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by TLE on 02:58 AM December 29th, 2004 EST (#2)
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I'm not really familiar with Sontag, but I did see some things in the articles I have problems with.
Writing in the 1960s about the Vietnam War she declared "the white race is the cancer of human history."
I strongly opposed this war and was subjected to the draft because of it. Yet, I am lumped in with those who supported it. I do not consider myself a cancer of human history because of my race.
Days after the Sept. 11, 2001, terrorist attacks, she criticized U.S. foreign policy and offered backhanded praise for the hijackers.
"Where is the acknowledgment that this was not a `cowardly' attack on `civilization' or `liberty' or `humanity' or `the free world' but an attack on the world's self-proclaimed superpower, undertaken as a consequence of specific American alliances and actions?" she wrote in The New Yorker.
She is justifying a massive hate crime committed against innocent civilians. I'm guessing she had no family members in the towers.
"In the matter of courage (a morally neutral virtue): whatever may be said of the perpetrators of Tuesday's slaughter, they were not cowards."
Can we settle this "cowards" issue once and for all? Even my abridged dictionary gives more than one definition of "coward." It isn't only that someone is afraid to risk bodily harm. It also means attacking people who have no means to defend themselves or to retaliate. It is in this second context that the hijackers can accurately be described as cowards.
No, I'm not familiar with Sontag, but I won't miss her.
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by scudsucker on 04:23 AM December 29th, 2004 EST (#3)
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Writing in the 1960s about the Vietnam War she declared "the white race is the cancer of human history."
There's a legitimatly boneheaded comment to complain about.
She is justifying a massive hate crime committed against innocent civilians. I'm guessing she had no family members in the towers.
No, no, no. She's talking about cause and effect and people are trying to twist her words to mean justification. The two are not one and the same. Just as pointing out that the U.S. helped create the Taliban and Al Queda by supporting the mujahideen's resistance to the Russian invasion of Afganistan doesn't mean that we are responsible for the Taliban's human rights abuses or Al Queda's terrorism.
Can we settle this "cowards" issue once and for all?
Yes, we can. Anyone who's willing to die for their cause is not a coward, case closed. Fanatical yes, crazy yes, cowardice, no.
It also means attacking people who have no means to defend themselves or to retaliate. It is in this second context that the hijackers can accurately be described as cowards.
Huh? Then what of the U.S. military that routinely uses smart bombs rather than sending in ground forces, huh? If that's your standard of cowardice, then the U.S. is more cowardly than Al Queda by several orders of magnitude, because they willingly die to launch an attack while we press a button in a control room miles away.
"...show young men an ideal of manhood that respects women and rejects violence" George W. Bush - Republican 2005
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by TLE on 05:20 AM December 29th, 2004 EST (#4)
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Huh? Then what of the U.S. military that routinely uses smart bombs rather than sending in ground forces, huh? If that's your standard of cowardice, then the U.S. is more cowardly than Al Queda by several orders of magnitude, because they willingly die to launch an attack while we press a button in a control room miles away.
Then an artillery attack against ground forces with only rifles would also qualify. I am talking about the deliberate targeting of innocents without warning. I refuse to praise such action regardless of who perpetrates it.
When I read the quote by Sontag about 9/11, to me, she implies that the hijackers were brave men with legitimate grievances who attacked an arrogant nation. Clearly we disagree on this point.
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by scudsucker on 06:47 PM December 29th, 2004 EST (#11)
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Then an artillery attack against ground forces with only rifles would also qualify.
With artillery you at least have ground forces that can be attacked by guys with AK-47's. Good luck taking out a stealth bomber at night with an assault rifle, though.
When I read the quote by Sontag about 9/11, to me, she implies that the hijackers were brave men with legitimate grievances who attacked an arrogant nation.
Well, if you want to be literal, that's true. - Brave? They died for their cause, check.
- Legitimate grievances? Israel, check. The U.S.'s constantly claims to support democracy around the world, but then our presidents cozy up to and support dictators when its covenient (Saddam in the 80's, Musharraf today), check.
- Arrogant nation? Every nation is arrogant in one way or another. The U.S. is arrogant. France is arrogant. Russia is arrogant. China is arrogant. Check.
Look, basically my point is this: you guys are calling the terrorist cowards because you conciously or unconciously want another reason to hate them and think that we are better than them. I'm against that for two reasons: - There's plenty of reasons to hate them already. Just about every American knows another American who was directly affected, or died in, the attacks on 911.
