Post Sept 11

The next song I wrote was called 'A Little Schubert'. It details a world of 'anarchist attacks' made liveable only by... Schubert, standing here for art in general.

Since 9.11 I seem to have retreated from political themes into a more private landscape of emotions, Paul Klee-like imagery (amoebas, dinosaurs, Kafkaesque metaphors) and, musically, into the sounds of the electroacoustic avant garde. This very much reflects my feeling that I want nothing to do with Bush v. Bin Laden, and don't care to take sides in the Arab - Israeli 'peace process'.

I am, however, writing a lot of anti-car songs, because I think car culture has a lot to do with 9.11. In fact I almost lost a client last week because of this. I wrote a song for Emi Necozawa in which the narrator runs over a couple of 'old fools' while parking her Citroen 2CV. Emi told me her record was being sponsored by Peugot, and asked me to change the lines. I told her no, under no circumstances.

I told her the anti-car line was a feature of much of my current songwriting. We'd already recorded a song called 'Firestone Baby', a torrent of scorn poured out on Bush: 'Firestone baby from the age of the car... I'm not losing sleep, cos there's hundreds of ways to get home'. I'd also written a song for Milky which is about 'how the current war / And all that happens in this world / Has been written in the stars / From the day they invented the car'.

In the end, I changed the line to one about running over a couple of camels. It actually had more Middle Eastern resonance than the line about 'old fools', so it was more, and not less, political (if more surreal).

The politics is there, hardened by 9.11, it's just all rather dreamlike. It's politics in the Kafka sense, not the Brecht sense.

Hate to break it to Mr. Finkelstein, but that was the situation *before* 9/11 -- which may be obvious and all, but it's part of this endemic belief that treats what happened on that day as some sort of unique event instead of Yet Another Incident of human stupidity across the boards.

Bin Laden hit the US on 9.11 because of two things, the Palestinian situation and the presence of US bases in Saudi Arabia. Why are there US bases in Saudi Arabia? Because of oil. The US has become more and more dependent on Middle Eastern oil since the 70s, and therefore gets dragged into the poisonous politics of the world's most hate-filled region. 9.11 was simply the arrival on US soil of the hell and hate which has been happening in the Middle East since the Six Day War.

Two nauseating things seen post 9.11:

1. City flight. People left Manhattan, a place where you can live without a car, and headed for lower-profile suburbs, where you need a car. By escaping 9.11's symptoms they added to 9.11's basic causes.

2. Interest free car sale promotions. Car sales greatly increased post 9.11 because car companies aggressively promoted them on TV, annoucing unprecedented low- to-no interest financing schemes. More cars = more dependency on Middle Eastern oil = more 9.11s.

Spot the new oil-related war being prepared now. So that the Iraqi people get a democratic government? Like hell. So that the US can lift the oil embargo and get at that oil again, to keep the SUVs running and guzzling.

Fewer cars = fewer wars and fewer terrorist deaths. But this link will never be made by an oil president. So it's left to humble songwriters to point it out, obliquely. * Sigh.*

While all the 9/11 hyperbole is often a bit much, it was a unique event in the sense that it took terrorism to a different plane. Bin Laden may throw out everything from Israel/Palestine to US troops in Saudi Arabia as justification for 9/11, but really his goals are more theological than political. He wants to expel infidels from the holy land, set up a pan-Islamic state, etc.

Because of that, he doesn't care how many people he kills, civilians or otherwise. This is distinct from terrorism as we have heretofore know it, because usually terrorism is directed towards achieving specific political ends. It does not behoove terrorists to kill thousands of people--just a few, enough to get attention for the cause.

Because it was calculated to simply achieve the maximum possible damage, 9/11 was qualitatively different from, say, what the IRA has been doing for the last 20 years. Bin Laden basically said there are no boundaries now. The ante has been upped.

And that is why the US government wants to attack Iraq: Because they are scared shitless of what comes after 9/11, and they think that Saddam may somehow be involved. And then there's the fact that by most estimates, he's only a few years away from going nuclear, and he would love to drop a bomb on Israel.

I feel very ambivalent about the whole thing, but chalking it up to oil (tho it is a factor) is a bit too easy.

Anyway, as far as I can see 9/11 has had virtually no effect on music, and I don't expect it too unless there is another terrorist attack. The US has stopped holding its breath, at least for the moment.

