loot and lust doesn't fully understand men and what unites them. Nor, for that matter, can "power" explain why complete strangers with nicknames spend so much time arguing over the internet.
Our efforts are undertaken by us because no other nation has the reach and the capability or the desire. It is us or no one at all.
-i think western Europe hasn't yet decayed so much that it couldn't field a significant military in fairly short order if they put theirs minds to it. And they can certainly change their immigration policies and tolerance for Jihadists if they wake up. Perhaps an Iranian nuke will make the difference.
The Montreal of the 1860s had a much different ethnic composition then. - indeed; i believe it was still a majority anglophone city, as it was for most of the 19thC. before industrialization.
There was no doubt fear of the northern army and fenians in the BNA colonies, but I think that cut both ways in terms of encouraging people to support the Confederates, or not, as did commercial interests.
Coisty
"Wars are about power but they are easier to sell to the morons who will fight them if you tell them they are about morality."
Excuse my sensitivity, but hope you are not suffering from lack of oxygen sitting up there in your little intellectual tower. It is morons who gave you the freedom for your dalliance.
I'd be surprised if more than 5% of canadians believe the US got what it deserved on 9/11. Let's not exaggerate the anti-Americanism in Canadian society.
-there's a larger percentage of people in all societies who don't know which way is up. I believe a recent poll suggested 37% of Americans believe 9/11 was a government conspiracy... which suggests both sane and insane Americans have little respect for OBL and his professions.
On the larger point, Coisty, I'm not saying the lust for power is not part of a proper explanation for war. But that lust is always contained within one vision of order or another. And it is the fact that humans rely on such visions that is of paramount importance. History is not a conspiracy, as the left like to believe, but rather a struggle for transcendence. Some seek transcendence and order through money, some through ideas, but for most people it is a combination of both.
Either you are in it up to your neck or you aren't in the pool.
-an interesting idea; but if the water is cold some like to inch in slowly and some think it's easiest to dive right in. And you know, I still haven't figured out which method is better though I still tend to be an incher who has the motivation to eventually go all the way. Canada is now losing soldiers almost weekly in Afghanistan. Who's to say we will not get more used to fighting Jihadists than run away?
Now, how you will nurture this sentiment - a return to an older Canada in some ways - in the face of an overwhelmingly PC culture is a tall order. I don't see how it can be done
-well, it takes faith, faith and reason that the present-day PC culture is inherently a fantasy ideology out of touch with reality. If this is correct, then the "stronger" it will get, then the more disconnected from reality and in fact weaker it will also get, like the thousand year reich. I believe today's PC is an unstable station on a continuum between totalitarianism and nihilism. As long as we can maintain enough sense that there is something wrong with these two ends, the truth will come out.
Coisty:
There is something almost obscene about someone who sounds like Pat Buchanan calling a soldier a moron.
Really you are deliberately obnoxious and offensive. You go out of your way to insult people for no other reason than the enjoyment moral superiority seems to bring to you.
My father was in the US Navy, he was not a moron and you owe him and men and women like him an apology.
BTW, just because some people have no sense of morality and think that everything is about power does not mean they are right, it just means they are cynical and self serving. Cynical people tend to think everyone else is either as amoral as they are or they are stupid.
There are a lot of people who think that only idiots can believe in God. They believe that anyone who thinks there is anything greater than themselves is just a fool.
Well I believe in God and country. Sue me.
But as a practical matter, in Canada, how would it happen? Where would you start?
-A good place to start is by becoming a cultural warrior (for others to emulate) one who goes out to public meetings/lectures, who organizes demos, who confronts politicians, who blogs, who makes it his goal to belittle and desecrate what the reigning PC ideology holds dear. The PC say they stand for human rights - well then, when are they going to start getting upset about the condition of women and dhimmis under Islam, or the erosion of free speech at home? They say they are against violence - well then, how come they implicitly defend the growth of violent groups at home in the name of peace and tolerance? For example, this weekend, a group in Culver City, CA are burning an effigy of OBL outside a Wahabi Mosque and inviting the Muslim-Americans to join them in protesting terrorism. They know that we are at a point when we've got to force the issue, divide and conquer, and make people take sides. Then, once the conflict is better in view, so will be the transcendent truths that are at stake.