- If you twist the definition of cowardice to include the hijackers, dispite the fact that they knew they were going to die for their "cause", then by the same definition the U.S. military is just as guilty of cowardice.
"...show young men an ideal of manhood that respects women and rejects violence" George W. Bush - Republican 2005
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by Anonymous User on 08:17 AM December 29th, 2004 EST (#5)
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"Yes, we can. Anyone who's willing to die for their cause is not a coward, case closed. Fanatical yes, crazy yes, cowardice, no."
I disagree. It takes more courage to work peacefully toward goals. I think that using violence to terrorize or harm the innocent as many mothers do to harm their children, or as many feminists do to harm men, or as many terrorist do to advance their causes is the height of cowardice.
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by Anonymous User on 12:51 PM December 29th, 2004 EST (#7)
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They are cowards, it is the direct attack on civilians, children too, are you saying they are so brave for having murdered civilians. Smart bombs are used against military targets and militants.
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by Clancy
(long_ponytail@yahoo.com)
on 03:53 PM December 29th, 2004 EST (#8)
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May I make one suggestion, instead of using the word "militants", try substituting "terrorist assholes" instead.
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by Clancy
(long_ponytail@yahoo.com)
on 12:29 PM December 30th, 2004 EST (#14)
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I guess that depends on your point of view. If you consider men from Syria, Iran, Saudia Arabia, and so on, to be "insurgents" defending THEIR(?) homeland, then I will know exactly where you are coming from. If you consider them to be men bent on furthering the chaotic empire established by good ole' boy Saddam and disrupting what could be a peaceful country, we are on the same page. I damn sure resent you calling the American Military a HOSTILE force. If we are "occupying", as you say, the country of Iraq, why do we not see American flags flying in the breeze on every building with a flagpole? If occupation is our goal, killing EVERYONE would be a top priority before rebuilding schools, power stations, water purification facilities and establishing a democratic Iraqi government. Germans used to line up civilians by the score and mow them down if ONE German soldier was killed by TRUE insurgents. But, I should know that I'm wasting my breath. When the next deaths occur on American soil due to "the nice visiting insurgents" and one of your family members is killed, will you still be singing the same tune? Will you be one of those who say "we brought it on ourselves". Why don't you just paint a big red target on both sides of your shirt, walk down the middle of a Baghdad street and offer your life as pennance for all of the really nasty things Americans have done to the rest of the world. Me? I'll be polishing my rifle hoping to God I get a chance to squeeze off just ONE round.
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by scudsucker on 02:27 PM December 30th, 2004 EST (#17)
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If you consider men from Syria, Iran, Saudia Arabia, and so on, to be "insurgents" defending THEIR(?) homeland
And what of the ones from Iraq, eh? And since you like to bring up WWII, surely you know that the whole middle east was carved up by arbitrary boundries by Eurpean countries, and your average from Saudi Arabia feels as much or more kinship with the people of Iraq as he does to the Saudi princes?
But okay, fine, lets call them terrorists for a moment. Then what were the French during the Revelutionary war? You know, the ones who were the difference between us becomming an independant nation or staying a colony of Britain? They sure as hell weren't defending their homeland, and the Syrians and Jordanians didn't have to cross an entire ocean to get to Iraq.
I damn sure resent you calling the American Military a HOSTILE force.
What, you resent facts? Any large military force that is occupying a country by our choice and not the natives, is by definition hostile.
If we are "occupying", as you say
Zell Miller? Is that you? Even Bush has called it an occupation. Deal with it.
If occupation is our goal, killing EVERYONE would be a top priority before rebuilding schools, power stations, water purification facilities and establishing a democratic Iraqi government.
Finding and destroying Saddams WMD's was the goal. Since those stockpiles didn't exist, the goal was retroactivly brining freedom to the Iraqi people. Just how is "killing EVERYONE" going to free them?
But, I should know that I'm wasting my breath.
You are, because so far you've been a blathering jingoist.
When the next deaths occur on American soil due to "the nice visiting insurgents" and one of your family members is killed, will you still be singing the same tune?
Well lets see: Iraq had NOTHING to do with Al Queda or 911, so invading it did JACK SQUAT TO STOP TERRORISM. Maybe the next time deaths happen on American soil you'll wish Bush had spent over $120 billion and 1,300 American lives INVADING THE RIGHT FUCKING COUNTRY.