But even if we want to make that broad connection and say that that historical engagement somehow "put us on stage" for retaliation -- which is an argument of very, very broad removal, sort of like saying Columbus is at the "root" of contemporary inner-city crime in the U.S. -- would you really argue that having avoided that engagement would have been a more beneficial or more moral path? Or is the argument just that our engagement with the region with our resource interests as priorities was problematic? As it stands, it sounds like you're saying the former -- that we would have been better off in a position to neglect the region entirely -- which I can't really agree with.

  mmmmmm, the US, THE biggest terrorist on the planet, has had a hand in the deaths of (hundreds of) thousands of people all over the world in order to protect its interests. It really doesn't care, it doesn't have to, in terms of arms, no other country has anywhere as much or spends anywhere as much (hello missile defense system!) And it doesn't do it to get attention to its cause, how much more attention does it need?
 

     Because it was calculated to simply achieve the maximum possible damage, 9/11 was qualitatively different from,
     say, what the IRA has been doing for the last 20 years. Bin Laden basically said there are no boundaries now.
     The ante has been upped.

 I think the US has always disregarded any kinds of boundaries or had any moral qualms in its acts of terrorism, you can see this from invasion of philipines from last century to countless civillian deaths thanks to bombing afghanistan
 
 

     And that is why the US government wants to attack Iraq: Because they are scared shitless of what comes after
     9/11, and they think that Saddam may somehow be involved. And then there's the fact that by most estimates,
     he's only a few years away from going nuclear, and he would love to drop a bomb on Israel.

Nah, personally, it seems unlikely there is a connection between saddam and bin laden. I think it's more likely they want to reassert their power over that country and its resources, it has been a bit of a worry since saddam stopped being trusted ally and became fiend.
 

     Anyway, as far as I can see 9/11 has had virtually no effect on music, and I don't expect it too unless there is
     another terrorist attack. The US has stopped holding its breath, at least for the moment.

which is the fecking problem, no-one has learned the lesson of the story, it's become worse
 

 essence of our initial engagement with the Mideast as a whole revolving
     around the simple economics of their having resources and our needing those resources; assuming that weren't the  case, I don't imagine we'd have much more involvement in the region than we do in, say, Saharan Africa.

Even if US wasn't as reliant, it would still need to control access to this most important of commodities. Whoever controlled
oil would have a huge say in how the world was run(for the time being), and likely they wouldn't approve of current US/big buisness resource plundering. I mean, how shocking it would be if the mass of people of that region actually controlled it. Not some puppet regime propped by US  (as saddam was)
 
 

     But even if we want to make that broad connection and say that that historical engagement somehow "put us on
     stage" for retaliation -

It's not broad, it's an obvious connection that people across the world make, just people in US seem to have difficulty making(gross generalisation, I know). People in palestine see US manufacturers addresses on bombs that get dropped on them. There ARE bases in saudi arabia, there were crusades over the same thing. Saud is friend of US
 

. -- would you really argue that having avoided that engagement
     would have been a more beneficial or more moral path? Or is the argument just that our engagement with the
     region with our resource interests as priorities was problematic? As it stands, it sounds like you're saying the
     former -- that we would have been better off in a position to neglect the region entirely -- which I can't really
     agree with.

Yeah, is this a new version of white man's burden? Those damn darkies can't learn to get along so we have to bulldoze our way in,
help topple governments that want to nationalise oil, support murderous regimes, give support to  unjust invading army,
and prevent people of that region actually benefiting from wealth?
 
 

E.g., the "US = terrorist" line is a gimmick or if we're charitable maybe a slogan, one with plenty of valid ideology behind it that gets done a disservice as people bang on and on about how someone died and someone else made money without ever grasping the context enough to display much credibility on the issue, leave alone offer a coherent ideological alternative. Not to mention which it is basically the death of semantics in terms of the huge (and, paradoxically, central to points like the one you're making) difference between the mechanics of terrorism and the mechanics of a superpower's foreign maneuvering. Pointing at dead bodies and yelling "terrorism" in all directions doesn't offer much of a roadmap to making the bodies stop piling up, which even the plan of piling up more bodies (particular bodies) manages to accomplish.

