or Powell's or me• • •
"Mike and Jon, Jon and Mike—I've known them both for years, and, clearly, one of them is very funny. As for the other: truly one of the great hangers-on of our time."—Steve Bodow, head writer, The Daily Show
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"Who can really judge what's funny? If humor is a subjective medium, then can there be something that is really and truly hilarious? Me. This book."—Daniel Handler, author, Adverbs, and personal representative of Lemony Snicket
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"The good news: I thought Our Kampf was consistently hilarious. The bad news: I’m the guy who wrote Monkeybone."—Sam Hamm, screenwriter, Batman, Batman Returns, and Homecoming
June 25, 2004
A Little More Anonymous
1. Later in the interview with Andrea Mitchell, Anonymous says:
My experience working against bin Laden was there was multiple occasions when we did not take advantage of an opportunity to solve the problem because we were afraid of killing a civilian, we were afraid of hitting a mosque with shrapnel, we were afraid of disrupting sales of arms overseas.
Yes, those namby-pamby liberals, keeping the CIA from doing its job because of worries about killing a civilian, or hitting a mosque with shrapnel, or... disrupting sales of arms overseas?
You'd think someone could ask Anonymous to expand on this. When exactly did the US government refrain from killing bin Laden because it was concerned this would disrupt arms sales? Who was buying, exactly? And who was selling?
We might be in danger of learning the answers to those questions if we had a press corps or an opposition political party. Thank god we don't.
2. dreamsign in comments here points out that:
Anonymous has said that the only effective course of action is a brutal war, short of changing the policies that many in the Muslim world find so offensive. Mitchell didn't hear the part after 'short of', because those policies have become embedded in our sense of national identity. It's a sort of heresy (of the letting the terrorists win variety) to suggest that those policies can be altered. Anonymous himself seems to think that all out war is less of a cognitive stretch than policy change.
I think dreamsign is exactly right. Andrea Mitchell probably does believe that our mideast policies are part of the essential nature of the US, and therefore "what we stand for." And Anonymous doesn't take the idea of changing our mideast policies seriously.
Still, I respect Anonymous' honesty in stating that changing those policies and a much more brutal war are the only two options for the US. I'd prefer myself to go with the "change policies" choice rather than the "let's be vicious killers" choice. But that's just me.
Posted at June 25, 2004 04:41 PM | TrackBackTypical of a namby-pamby liberal to reject the "let's be vicious killers" choice. Why do you hate America so?
In case you don't realize, if we "change policies", we'll be flip-floppers. And that's un-American! At least, that's what the RNC told me.
In a course on "Empire: Then [New Testament times] and Now [now]" we were discussing the narrow priorities of our national press corps, and one specific example made my prof so frustrated that he said, "This is how Americans are manufactured as morons."
Most Americans probably don't think we even had a Middle East policy to flip flop from -- there we were, minding our own business, buying the occasional barrell of oil, and wham! out of nowhere they attack us. That's the only possible reason that the rhetoric of "finally taking it to the enemy instead of waiting for them to hit us" could make any kind of sense.
Posted by: Adam Kotsko at June 26, 2004 08:12 AMAdam,
OF COURSE we had a mideast policy pre-9/11. It was to feed the hungry, heal the sick, hug the unhugged, and so forth. I don't have the figures at hand, but I think we spent about $2 trillion on that every year. That the Arabs didn't appreciate it shows just how depraved they are, and is all the more reason to stick chemical lights in their anuses.
Posted by: Jonathan Schwarz at June 28, 2004 11:18 AM
