Posts by Christiaan
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A small request: Russell/Craig, I apologise for being overly aggressive, but would you mind refraining from turning my "not much sympathy" statement into a "I wish they were dead" one? My point is the *potential* risk to informants is far outweighed by the need for the world to know that NATO is murdering thousands of people and keeping mum about it.
I'm not quoting this to justify the abuses and lies of international forces. But I think it's glib to demand an immediate exit and not consider the consequences.
Well I for one am not demanding this. The only people who have a right to this demand are the Afghan people.
I just wish liberals would stop getting sucked into believing these invasions and occupations are about anything other than global dominance by a group of powerful people. Yes there're some shitty places in the world but it's largely up to the people in those places to make them better and its up to the rest of the world to try and engage them positively in a peaceful manner. Travelling half way round the world to bomb shit up, murder people and take their shit is one of the primary reasons there are shitty places in the world to live in the first place.
What we learnt in the 1st and 2nd world wars is that if powerful states like the U.S. are allowed to continue into the future trying to dominate the rest of the world there eventually won't be much world left to worry about things like who you want to stick your penis in. Somebody is going to end up triggering a nuclear or biological clusterfuck, whether that's a powerful state or some justifiably pissed off individual (eventually when the technology is available).
Public opinion is a powerful thing—maybe the only weapon we wield against the powerful—and it is this weapon that is consistently undermined, in large part, by liberals who spend their time pontificating about the humanitarian potential of wars that are designed to dominate.
You know, the way we the Western world act, we're not all that different from the Taliban. The key part of our culture that we share is that we think we have the right way to live and that everybody else should live like us, even if at the end of gun barrel. If we ever blow ourselves back to the stone age I'm betting that it will be because we never managed to eliminate this diseased meme from our world.
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Rather than assuming you know what they think, perhaps you could move beyond your own certainties and find out.
I wasn't assuming anything. I'm quite up to speed on the polls. It seems you're the one making assumptions about what I think.
I wasn't trying to bolster some specific position on what should or shouldn't be done. I was simply making the plain point that it doesn't matter what we think. It only matters what Afghans think, whether that means staying or going.
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But who cares what any of us think? It doesn't matter what we think. It matters what Afghans think.
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And atrocities weren't happening during the 1990s?
But that's the point. NATO imperial aggression, even when marketed to gullible liberals as liberal interventionism, isn't making Afghanistan a better place.
There is of course a right thing to do and that's for the U.S. to stop killing people, pay reparations and to get out whenever Afghan popular opinion says so. At that point the world can perhaps get on with engaging Afghanistan in a peaceful manner and dealing with the problems of Palestine and Kashmir.
One thing they certainly don't need is patronising Western liberals telling them they can't hope to manage without Westerners around to hold their hands.
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There's plenty of room for opposing opinions here. State them politely and respectfully, like everyone else.
So I'm accused of being "morally callous" for holding strong views on imperialist war while living in London and I'm a disrespectful prick for making analogous observations in response? Right.
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Well I wouldn't want to spoil your little chit chat with unsavoury views.
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You don't have to, Christiaan, but London's rather unhallowed ground for that kind of moral callousness. Plenty of people out there who would regard any Londoner shredded by a car bomb as asking for everything they get by living in the heart of an "imperial" power.
And I'm hardly surprised someone from the North Shore of Auckland thinks it's moral callousness to oppose imperial folly and its informants. Perhaps you'd have a different view if it was your fellow kiwi informing on you while foreign invaders killed your family?
And indeed, not only do I live in London but I pay taxes. I have friends who have the courage to live here and refuse to pay taxes. Courage I don't have. I certainly don't expect sympathy from the victims of British aggression and I could certainly be in the wrong place at the wrong time.
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But does publishing people's tax records - for no obvious reason - really constitute "opening up information" as opposed to "being dicks"?
Publishing the tax returns of a rich tax evader is being a dick?
Or, if you are an Afghani who has helped the US Army, does having your name published on Wikileaks really constitute "opening up information" as opposed to "being dead meat"?
Can't say I have much sympathy for informants who help imperial invaders but in any case where did you get this idea from? It's a Pentagon soundbite to distract you from the thousands perishing as a result of this stupid war. They want you to chatter about the hypothetical deaths of their informants rather than the thousands of people they're actually killing in secret.
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The most surreal aspect of this story for me has been to see the chairman of the U.S. Joint Chiefs of Staff accusing someone of having blood on their hands. Truly a topsy turvy world.
Some will see this wariness of Wikileaks ... as mere professional jealousy
Seems to me that many are simply pissed off at Wikileaks for opening up information to the peasants. How can they be part of the chattering classes if they don't have a monopoly on information?
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Heh, thanks Russell, the update to this post has brightened my week considerably.