And so then it's a cartoon, a bad one even, it's just: "[T]he US has always disregarded any kinds of boundaries or had any moral qualms in its acts of terrorism, you can see this from invasion of philipines from last century to countless civillian deaths thanks to bombing Afghanistan." This is the sort of thing that actively pisses me off, insofar as it makes perfectly reasonable questions about our operations' regard for the Afghan population look as intentionally dim-witted as the above act that there's no mechanical difference between deliberate attacks on civilians and "pragmatic" military actions that have secondary effects. It puts me in the position here of not even being able to half-agree with you in terms of the ethical ramifications of the two, insofar as you're basically erasing the vast contexts-and-causes majority of the story from your analysis. And honestly, this is just inviting some Texan pragmatist to talk about breaking eggs for making omelettes and sound a million miles further down the road-to-progress than you. It also nearly skirts the whole Afghan Leftist's Conundrum, something I think it's vital to take head on: the Taliban has been demonstrably shit from the time of its conception, for reasons having very little to do with anyone on this side of globe, and to tiptoe around the very real good their displacement creates is to basically cripple your argument by refusing to enter conversation with a pro-and-con sheet.

Same goes for Iraq and basically everything you've said, really -- and curse you for making me sound like a conservative: the presence of a state like Iraq in any region basically kills not only a desire for smooth-sailing safety but the entire state-modernization project that is the dream of the bulk of the planet. To pretend that resources are the only key here is to shove into your head a ridiculous caricature of the way Western power structure operates -- which again is only going to make everyone who dissents from that structure look equally foolish even when the dissent is as valid as it often is. It's like ragging on a movie you haven't even seen and expecting people to believe you.

And of course you're misreading my comments to slot them into the one very stale narrative you're using to organize an entire planet's cultural and political clockwork. It is inherently broad to move from U.S.-involves-self-with-region to U.S.-garners-animosity-in- region because clearly there is a massive middle step in operation, which I asked for Momus's opinion of quite explicitly above: the question is what specifically about our engagement makes that a certainty. And DON'T WORRY, I know what your answer to this question would be and in the most general of senses I might even mostly agree with you. But to continually dogmatically skirt the nuts and bolts of that is silly. The way you phrase your rejection to consider this issue -- i.e. OF COURSE, basically -- only turns you into a left-wing isolationist, which is even more intellectually dishonest than being a right-wing one: the solution to "we engage, but badly" need not be "so stop engaging" if people would bother considering long enough to point out better routes of engagement.

But you tie all the complaining together into a great incoherent jumble: "People in Palestine see US manufacturers addresses on bombs that get dropped on them" YES CLEARLY but this slots NOT AT ALL into your resource-based harangue, and "There ARE bases in Saudi Arabia, there were crusades over the same thing" except that PLEASE GOD at least acknowledge the obvious top-level distinction of our presence there being an "invited" one, and one ostensibly meant as a loan of stability in the creation of workable "modern" nations. Workable modern nations so we wouldn't have to fret about resource supply? YES, SURELY. This is not just disagreement: our main concern is stability more than democracy, which is why we'll surely go on encouraging the Saudi monarchy long after the nation's ripe for another oil-market-shaking "transition" period. But there need be an end goal here, politically, and "we have bases we are wrong" isn't a roadmap to it: Christ, there are nuts and bolts in there!

As for the "damn darkies can't learn to get along" part, I suppose if that's a sarcastic rephrasing of what you think my point was, it's hilarious in a lot of ways, including my being a darky and that having nothing to do with my point in the least. I suppose here you're reading "engagement" to mean "help topple governments that want to nationalise oil, support murderous regimes, give support to unjust invading army and prevent people of that region actually benefiting from wealth" etc. etc. etc. at which point I direct you to the OED and the entry on "engage."

     E.g., the "US = terrorist" line is a gimmick or if we're charitable maybe a slogan, one with plenty of valid ideology
      behind it that gets done a disservice as people bang on and on about how someone died and someone else made
     money without ever grasping the context enough to display much credibility on the issue, leave alone offer a
     coherent ideological alternative.

Central issue here is what you define to be terrorism. OK, in my previous post it was a gimmick, I offered little to back it up.
But essentially, I'm working from a definition of terrorism that is widely accepted, I mean I'm talking about the defintion
that is generally accepted, and a case in point would probably the US actions against nicuragua that were condemned by the world court,.
 

    Not to mention which it is basically the death of semantics in terms of the huge
     (and, paradoxically, central to points like the one you're making) difference between the mechanics of terrorism
     and the mechanics of a superpower's foreign maneuvering. Pointing at dead bodies and yelling "terrorism" in all
     directions doesn't offer much of a roadmap to making the bodies stop piling up, which even the plan of piling up
     more bodies (particular bodies) manages to accomplish.

