David M. Payne

I got this from a US- Iranian Web site that I'm a member of. It may have been here before, but I don't remember it, and I think it bears repeating anyway.

David

The only name was attached to this internet write up was read Armie.

Who is the real writer I have no idea.

Thanks for the friend sending me this.





-----Original Message-----


Dated: Sept. 11, 2002 (1 year after)

No matter what your views on President Bush's statements about an upcoming war, this piece, from an English journalist, is very interesting. Just a word of background for those of you who aren't familiar with the United Kingdom's "Daily Mirror" newspaper. This notoriously left-wing journal normally is not supportive of the Colonials across the Atlantic.

By Tony Parsons for the "Daily Mirror"... September 11, 2002

One year ago, the world witnessed a unique kind of broadcasting - the mass murder of thousands, live on television. As a lesson in the pitiless cruelty of the human race, September 11 was up there with Pol Pot's Mountain of Skulls in Cambodia, or the skeletal bodies stacked like garbage in the Nazi concentration camps. An unspeakable act so cruel, so calculated and so utterly merciless that surely the world could agree on one thing-nobody deserves this fate. Surely there could be consensus: The victims were truly innocent, the perpetrators truly evil. But to the world's eternal shame, 9/11 is increasingly seen as America's comeuppance. Incredibly, anti-Americanism has increased over the last year. There has always been a simmering resentment to the USA in this country [England]; too loud, too rich, too full of themselves, and so much happier than Europeans--but it has become an epidemic. And that seems incredible to me. More than that, it turns my stomach. America is this country's greatest friend and our staunchest ally. We are bonded to the US by culture, language and blood. A little over half a century ago, around half a million Americans died for our freedoms, as well as their own. Have we forgotten so soon? And exactly a year ago, thousands of ordinary men, women and children--not just Americans, but from dozens of countries--were butchered by a small group of religious fanatics. Are we so quick to betray these victims? What touched the heart about those who died in the Twin Towers and on the planes, was that we recognized them. Young fathers and mothers, somebody's son and somebody's daughter, husbands, wives and children, some unborn. And these people brought it on themselves? Their nation is to blame for their meticulously planned slaughter?

These days you don't have to be some dust-encrusted nut job in Kabul or Karachi or Finsbury Park to see America as the Great Satan. The anti-American alliance is made up of self-loathing liberals who blame the Americans for every ill in the Third World, and conservatives suffering from power-envy, bitter that the world's only superpower can do what it likes without having to ask permission. The truth is that America has behaved with enormous restraint since September 11. Remember... remember... remember... the gut-wrenching tapes of weeping men phoning their wives to say, "I love you," before they were burned alive. Remember those people leaping to their deaths from the top of burning skyscrapers. Remember the hundreds of firemen buried alive. Remember the smiling face of that beautiful little girl who was on one of the planes with her mum. Remember... remember... And realize that America has never retaliated for 9/11 in anything like the way it could have. So a few al-Al-Qaeda tourists got locked up without a trial in Camp X-ray? Pass the Kleenex. So some Afghan wedding receptions were shot up after they merrily fired their semiautomatics in a sky full of American planes? A shame but maybe next time they should stick to confetti. AMERICA could have turned a large chunk of the world into a parking lot. That it didn't is a sign of strength. American voices are already being raised against attacking Iraq--that's what a democracy is for. How many in the Islamic world will have a minute's silence for the slaughtered innocents of 9/11? How many Islamic leaders will have the guts to say that the mass murder of 9/11 was an abomination? When the news of 9/11 broke on the West Bank, those freedom-loving Palestinians were dancing in the street. America watched all of that--and America didn't push the button. We should thank the stars that America is the most powerful nation in the world.

I still find it incredible that 9/11 did not provoke all-out war. Not a "war on terrorism." A real war. The fundamentalist dudes are talking about "opening the gates of hell" if America attacks Iraq. Well, America could have opened the gates of hell like you wouldn't believe. The US is the most militarily powerful nation that ever strode the face of the earth. The campaign in Afghanistan may have been less than perfect and the planned war on Iraq may be misconceived. But don't blame America for not bringing peace and light to these wretched countries. How many democracies are there in the Middle East, or in the Muslim world? You can count them on the fingers of one hand - assuming you haven't had any chopped off for minor shoplifting. I love America, yet America is hated. I guess that makes me Bush's poodle. But I would rather be a dog in New York City than a Prince in Riyadh. Above all, America is hated because it is what every country wants to be, rich, free, strong, open, optimistic. Not ground down by the past, or religion, or some caste system. America is the best friend this country ever had and we should start remembering that. Or do you really think the USA is the root of all evil? Tell it to the loved ones of the men and women who leaped to their death from the burning towers. Tell it to the nursing mothers whose husbands died on one of the hijacked planes, or were ripped apart in a collapsing skyscraper. And tell it to the hundreds of young widows whose husbands worked for the New York Fire Department. To our shame, George Bush gets a worse press than Saddam Hussein. Once we were told that Saddam gassed the Kurds, tortured his own people and set up rape-camps in Kuwait. Remember... remember... September 11th. One of the greatest atrocities in human history was committed against America. No, do more than remember: Never forget.