"...show young men an ideal of manhood that respects women and rejects violence" George W. Bush - Republican 2005
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by shawn on 05:03 PM December 30th, 2004 EST (#19)
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Finding and destroying Saddams WMD's was the goal. Since those stockpiles didn't exist, the goal was retroactivly brining freedom to the Iraqi people. Just how is "killing EVERYONE" going to free them?
You're probably right that WMD's did not exist in Iraq, at least recently. Bill Clinton, Hiliary Clinton, John Kerry, Nancy Pelosi, Ted Kennedy, Kofi Annan, and pretty much everyone else were most likely wrong when they claimed that Saddam did have WMD's, and that these weapons were a threat to the region and the world.
EVERYONE isn't being killed in Iraq. In fact, the number of innocent Iraqi's who were slaughtered under Saddam Hussein each and every year was about 10 times higher than the number currently being murdered by terrorists (patriotic freedom fighters in liberalese). Personally, I'm glad that fewer Iraqi innocents are being killed.
To put things in perspective, the death rate due to terrorism in Iraq is comparable to the death rate due to traffic accidents in the United States. Obviously, this doesn't mean that the two are the same. Iraq is suffering in many other ways ... health care, nutrition, education, infrastructure, etc. The US military and its coalition partners are working hard to rectify these problems. They are working hard to improve the quality of life of the general Iraqi population. Unfortunately, terrorism by radicals who clearly do not care about the Iraqi population is making it more difficult.
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by Clancy
(long_ponytail@yahoo.com)
on 12:49 PM December 30th, 2004 EST (#15)
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Well why don't you just head on over there and tally them up? My guess would be a damn site fewer than all the damage and death brought by the thousands of bombs dropped during WWII. Let's say you're looking down the bomb site of a B-17 at what may, or may not, be a munitions factory and you see what "looks" like a civilian. "Hey fellas, we gotta turn around. We don't want to hurt nobody that ain't a Nazi". You act like war is a frigging game of paintball. While you're there, take a head count of all of the civilians that were gassed because they pissed off that nice Mr. Saddam. Better yet, take a medium with you and interview a few million of them. Ask 'em how they feel about those god-damned Americans that took down their beloved president.
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by Clancy
(long_ponytail@yahoo.com)
on 04:42 PM December 30th, 2004 EST (#18)
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By golly scumsucker, you use your tongue prettier than a $20 whore. Say, how much does a Jingoist make anyway? You spread compliments around like a stable hand tosses horse manure. Being called a dumbass redneck? *sob* I was just so moved. Nobody's ever sweet talked me like that before. Intelligence? Well, that's all been used up by you. So long, Lefty. Since I don't want to get kicked off of this board, I'll just go around you whenever I see you. That's the best way to avoid a snake.
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by Luek on 08:08 AM December 30th, 2004 EST (#12)
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"Writing in the 1960s about the Vietnam War she declared "the white race is the cancer of human history."
I am not that familiar with Susan Sontag but I strongly suspect she was no friend of men's rights.
And if she did say what is quoted above about the white race being a cancer then to hell with her.
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by OldManSenile on 03:50 AM December 31st, 2004 EST (#20)
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I may not agree with this war, but I have to follow orders. Tell you what, If they are in the kz after a warnning and evac, they are fair game. I have many a friends and family over there. Before everyone gets thier panties in a bunch sayin I'm a cold hearted bastard, I'm a Ssgt in the USAF. I'm talking as a NCO. My ass is next in line for rotation.
When we fight people that don't follow the ROE, ie......booby trapping dead bodies, using religious sites for combat, waving white flags then openning fire and so forth, they are fair game.
But I suspect that you won't hear any of said info because Amnesty International says that we are commiting war crimes. Try visiting http://sftt.org/ It will fill you in on the real events going on.
And yes I don't agree, we need to pull our boys and girls out and let them deal with thier own problems, But when they attack us on our own soil, a can of ass whoopin needs to be opened.
There will always be colateral damage, Its a fact of war. It is not perfered, but it happens. Another thing that happens is.... we never hear about how we have thousands if not millions of homeless people here in America and no one SCREAMS, HELP THEM .
Its always help the other nation. Everyone loves us when we can save YOUR ASS , but hates us when we do something you dont agree with.