As I say, central issue is what one defines to be terrorism. Pointing at dead bodies and yelling terrorism in one direction, i.e., our enemies' direction is what most governments, leaders, people in control do, it's part of manipulation of people. I find the implication that superpower foreign manuvering cannot be seen as terorism to be grossly insulting to its victims. And to say it doesn't make the bodies pile up, well I  think it helps more than ignoring it or painting it as something else (the return to democacy was an old US fave w.r.t south america in the 80s). The death of semantics, well anyone who reads mainstream US news sources knows that occured long ago.
 

        This is the sort of thing that actively pisses me off,
     insofar as it makes perfectly reasonable questions about our operations' regard for the Afghan population look
     as intentionally dim-witted as the above act that there's no mechanical difference between deliberate attacks on
     civilians and "pragmatic" military actions that have secondary effects. It puts me in the position here of not even
     being able to half-agree with you in terms of the ethical ramifications of the two, insofar as you're basically erasing
     the vast contexts-and-causes majority of the story from your analysis. And honestly, this is just inviting some
     Texan pragmatist to talk about breaking eggs for making omelettes and sound a million miles further down the
     road-to-progress than you. It also nearly skirts the whole Afghan Leftist's Conundrum, something I think it's vital
     to take head on: the Taliban has been demonstrably shit from the time of its conception, for reasons having very
     little to do with anyone on this side of globe, and to tiptoe around the very real good their displacement creates is
     to basically cripple your argument by refusing to enter conversation with a pro-and-con sheet.

OK, there is very little diference between knowing your actions will cause thousands to die and regarding that as an end, morally at least. I refer you to the case of the fat war terrorist Ariel Sharon and Sabra and Shatila, I won't go into that, look it up. Or perhaps the fact that sanctions on Iraq have murdered half a million children (it was worth it says albright). The texan pragmatist will sound further down the road depending on your perspective, I'm sure.  HAHAHHAHAH, taliban had nothing to do wih anyone on your side of the globe?OK  Fine, there is good, it's a shame the US doesn't really want to know the total number of casualties it caused or what those in power now are up to , i.e., the bad. But, it's there, does it outweigh the good and could there have been alternatives?
That's a whole other discussion

     Same goes for Iraq and basically everything you've said, really -- and curse you for making me sound like a
     conservative: the presence of a state like Iraq in any region basically kills not only a desire for smooth-sailing
     safety but the entire state-modernization project that is the dream of the bulk of the planet. To pretend that
     resources are the only key here is to shove into your head a ridiculous caricature of the way Western power
     structure operates -- which again is only going to make everyone who dissents from that structure look equally
     foolish even when the dissent is as valid as it often is. It's like ragging on a movie you haven't even seen and
     expecting people to believe you.

Making too many assumptions. Your description of Iraq I think suits Israel better, US's $3 billion a year friend.  It may seem like a caricature but it leads to accurate predictions and analysis IMHO.
     And of course you're misreading my comments to slot them into the one very stale narrative you're using to
     organize an entire planet's cultural and political clockwork.

Not really,  I don't know where you get the fact that I'm trying to organise the planets culture into one narrative. But as for the political clockwork: it's clear from reading, and personal experieces that the certain overarching themes that run through recent history allow one to carry through a very accurate analysis and prediction. Of course this is just an abstraction over the underlying "reality" but then you have to question the extent to which it is, that has to be based on amassed evidence and does the reality fit the hypothesis. I'm confident that it does, though perhaps that doesn't seem self-evident to someone with your set of assmptions.

It is inherently broad to move from
     U.S.-involves-self-with-region to U.S.-garners-animosity-in- region because clearly there is a massive middle step
     in operation, which I asked for Momus's opinion of quite explicitly above: the question is what specifically about
     our engagement makes that a certainty.

Fair enough , a valid point, my point, at least it should have been was, that it should have been obvious to anyone with knowledge of the situation, that it wasn't was testament to the propaganda system.
 

And DON'T WORRY, I know what your answer to this question would
     be and in the most general of senses I might even mostly agree with you. But to continually dogmatically skirt the
     nuts and bolts of that is silly. The way you phrase your rejection to consider this issue -- i.e. OF COURSE,
     basically -- only turns you into a left-wing isolationist, which is even more intellectually dishonest than being a
     right-wing one: the solution to "we engage, but badly" need not be "so stop engaging" if people would bother
     considering long enough to point out better routes of engagement.