As Adam Katz says:
So, we are dealing with opposing religious faiths, or forms of the sacred [the sacred system of White Guilt vs. the forces of western traditions and modernity] —even if White Guilt might best be classified as a Western heresy. This offers us distinctive advantages in analyzing the phenomenon and fighting back. As anyone who has ever tried knows, arguing with a member of the “Angry Left” (the Church—or Mosque?—of White Guilt) is as fruitless as arguing with a jihadist must be. What is called for, in both cases, is not the outrage or disappointment that might be appropriate in dealing with members of one’s own faith, but sustained desecration, aimed first of all at all those elements of these faiths we are least able to live with, but ultimately extending to what emerge as key elements of the system of blackmail rendering the White Guilt/Islamist axis parasitical on the West.
I will leave aside the particulars of what such desecrations might look like, especially since much of this must be determined by the inventiveness of “cultural warriors” on the ground. (A quick look at a blog like Little Green Footballs will provide a lot of ideas, though.)...
On a more philosophical note, I would add to your question about practical action, that there are two kinds of truth: pragmatic or pratical truths, and the more fundamental kind that most people don't want to hear about if it threatens their pragmatic truths. In other words, if the fundamental goal of human society is to maintain a form of order against its erosion, then most people don't want to hear analyses of how their order works in the most fundamental terms because once someone knows how to show how something really works, it's a sign that the system has reached a point where it is no longer going to work, because all human systems are systems of exchange and exchange depends on uncertainty, not certainty, about the value of means and ends. Rather, people prefer to hear pragmatic truths - the reigning ideology - the consensus about what the market is thinking.
Once a system has been successfully deconstructed under the pressure of the resentment and criticism (or the greed and fear) it generates for being a human and hence less than perfect system, the end for it is near.
So, if we can now marshall the intellectual resources to show how our PC culture works, as a pratical matter a lot of people are not going to want to hear what we have to say - and indeed the evidence is all around us. But if we feel there is very little pragmatic value left in the PC order, that it is getting crazier and crazier in order to maintain itself (once it may have had a point, say in days of racial segregation and wife beating, but now it's getting really tired and hysterically puritanical), then we have to deny that it has any more pragmatic truth, and we deny it in the name of some fundamental truth about freedom - e.g. in the name of our need, at this moment in time, to engage conflicts and fight for a new and freer order so that we need not live in fear of those clinging to the pragmatism of what has become a nihilist, tyrannical or imperialistic order.
To do this, we have to find the opportunities to show people that the emperor has no clothes and that he is becoming scared and lashing out and that, while you're not one to rock the boat it's time to realize that you, and many others, could soon be big losers under a system in which people can no longer put their reason and faith that said system can maintain peace, order, and an acceptable degree of freedom and equality. It's like still being in the stock market as the bubble bursts and all of a sudden you find yourself with nothing in which to put your reason and faith.
Terrye
Thanks, I was beginning to think I was alone in seeing the smug sanctimony of that comment.
No Luther, you weren't
I am sorry if I ruined the dialog, I just could not let that slide.
For example, this weekend, a group in Culver City, CA are burning an effigy of OBL outside a Wahabi Mosque and inviting the Muslim-Americans to join them in protesting terrorism. They know that we are at a point when we've got to force the issue, divide and conquer, and make people take sides. Then, once the conflict is better in view, so will be the transcendent truths that are at stake.