Please pass this on. A lot of people need to read it. Light travels faster than sound. This is why some people appear bright until you hear them speak.

PS; There are a bunch of interesting articles here.

David

Bebbo

Some more background on the "Daily Mirror": it's a sleazy British tabloid that's not the place to go for well thought out comments on anything. Tony Parsons's piece is ill thought out, historically dubious, and stupid.

America isn't the root of all evil, but neither is it -- or any other Western country -- a paragon of virtue either.

--
Dene

Me and Me

How is sept 11 uniqe in the world?

Propaganda is inserted in that piece, probably not consciously though, Example: The mentioning of Pol-Pots crimes when speaking of cambodia, why isn't the american bombing of Cambodia for 5 yrs straight mentioned along with this?
And on the same note, why is it that when mentioning murderous dictators, noone ever commonly mentions Pinochet or Samosa? Why aren't they used as commonly? Because their murders were supported and allowed by the U.S. Saying Stalin, HItler, or Pol Pot, is just parroting info that is the norm and names that trigger emotions that doesn't require knowledge to know what they mean or what they did.

If you kill 3 million vietnamese, kill thousands of cambodians and cause a famine and disrupt the whole of Indochina, and turn latin america into a land of dead corpses, should the U.S. be untouched for all that? No I am not saying the U.S. Deserved it, I am simply stating a fact, you don't murder millions of people and expect that no one will want to get revenge some how.

If the U.S. didn't deserve sept 11, than tell me what they do deserve for their responsiblity in training latin american soldiers in tactics of torture and killing civillians or the many other times the U.S. has destroyed a whole nation.

History will haunt you, whether you learn it or not.

Majestyk

Yeah. Propoganda comes in all forms.

Amen-Moses

Part of the anti-US feeling in the UK has to do with the 30 years of terrorism that we have had to endure which was primarily sponsored from the US!

If the US wanted to really wage a war on terrorism why wasn't their first target the IRA?

Amen-Moses

Warwick

Could you please elaborate on this point? I thought the US was always against the IRA.

David M. Payne

I didn't comment on the author or who he worked for, who wrote it isn't as important as what was said in it, IMHO. I thought it was well said, you don't. We have a difference of opinion, which is OK by me. I think that what went un-said in this world by some is that if the US was as evil as it is made out to be by by them, President Shrub would have done some real damage on a mass scale in the Middle East. We didn't do that, we just went after some bad people. As to how successful we will be long term in this excursion into the Islamic hornets nest, we'll see. What I worry about in all this, is that this is a religious conflict, even if the powers that be deny it. It's the nature of the religious conflicts that are so worrisome. Hot religious wars can last for centuries. 9/11 is just the latest flare up in a war that is as old as the first conflict between the religions of the Abrahamic God. The only way these conflicts will ever be resolved is if the Abrahamic religions are reduced to the status of other impotent superstitions, and I don't see that happening any time soon.

Shrub called this a "crusade" early in his discussions about this war on terror in Iraq. I think in his heart he thinks this is a "just crusade" against Islamic terror. I think that he has millions of Christians around the world who agree with him in their hearts. Many millions in Islam think that Bush meant just what he said, it really is a Christian crusade against their religion and way of life. These guys are still mad about the last crusade. (1095 to the mid thirteenth century.) I don't worry so much about a war of a few years, but this could end up in an unconventional worldwide terrorist war that lasts for decades. And a war with chemical, biological perhaps even nuclear WMD.

Humanity had, in the last few centuries, moved most of the world wide religious conflicts that had resulted in wars to secular conflicts among different political ideologies. That�s pretty much gone with the dominance of capitalism and democratically based governance. Well religious conflict is back big time as 9/11 and Afghanistan and Iraq show. (Though I think it got hot again for us in Beirut in 83 with the barracks bombings that killed over 300 American and French troops.) As the old saying goes, those who ignore history are doomed to repeat it. This time I fear the religious zealots will have WMD, and some of the really fundamentalist zealots wouldn't mind wiping out every other person on the planet who disagrees with them. And of course God is on their side and will protect them, just ask them. With the advent of computerized biological weapons labs small enough to fit in a large bedroom or the back of a truck, and still big enough to develop something like the SARS virus, I fear the long-term biological danger more than anything else.

These are indeed interesting times we live in.

David

PS Hi J. M&M. I'm not interested in turning this into a bash the US, capitalism and everything they stand for thread. If you would like one of those, go start your own thread and play on it.

David M. Payne

I think he means that some Irish American Catholics have supported the IRA with a lot of money and other support and the US government hasn't stopped it. (That's hard to do in a democracy with a lot of personel freedoms.) I work with a nice Irish Catholic guy and he thinks that Irish terrorism isn't terrorism, its, you know, different, God is on their side, yadda yadda yadda.

David

Bebbo

The American government doesn't have a problem restricting support for terrorist groups now.

--
Dene

Loren Pechtel

They get donations from Irish-Americans, however, and the government hasn't done enough to crack down on it.