     But you tie all the complaining together into a great incoherent jumble: "People in Palestine see US manufacturers
     addresses on bombs that get dropped on them" YES CLEARLY but this slots NOT AT ALL into your
     resource-based harangue, and "There ARE bases in Saudi Arabia, there were crusades over the same thing"
     except that PLEASE GOD at least acknowledge the obvious top-level distinction of our presence there being an
     "invited" one, and one ostensibly meant as a loan of stability in the creation of workable "modern" nations.

Mmmmmmm, it ties into it that it was self-evident enough forold bin head to exploit to gain power. Invited by whom? You seemto be confusing the aristocracy and elites with the mass of people. The central theme is US needs to have presence in that region due to its fabulous resources, any hint of nationalism will not be tolerated, so let's support Israel to be our proxy, yay!, then let's prop up corrupt rich tyrannies that we can work with and supply arms to , like egypt and saud. Yippee! we've won!
Oh no, seems like some of those arabs are a bit peed off!

     Workable modern nations so we wouldn't have to fret about resource supply? YES, SURELY. This is not just
     disagreement: our main concern is stability more than democracy, which is why we'll surely go on encouraging the
     Saudi monarchy long after the nation's ripe for another oil-market-shaking "transition" period. But there need be
     an end goal here, politically, and "we have bases we are wrong" isn't a roadmap to it: Christ, there are nuts and
     bolts in there!

Saudi arabia is a modern nation?IT'sas bad as the talibans ferchrissakes. Our main concern is money, more than stability. Stability, you'd have to convince me that the region would explode if it were't for "our" guided hand. Fair enough it's at the point where there needs to be intervention, but on the ther hand,  a lot, if not most of it is due to western intervention, and even then, most of the inervention west does give does much more harm than good for all concerned

     As for the "damn darkies can't learn to get along" part, I suppose if that's a sarcastic rephrasing of what you think
     my point was, it's hilarious in a lot of ways, including my being a darky and that having nothing to do with my point
     in the least. I suppose here you're reading "engagement" to mean "help topple governments that want to nationalise
     oil, support murderous regimes, give support to unjust invading army and prevent people of that region actually
     benefiting from wealth" etc. etc. etc. at which point I direct you to the OED and the entry on "engage."

Yes, your point seemed to be that that area's resources are there to be plundered, we have a right as civilised people to use it in whatever way we see fit, these people are savages! Those are examples of engagement in which US has traditionally...engaged, not my new dictionary definition of the term! I'm just working out what your position seems to be from your words, and it does have that patronising imperialist tone, although that can be  state of mind rather than a physical condition these days, equality, any skin colour can be an evil imperialisitcbastard these days (hello colin powell!)
 

I'm not sure what "generally accepted" definition you're working from, but the meaning of terrorism is not just "killing other people." One can condemn both superpower foreign maneuvering and terrorism without confusing the two. It's a shame that George W. Bush has made "terrorism" into an abstract noun, a synonym for "evil," but that doesn't mean we have succumb to the same rhetorical idiocy.

"OK, there is very little diference between knowing your actions will cause thousands to die and regarding that as an end, morally at least."

There is a difference, actually. Unless you're living in an abstract world of simplistic moral equations, that is. Sort of like Bin Laden, who says there's no difference between civilians and combatants, and thus the WTC bombing is A-OK with Allah.

"Stability, you'd have to convince me that the region would explode if it were't for "our" guided hand. Fair enough it's at the point where there needs to be intervention"

The Kuwaitis were pretty happy the US intervened in 1990, and so were the other Arab nations. The Afghanis are pretty happy too--their main worry is that the US/UN forces are going to pull out. And everyone from Saudi Arabia on down desperately wants the US to get involved in the Israeli/Palestinian conflict again. There are dark sides to US involvement in the Middle East for sure, but it's a lot more complicated than the idea that the "area's resources are there to be plundered, we have a right as civilised people to use it in whatever way we see fit, these people are savages!"

Anas, it seems, always has a terrible problem with the fact that people might disagree with him.

Sure, various stories that I read in the newspaper every day and can't be bothered to dig up now. Basically, if the peacekeeping force leaves Kabul in April (the Brits are pulling out then, and noone else has yet said they will take over), then the country will plunge into civil war again. Which is what happened last time the US got involved in Afghanistan. It would be far more immoral for them to leave than to stay.

And of course I have read all the kinds of stories you talk about too. And of course they are terrible.

I'm not sure what your "who pays" question is supposed to mean.

My entire point was that "how you define terrorism" and by extension "who is officially a terrorist" is not the central issue, insofar as it turns everything into this legalistic/semantic guessing game in which we quarrel over X being a legitimate target and Y being boogey-word "terrorism" -- and thus distract ourselves from actually examining the motives and pressures spurring action on any side (which are in any event far less precise than simply "greed" and "retribution"). It flattens everything out to what you've said above, i.e. we dish it out and we get it back, a viewpoint that is singularly unhelpful in terms of setting better policy goals and finding better routes to achieving them. You can defend this conflation of action in Nicaragua and rogue terrorism maybe in abstract moral terms, but implicit in this is a sweeping-away of the underlying mechanics that will always leave you at a loss to argue effectively for change -- it's like saying "this clock is wrong" while deliberately shielding one's eyes when the clockwork's revealed: it only cedes power to the clockmaker, who's now free to set the clock to whatever time he damn well pleases.

And to be fair, at times you do seem to admit the underlying ideology -- mentioning the often-unconscionable ways in which we pushed "democracy" in South America (or more often stabilizing totalitarianism we perceived as a step toward the sorts of capitalist republics we craved). The very real and very believed-in ideology underlying such thinking has to be a major part of any analysis, or your condemnations will be met by some latter-day Kissinger saying "you simply don't understand the intricacies and realities involved," or "sometimes we must take decisive action in the name of freedom and democracy and etc."

Misreading #1. Me: "The Taliban has been demonstrably shit from the time of its conception, for reasons having very little to do with anyone on this side of globe." You: "HAHAHHAHAH, taliban had nothing to do wih anyone on your side of the globe." Me: Ummm, yes basically, insofar as proximate effects of the Taliban were pretty much suffered by the Afghan population, no?

By the way, much as I agree with you about Sharon, the Arab-Israeli conflict is basically the last place on Earth where you want to start ignoring mechanics in favor of drawing up massacre tally- sheets. An even worse place is your statement that "sanctions on Iraq have murdered half a million children (it was worth it says Albright)," which is EXACTLY my problem with your statements: you call it "murder" without making any argument against the ostensible purposes of actions, and then scoff at Albright for finding the tradeoff worthwhile. I AGREE with you that it was very likely not worth the tradeoff, but that argument is never going to fly without at least acknowledging what the ostensible goals and the "tradeoff" actually ARE! And so Albright will say "worth it for XYZ" and since you have no counterargument other than the ridiculous "murder" (another ridiculous tying-up of actions with effects removed by several steps; even "manslaughter" stretches it), Albright will always be the clockmaker in this argument.

And to say of the mechanics of the Taliban --> Karzai forced transition "it's there, does it outweigh the good and could there have been alternatives? That's a whole other discussion" just pains me, insofar as surely that's the PRIMARY discussion: what are the options, and where is the maximum good.

Also: to cast Israel as a drain on the modernization project is fairly ridiculous -- it is, after all, an internally well-running economically-viable democracy. Its presence has surely managed to distract a lot of Arab nations from bringing pressure to bear on their own leadership, but then our new terrorists are just as much in opposition to the Gulf state monarchies as they are to the U.S. or Israel.

When I say you're trying to organize the planet into one narrative, I'm referring to a narrative of state power as unifaceted and exclusively rapacious, which is all you offered above. This narrative explains a decent amount of history, but leads to very poor thinking on the majority of issues -- not to mention which even when it is the case it's slotted into surface-level ideologies that have to be combatted first. Minor Misreading #2. Me: "[O]ur presence [in Saudi Arabia is] an 'invited' one, and one ostensibly meant as a loan of stability in the creation of workable 'modern' nations." You: "Invited by whom? You seem to be confusing the aristocracy and elites with the mass of people." + "Saudi arabia is a modern nation?IT'sas bad as the talibans ferchrissakes." Me: Please note scare-quotes around "invited" and "modern," plus the VAST misreading that goes this idea that I said Saudi Arabia was modern -- I said just below that "we'll surely go on encouraging the Saudi monarchy long after the nation's ripe for another oil-market-shaking 'transition' period." Also note that saying "Saudi monarchy is as bad as Taliban" is EXACTLY the kind of just STUPID political reasoning that's annoying me here. It's NOT as bad. SURELY you know this. And surely on some level you see how refusing to acknowledge distinctions, especially subtle ones, completely shatters one's credibility when talking about these things. It's just lazy, lazy thinking: YES it makes your opinions sound all bombastic and hyper-confident but that is half of what's so offensively lazy about it. This is why much as I think your narrative of the US and the Mideast is definitely a central strain to that engagement, I simply won't agree with your apparent assertion that it is the SOLE strain, after which it seems like you put your hands over your ears and start saying LA-LA-LA and basically rejecting subtlety and nuance.

As for "Our main concern is money, more than stability," well, stability ==> money, here, insofar as ensuring a stable resource market helps ensure economic expansion on our end.

Stupid Dogmatic Misreading That No Offense Makes Me Want To Slap You Really Really Hard: "Yes, your point seemed to be that that area's resources are there to be plundered, we have a right as civilised people to use it in whatever way we see fit, these people are savages!" Which, Christ, I was being sort of patronizing before, and then I felt bad about it, but God, not any more, insofar as it's difficult not to patronize someone so intellectually lazy they refuse to even READ an argument levelled in opposition and instead just pretend it's whatever argument they hold in their heads as belonging to the enemy. I would really appreciate your explaining how anything I've said even borders on what you're casting it as above, and I would also REDIRECT you to the DENOTATIVE meaning of the word "engage." The problem you are running into is that you, very much like the "imperialists" you complain about, can't seem to conceptualize any sort of international engagement that's NOT based on exploitation, despite vast elements of the US's engagements in various areas of the world being vastly constructive ones. If you think it's "imperialistic" that I'd prefer the world's preeminent superpower to adopt foreign policies that cooperatively encourage stable, civil democracies and the improvement of living standards throughout the world, well then apparently I'm an imperialist, and, weirdly, my family in Ethiopia full of imperialists as well.

I agree, and I'm pretty sure that I didn't write anything that contradicted what you've just said. Let's substitute,"acceptable" for "generally accepted", and I'll look up dictionary.com....wait...
 

       The unlawful use or threatened use of force or violence by a person or an organized group
       against people or property with the intention of intimidating or coercing societies or governments,
       often for ideological or po

Right, fair enough. That's something along the lines of what I was aiming for. Of course it maybe impossible to derive a definition completely acceptable to everyone. My point is that that description very easily fits a whole range of actions that US and its allies have taken. I gave the Nicuragua example where the US was condemned by the world court. But it could easily apply to bombing of pharmaceutical factories in Sudan, or the actions of  US's biggest recipient of military aid against a whole population.
 

     There is a difference, actually. Unless you're living in an abstract world of simplistic moral equations, that is. Sort
     of like Bin Laden, who says there's no difference between civilians and combatants, and thus the WTC bombing
     is A-OK with Allah.

It seems like you're the one living in a simplistic world. Bin Laden says there is no difference between civillians and combatants, US chiefs say it in nicer terms like collateral damage, or don't mention it at all. I don't think those at the receiving end really think there is much difference. I mean, what's the difference if say equal numbers of innocent civillians died in Afghanistan as in 9/11? It implies that you think that some lives are worth less than others. But that's probably too rash an assumption for me to make. A lot of US intervention might not lead directly in civillian deaths(some does), but indirectly it certainly does. That might make the US better than some evil empire out of comic books, but not much.
 
 

     The Kuwaitis were pretty happy the US intervened in 1990, and so were the other Arab nations. The Afghanis
     are pretty happy too--their main worry is that the US/UN forces are going to pull out. And everyone from Saudi
     Arabia on down desperately wants the US to get involved in the Israeli/Palestinian conflict again. There are dark
     sides to US involvement in the Middle East for sure, but it's a lot more complicated than the idea that the "area's
     resources are there to be plundered, we have a right as civilised people to use it in whatever way we see fit, these
     people are savages!"
 

Of course arab nations will be happy, at least their leaders will be, they are US puppets in the first place. Of course I don't need to mention the deals Iraq tried to make to pull out of kuwait that the US completely ignored. As I said the whole it could get tedious if I went through and explained the complexities of my world view, but it probably needs to be done because peeps are making false assumptions about what I mean. It's a case of radically different world views here, so statements I could feel safe making without
too much justification elsewhere I have to back up heavily here. This is no bad thing, or wouldn't be if this wasn't I love Music forum.
The deal is more complex, but there are general themes, through my reading and experience I have discovered these. But  it seems I can't give them explicitly for fear of people making up for the lack of a more thorough picture and attributing opinions to me.

OK, to answer some of your points. US is involved in Israel/Palestine, they supply the arms and the funding to the Israelis and
encourage the Israelis not to make peace. US involvement doesn't need to have dark sides, but the problem is that it is essentially "dark"
 
 

     "this makes interaction tedious" = more patronising than anything nitsuh says

     Anas, it seems, always has a terrible problem with the fact that people might disagree with him.
 

Heh, I think I've gone out of my way to provide for this. I don't know why people think I'm patronising. I mean, the point is that we have different world views here and making up for that might be tedious. I think I've said a lot more patronising stuff 
     I'm not sure what "generally accepted" definition you're working from, but the meaning of terrorism is not just
     "killing other people." One can condemn both superpower foreign maneuvering and terrorism without confusing
     the two. It's a shame that George W. Bush has made "terrorism" into an abstract noun, a synonym for "evil," but
     that doesn't mean we have succumb to the same rhetorical idiocy.

I agree, and I'm pretty sure that I didn't write anything that contradicted what you've just said. Let's substitute,"acceptable" for "generally accepted", and I'll look up dictionary.com....wait...
 

       The unlawful use or threatened use of force or violence by a person or an organized group
       against people or property with the intention of intimidating or coercing societies or governments,
       often for ideological or po

Right, fair enough. That's something along the lines of what I was aiming for. Of course it maybe impossible to derive a definition completely acceptable to everyone. My point is that that description very easily fits a whole range of actions that US and its allies have taken. I gave the Nicuragua example where the US was condemned by the world court. But it could easily apply to bombing of pharmaceutical factories in Sudan, or the actions of  US's biggest recipient of military aid against a whole population.
 

     There is a difference, actually. Unless you're living in an abstract world of simplistic moral equations, that is. Sort
     of like Bin Laden, who says there's no difference between civilians and combatants, and thus the WTC bombing
     is A-OK with Allah.

It seems like you're the one living in a simplistic world. Bin Laden says there is no difference between civillians and combatants, US chiefs say it in nicer terms like collateral damage, or don't mention it at all. I don't think those at the receiving end really think there is much difference. I mean, what's the difference if say equal numbers of innocent civillians died in Afghanistan as in 9/11? It implies that you think that some lives are worth less than others. But that's probably too rash an assumption for me to make. A lot of US intervention might not lead directly in civillian deaths(some does), but indirectly it certainly does. That might make the US better than some evil empire out of comic books, but not much.
 
 

     The Kuwaitis were pretty happy the US intervened in 1990, and so were the other Arab nations. The Afghanis
     are pretty happy too--their main worry is that the US/UN forces are going to pull out. And everyone from Saudi
     Arabia on down desperately wants the US to get involved in the Israeli/Palestinian conflict again. There are dark
     sides to US involvement in the Middle East for sure, but it's a lot more complicated than the idea that the "area's
     resources are there to be plundered, we have a right as civilised people to use it in whatever way we see fit, these
     people are savages!"
 

Of course arab nations will be happy, at least their leaders will be, they are US puppets in the first place. Of course I don't need to mention the deals Iraq tried to make to pull out of kuwait that the US completely ignored. As I said the whole it could get tedious if I went through and explained the complexities of my world view, but it probably needs to be done because peeps are making false assumptions about what I mean. It's a case of radically different world views here, so statements I could feel safe making without
too much justification elsewhere I have to back up heavily here. This is no bad thing, or wouldn't be if this wasn't I love Music forum.
The deal is more complex, but there are general themes, through my reading and experience I have discovered these. But  it seems I can't give them explicitly for fear of people making up for the lack of a more thorough picture and attributing opinions to me.

OK, to answer some of your points. US is involved in Israel/Palestine, they supply the arms and the funding to the Israelis and
encourage the Israelis not to make peace. US involvement doesn't need to have dark sides, but the problem is that it is essentially "dark"
 
 

     "this makes interaction tedious" = more patronising than anything nitsuh says

     Anas, it seems, always has a terrible problem with the fact that people might disagree with him.
 

Heh, I think I've gone out of my way to provide for this. I don't know why people think I'm patronising. I mean, the point is that we have different world views here and making up for that might be tedious. I think I've said a lot more patronising stuff stuff in my posts. As I say, the people on ILM that have added to these debates seem to be coming from a different position from me. So if I want to discuss politics, I need to get rid of assumptions I have, I didn't do that at first. I'm stupid. Anyway back to the music. I think that Massacre live at Meltdown rocks, especially Fred Frith!