I worked down the street for three years post-9/11. Nice people in my Friday experiences. Maybe I'll get a last, well probably not last, meal in a box at Tito's Tacos and then walk up. Scratch that. Mom's making tacos for lunch. Maybe we'll go to Junior's or the In-N-Out Burger further west on Washington Blvd. after swinging by to see if the mosque is or, more likely, the out-of-towners are under siege. I'm gonna miss L.A. So much to see and do and nobody cares if you're a little, or even very, late.
luther:
Hey I am glad you spoke up.
Coisty should also learn a little mroe history before he shoots his mouth off. The British may have been officially neutral but that did not mean that they did not find ways to supply the Confederates and it is very true that they threatened a nation in the midst of civil war with another war. Briish and French ships most certainly did run those blackades, that is a fact.
It is something how cynical a guy like coisty can be when it comes to moron Americans, but his own history is something else entirely. Then he believes whatever he is told.
peter:
Well we had a civl war in which 600,000 people lost their lives, that really is a major disconnect. Add to that the fact that northern troops occupied the south until the late 1870's and the infamous Hayes compromise.
The British did have ties with the south, through commerce and culture and even some blood ties as well. And there was resentment of the United States government and the American people. Charles Dickens, one of my favortie authors, despised Americans.
I think it was the Trent Affair that brought about the possible declaration of war against the US by Britain. However, it seems that Europe looked upon us as two nations and were willing to help bring about the demise of one of them. After all what help there was, what support there was mostly went to the Confederates...except from the working people of Britain, including those in the mills with the most to lose. They supported the Union.
I do think however, that until after this war the US and Britain had some shakey relations...but it seems that once this was over the Brits began to finally see us as seperate and almost equal.
The South btw wrote its own Constitution, which was much like the one written a century before, except that it specifically protected slavery.
BYW, my grandmother's great grandfather died at the battle of Appomatax, the last battle of the Civil War. He was with the Alabama Volunteers. He left behind a wife and nine children, the oldest was 15.
Another thing that should be kept in mind is that quite aside from whichever side one thought morally superior, the British, in North America, had no choice but to fear the large Northern army. Once an army exists, it might be used. And Manifest Destiny and the Monroe Doctrine, an ideology with which I am not completely unsympathetic, was American policy. It is surely the case that there were Brits who might have favored the North against the South, if not for the fact that British lands in Canada were - and who could have known how seriously or rational was the fear? - threatened by a massive military build up the other side of the various semi-independent British colonies' borders.
More of a lover's quarrel. The North and the South and the estranged Brit's. We know much, but we do not know all, of the various motivations that enticed the British to support the South to the extent that it did. Simple jealousy toward the North might have inspired more than a few. Some may have seen the sun setting on the empire even at that early date and attempted to prevent that. The making of money may have motivated a few more. I find it odd that this is even being discussed. Fact is, is that the English speaking countries, each in their own time, will be the only ones fighting this war. It is we who live the dream, who have to defend it. No one else understands.
Peter:
Point being that if the Confederates had won, the Union would have been doomed and it seems that was all right with a lot of folks across the pond. At least then, now most of them can not believe that their ancestors might have ever had a soft spot for slave owners.
The South was not a union, it was a bunch of sovereign states held together by the Confederate government. That meant they did not work together well as a strong cohesive unit either. Georgia might help Alabama and it might not.
So yes, at first those counry boys and fine Generals who knew how to shoot were doing well against the cold hard Yankee clerks and farmers...but the Yankees had industry and people and tenacity.
And Lincoln.
And Peter:
The idea that slavery was not the motivating factor in the war is a modern notion. Go back and read some of the speeches given by the politicians of the time. To abolitionists in the North slavery was an abomination. To the South it was a manifestation of their independence. There was even talk of it at the time of the ratification of the Constitution, but it was too devisive to confront headline. The hope was that time would deal with it. George Washington said that he hoped slavery would become an anachronism and simply die out. He freed all his slaves on his death bed and arranged for them to be taken care of.
But then came cotton. So, yes the war had been about slaver...just like the rhetoric had been about slavery for 100 years.
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