From a NCO in the USAF, kiss my ASS. Who you think gave you the right to complain? Who secured your freedoms.
Here is a poem I recieved durring the POW/MIA recognition,
It is the military member, not the reporter, who has given us the fredom of press. It is the military member, not the poet, who has given us the freedom of speech. It is the military member, not the campus organizer, who has given us the freedom to demonstrate. It is the military member, not the lawyer, who has given us the right to a fiar trial. It is the military member who salutes the flag, serves under the flag, and whose coffin is draped by the flag, who allows the nation to sleep under the blanket of freedom provided.
Author Unknown
Just my 2 cents
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by Anonymous User on 12:32 PM December 29th, 2004 EST (#6)
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by AngryMan
(end_misandryNOSPAM@yahoo.co.uk)
on 09:43 AM December 30th, 2004 EST (#13)
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Sontag apparently said
"America was founded on a genocide, on the unquestioned assumption of the right of white Europeans to exterminate a resident, technologically backward, colored population in order to take over the continent...the truth is that Mozart, Pascal, Boolean algebra, Shakespeare, parliamentary government, baroque churches, Newton, the emancipation of women, Kant, Marx, Balanchine ballets, et al., don’t redeem what this particular civilization has wrought upon the world. The white race is the cancer of human history; it is the white race and it alone — its ideologies and inventions — which eradicates autonomous civilizations wherever it spreads, which has upset the ecological balance of the planet, which now threatens the very existence of life itself." What she is saying is that white people are uniquely clever, and they are also uniquely evil, but their cleverness does not compensate for their evil. This is nonsense, not to mention overtly racist. White people are neither uniquely clever nor uniquely evil, nor indeed, uniquely anything else. To say otherwise is to court racism. That's a bad move, partly because of the moral consequences, but mainly because it is empirically false.
The white race? This is a very civil rights-era ethos. There is no such thing as 'the white race', or any other race. All humans around the world are the same type of animal, and are therefore basically the same. Individuals differ, 'races' do not differ.
It is a very Eurocentric viewpoint. It buys into the myth of the technological and cultural supremacy of Europe (including its colonies). Civilisations rise and fall, and at the moment European, or post-European, civilisations are culturally and militarily dominant, but that wasn't always so, and it is only temporary. In any case, their current dominance is not unchallenged outside the Western hemisphere. In the 16th century the dominant power was the Ottoman Empire, and China has been a significant power for three thousand years. Europeans acquired much of their technology from the Chinese and the Arabs. Arguably, Europe only rose to a dominant position after the industrial revolution, a mere blink of an eye ago. When you want to make grand sweeping statements about the whole of human society, as she does, you cannot afford that kind of parochialism.
More than that, she buys into an overtly racist myth that white people are inherently destructive. "it is the white race and it alone...which eradicates autonomous civilizations wherever it spreads". What nonsense. War and slavery were rife in Africa and South America long before Europeans got there. The Maoris of New Zealand invaded the Chatham Islands and enslaved the population. Ancient history is full of accounts of ecological destruction. The people of Easter Island doomed themselves when they cut down all the trees.
Reading:
Alfred W Crosby, 'Ecological Imperialism: The Biological Expansion of Europe, 900-1900'
Jared Diamond, 'Guns, Germs and Steel'
Marvin Harris, 'Cannibals and Kings'
Probably all written by white heterosexual men, I'm afraid, sorry about that. If you only have time for one, I would read Harris.
The only thing you can say in her favour is that - somewhat surprisingly perhaps - she holds science (in the form of Boolean algebra and Newton) in some regard, although obviously not much.
Maybe she thought she was trying to act as America's conscience in the civil rights era, but she sounds not only ignorant, parochial and Eurocentric, but a self-loathing racist.
Whether she was a feminist or not, I have no idea. She regards something called 'the emancipation of women' as one of the Western world's achievements, so I suspect she is. 'The emancipation of women' was little more than the invention of birth control and the industrialisation of the service sector (Marvin Harris, 'Why Nothing Works'), along with the general spread of democracy which had been going on in the West since the 18th century, and the decimation of the male population in two world wars.
As far as being "the cancer of human history" is concerned, there are many candidates, but as the contemorary "cancer of the Western world", I nominate feminism.
Feminism will continue as long as there is money to be made from hating men.
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The AP and the are reporting BBC the death of Susan Sontag, among other news providers (see stories: