h2g2 The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy: Earth Edition

From what i have read in this conversation group, no one has any sort of clear viewpoint on why this happened. A few ideas have been brought up, mostly vague and definetly without merit.

What happened in the united states this week was a result of every major economic system in the history of the planet:
The rich got to rich and the poor got too poor
the rich being the u.s. and the poor being the downtrodden agressors of the middle east.

Go read "The Good Earth" by pearl s. buck for further insight.

Lucky Bri, simulpost. I was replying to the post above yours. The one from Uber Phreak

Shoe, check out the Bring Back Bill thread for discussions on causes for the tragedy

Loony... must sign off as its beddy byes time on this side of the planet.
Enjoyed the chat, catch up again soon.
My thoughts are with those who lost their loved ones.
TTFN

ShoeEventHorizon, if no-one else has any sort of clear viewpoint on why this happened then I suggest it's extremely unlikely you do either. There are many plausible reasons why people from the Middle East might wish to attack America, but that doesn't mean the people who actually carried out the attacks did it for any of those reasons.

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Well, the world will not turn its back on the US..

I just heard this situation has been officially classed as an affair for NATO.

We're all in this together, folks

Peace

but, currently, we are the only superpower.... are we not?

Hello all. I am an American, and I have spent the last couple hours reading all of the posts on this topic. I have been earnestly trying to understand why this tragedy has occurred. Reading everyone's messages, whether I agreed with them or not, has helped me better understand how a group of people could resort to this sort of act. There is obviously a lot of hatred/resentment of America in the world, some of it perhaps deserving.

Nevertheless, I feel a bit helpless as to what to do about this hatred. As I see it, America has 4 choices in dealing with foreign conflicts. Let's take the Israeli/Palestinian conflict as an example. Our choices are: 1. Side with the Israelis. 2. Side with the Palestinians. 3. Do nothing. 4. Try to be the objective 3rd party and broker peace. If we do #1 or #2, we will likely make an enemy of whoever we don't side with (imagine if we sided with the Palestinians - would the Israelis feel any different then than the Palestinians do now? Unlikely). That enemy may eventually decide to seek retribution from us, perhaps by killing innocent Americans. If we choose #3, we allow two groups of people to fight it out, with one likely winning at the complete expense of the other, regardless of which side is "right" (yes, "right" is a pretty difficult thing to determine, which is certainly part of the reason that a lot of people would probably advocate this choice). Doing #4 seems perhaps to be the best solution, but here's the problem: both sides, in all of these conflicts, appear to think they are ABSOLUTELY in the right. They appear to be unwilling to make any compromise at all (yes, perhaps that's a generalization, but it seems, from what I've read and heard, to be fairly accurate). Brokering peace necessitates that at least one side (more likley both) make compromises. In the end, we run serious risk of making enemies out of either or both groups because neither side is likely to be satisfied with any sort of compromise.

So my question is: What do we do? If we choose sides, we risk having a large portion of the international community hate us. Brokering peace may have the same eventual effect as the choosing sides. Doing nothing could lead to the type of threats that we were facing with WWII, where one group of people decided they were going to push their military advantage as far as they could. Even if it doesn't lead to that extreme of a situation, are we in any way obligated (morally or otherwise) to do what we can to prevent 1 group of people from committing atrocities against another?

In the immediate term, my ideal solution is to hunt down the particular group of people that committed these acts and then "deal with them" in whatever way we can, hopefully peacefully. Unfortunately, there is a great likelihood that other innocent people will be destroyed in that process, and that's a pretty tough thing to defend at this point. Regardless, though, it is the long term that bothers me. How do we, as Americans, prevent this sort of thing from happening again? And I don't mean how do we make sure people don't hijack planes - I mean how do we go about fixing our relationships with these people so that they no longer WANT to hijack our planes? I don't have any great solutions, but it seems like that should be our goal, doesn't it?

One last thing: I strongly believe that America's foreign policy is guided more by a desire for world peace and fairness than a desire to preserve our political and economical interests. Perhaps you will think I am ignorant/brainwashed, but the fact is that people in this country rarely (if ever) defend their foreign policy opinions with "it will get us richer".

Good luck to you all. I think this is an excellent forum and I'm grateful to be a part of it.

Bombadil, a Solomon-like solution would be to resettle the Israelis in Nevada. They have proven they can turn sand into gold.

In reply to the gee we are wonderful, "God bless - cheap oil for all - America" posting a little further back, New Zealand and Australian service people fought side-by-side with America in Vietnam - to our everlasting shame. We have also been at America's side in all the other 20th century hot spots.

It was mainly through a disaster spookily similar to the current tragedy that America become the dominant world economic force it is today

Pearl Harbour awoke a sleeping giant.

At the end of World war 2, because the mainland had not been devastated and because of the infrastructure now available through the massive war-time retooling, America was in a position to sell and supply the materials needed to rebuild Europe and Japan. This meant full employment and the accumulation of the billions of dollars needed to turn small (in 1941) American companies into massive world-leading ones through the 50s, 60s and 70s.

Cherry-picking immigration policies and splendid salaries ensured the top brains from Europe and elsewhere were attracted to stateside universities.

I could go on

I’ve seen several points made in this forum, some of which I applaud, some of which I thumb my nose against.

• World’s Policemen: Americans perceive themselves as the policemen of the world, beginning with WWI and the destruction of the Lusitania. Why? America is the only country in the world that contains a large sampling of every nationality. We feel a kinship to the rest of the world that other countries don’t share, and an obligation to protect it because of that kinship. Much has been said about America poking its nose in where it doesn’t belong, but I believe that none of the countries that received aid after WWII are complaining. Things aren’t as cut and dried any more. We don’t have a huge symbol like Hitler to fight against; now we have the spectres of communism and terrorism. Vietnam was a misguided attempt to keep democracy in Vietnam alive. That war was based upon the notion that the political system of democracy was intrinsically good, and communism intrinsically bad. We never intended to win that war, and our involvement was a show of force to the Russians. The Gulf War was necessary. When a leader of a Middle Eastern country invades another country with rich oil resources, it’s a signal that he plans to acquire goods and services with the resources that he would have gained from the invasion - much like Germany in WWI and Russia in the Cold War. The involvement of America with the Israelis was wrong. This wasn’t a war with sides that could be clearly defined. There are too many people on both sides with a solid claim to the territory in question, and the damages are too great for either side to swallow anything as peaceful as a treaty. Too much hatred. But how could anybody stand aside and not try to help? Rather like the civil wars in Kosovo and Serbia. Why we kept funding them is something I can’t answer, but the people that blame America for funding Israel should be angry at Israel for wasting American money on bombs.

• Terrorist attacks to send a message: any civilized nation (in the history of the world!) has traditionally attacked the *military* organizations, and left the civilians alone. Individuals in the military don’t want to be killed, but at least it’s something that they plan for, and accept as a possibility. The attack was against the center of capitalism, the World Trade Center, which was full of innocent civilians. None of those people expected or wanted to die for a cause. Whatever message they had planned to send, I refuse to listen. Any ideology that does not respect the value of human life has no ideals that I would care to hear.

• American Big Business and sweatshop exploitation: Much has been said about the evils of Nike, Reebok, and McDonald’s. These big corporations aren’t really American any more. Their products are made in China, assembled in Mexico, and painted in Thailand. The only American involvement is in the advertising. I resent the fact that other countries allow them to operate their businesses without asking them to comply with local labor laws and pollution controls. Instead of blaming American businesses for operating in countries with lower labor costs, blame the countries that allow their lands to be raped in the name of money.

• Our beloved president: I'm personally in what Hunter S. Thompson would call 'the Big Sweat' over our current leader. I didn't vote for him. The majority of the American people didn't vote for him. But one thing that I am proud of is that our country DOES NOT engage in propaganda about how great our leader is. There are no fifty-foot posters of his beady little eyes and slack mouth gracing the buildings of downtown Washington, D.C. We don't have parades where we hail our gracious leader and saviour of the people. It just doesn't happen. One thing Americans are is pragmatic. Perhaps too pragmatic, because non-Americans come away with the perception that our president is a drooling alcoholic idiot, and Bill Clinton was a criminal. This is what happens when you have two opposing political parties with no qualms about throwing a little mud. So the two terms of Clinton were marred by the frantic efforts of the Republicans to dig up some dirt - any dirt - on the man; it's a little sad that all they could come up with is some marital transgression. Now the Democrats are sneering at our current president because he's a redneck with a low GPA. The real fact of the matter is that the president is just a symbol of the country. He doesn't do anything important. The reason one exists is because ol' George Washington refused to be made king, and they wanted a figurehead for America; somebody they could point to and say 'There's our leader!' I do wish that somebody besides Bush was in office right now, but in the long run, it won't make any difference.

Well, there's my opinions. And you know what they say about opinions, right? (Ewww... what's that smell?)

- Lentilla

Lentilla I disagree with the point you make in line.... Just joking

You argue your point lucidly and well. As with most world-citizens, I admire genuine patriotism that doesn't descend into self-praising jingoism.

Now if only we could get the TV channels to stop playing that awful dirge, God Bless Cheap Oil

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Uber phreak, in the context of this century, the term "superpower" has no meaning.

Randy, what you have put up was posted earlier. It was removed by the moderators, possibly because of copyright issues.

My post about NZ and Australia was a response to the earlier posting

I'm sure I've seen that broadcast quoted somewhere else on h2g2 today. It is from 1973 and I can't see that it has anything to do with the current situation. The give away is the reference to "Boeing Jumbo Jet, the Lockheed Tri-Star, or the Douglas DC10"

Bombadil, with regard to foreign policy, it's certainly true that no-one ever says "it will get us richer", but that doesn't mean they don't think it, and there's certainly no shortage of people asking similar but less overtly self-interested questions such as "this is costing us a lot, isn't it?". World peace and fairness do play a large part in US foreign policy, but it doesn't outweigh all other concerns: if it did then America would have responded in the same way to China's invasion of Tibet as it did to Iraq's invasion of Kuwait. Then again, it's not just America who looks at the balance sheet before acting - everyone else does it too - and as in other areas, America's policy on Israel is swayed from the egalitarian ideal by less lofty considerations. The most farcical demonstration of this occurred last year when footage of Hillary Clinton hugging Suha Arafat (Yasser's wife) and having previously said that it would be nice if the Palestinians had their own country too became major issues in the New York senatorial campaign.

As for stopping people from wanting to attack America, it's probably an impossible goal in the same way that stopping a few Americans from wanting to assassinate the President is unachievable. That shouldn't stop you from trying, but it's certainly worth bearing in mind that your country's position in the world dictates that by dint of action or inaction someone somewhere will always be resentful enough to try causing America harm.

Lentilla, I wouldn't disagree with you on much of what you say (more or less ), but if you've ever watched the ovation Presidents get at the State of the Union address, it's hard to believe they all deserve that much credit.

Randy & LÒÒnytunes, the post almost certainly will get moderated away, so I've added a link to Gordon Sinclair's script to my list of links, which won't

I am a Muslim and would like to share my thoughts in this discussion. Being Muslim, we are surprised at the reaction of US for making Muslims responsible for this violent action. US is the super power at the moment and is expected to behave like “super”. Lots of rationality is required to blaming Muslims for such destructive action that seems missing at present, If it was just suspicions, then why not Israel or Japan, etc?

Secondly, we believe that US people are calm and democratic, but present reactions towards Muslims residing in US and insecurity they are facing these days indicate as it was just deception. US residents are as aggressive and violent as people of any other nation whose human rights are being violated. Aggression of Muslims in Palestine, Kashmir, earlier in Bosnia, Chechnya, etc may be now understandable for the Christians and Jews….

Third, I would like to attract the attention of Europeans towards the reaction of the public of Islamic countries in general and of Palestinian particularly on this sad event when they celebrated the day whereas the leadership condole and condemn the incident. There is a lesson in that if European intellectuals and US scholars pay attention to it.

Fourth, I would like to add that it is not enough just to say that we are the super power, best of human being, have strong economy, etc, all the people and countries should bow down to us. If developed countries like to make people of present era, either Muslims or non-Muslims as SLAVES they should to be more realistic in their thinking and approach. Leadership with justice is a big challenge for present developed world, otherwise they might get same reactions from all those are suffering in this era, either Muslims or no-Muslims.

I am a Muslim and would like to share my thoughts in this discussion. Being Muslim, we are surprised at the reaction of US for making Muslims responsible for this violent action. US is the super power at the moment and is expected to behave like super. Lots of rationality is required to blaming Muslims for such destructive action that seems missing at present, If it was just suspicions, then why not Israel or Japan, etc?

Secondly, we believe that US people are calm and democratic, but present reactions towards Muslims residing in US and insecurity they are facing these days indicate as it was just deception. US residents are as aggressive and violent as people of any other nation whose human rights are being violated. Aggression of Muslims in Palestine, Kashmir, earlier in Bosnia, Chechnya, etc may be now understandable for the Christians and Jews.

Third, I would like to attract the attention of Europeans towards the reaction of the public of Islamic countries in general and of Palestinian particularly on this sad event when they celebrated the day whereas the leadership condole and condemn the incident. There is a lesson in that if European intellectuals and US scholars pay attention to it.

Fourth, I would like to add that it is not enough just to say that we are the super power, best of human being, have strong economy, etc, all the people and countries should bow down to us. If developed countries like to make people of present era, either Muslims or non-Muslims as SLAVES they should to be more realistic in their thinking and approach. Leadership with justice is a big challenge for present developed world, otherwise they might get same reactions from all those are suffering in this era, either Muslims or no-Muslims.

Researcher 184880, no-one's suggesting that the Muslim people as a whole are either responsible or intrinsically predisposed to carrying out such attacks, but given that several of the hijackers have been identified and that they are all Muslims from the Middle East, it's not unreasonable to assume that this might have some bearing on the situation.

The attacks on Muslims in America are, of course, reprehensible. Unfortunately the USA is no more free of idiots than any other country and the vast majority of Americans would be much happier if they were all in jail right now.

Not at all