aghogday wrote:
Before 9/11, I could never understand how the nation of Germany could have supported the holocaust effort, that was justified by perceived differences in another group of human beings.
But, to that point the largest sense of nation I had, was supporting a football team, another religious like source of fulfilling the tribal instinct.
The US had never been unified on a common enemy or cause my entire life. I missed World War II.
9/11 provided my first real sense of nation, and while I could see through the action on Iraq as some others could, the sense of patriotism closed down the process of logic for an entire nation, that would have otherwise made an unprovoked attack on another nation, impossible.
Interesting.
Were you around for any of the McCarthy stuff or the start of Vietnam?
I tend to have an impression of US politics that the end of the Vietnam Adventure is really where the Rep/Dem parties staked out their turf and have never hugged since. I know the deal with god later on really sent the Rep's off into wilderness never to return, but that seems to me where the seeds were sown.
Was the anti communist era, not national enough for you?
From the outside looking at the post 9/11 psychology of the US it seemed very split personality.
One minute a furious rage ready to nuke any fecker back to the stone age the next all peace and love, muslims are nice, Islam is peace, KILL KILL KILL, la la la, have you met my Saudi friend?
Must have been easy in WWII to be able to point to a map and say 'this who the evil people are, hate them!'.
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I have no idea if the people in the UK, have a sense of nation; it is lost again in the US, and it will likely take another significant attack on US soil, for it to rise again, however, as proven time and time again in the past, the consequences of patriotism are not always logical and can be deadly for those who fall victim to it.
No nation in Europe has any sense of nation any more. In all seriousness if a US democrat showed up here running for office showing the same level of national patriotism he would be run out of town for being fascist.
In the US your national story is one of freedom and nation building, it's constructive and wholesome.
In Europe we don't have that luxury, our histories are written in each other's blood back into the mist of time. Prior to the 20th century if you look at the detailed histories of Europe you will run out of records before you find a single year where some bunch of Europeans were not invading and killing another bunch of Europeans.
The second European countries press the national patriotism button, someone will go and invade Poland and things get messy.
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However, one thing I know for sure, is that they have a sense of tribe/nation in middle eastern muslim nations. As they do in the Jewish nation of Israel. A common enemy has always been visible.
Their expression of religion is intertwined in that sense of tribe/nation, but as proven in other countries, a belief in a diety is not a requirement for a sense of tribe/nation or the resulting patriotism that can lead to consequences to others that are not always merited.
The video in the first post reflects the tribal instinct to focus on a common enemy, but if one has encountered Muslims real life, and felt no danger, as is often the case in the US, it's pretty hard to convince one that Islam itself is the the actual cause of so many problems in the world.
The bible has just as much, if not more nasty stuff in it than the Koran and while the religious right in the US do a fine job of indoctrinating obedient closed minded zealots, they lack the hatred, willingness to die and focus from near birth that the Wahabbis have so successfully unleashed on the world.
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I encountered hundreds of Saudi nationals on a military base, under a federal contract for training. This was back in the days when Bin Laden was an ally of the US in fighting the Russians, and the only middle eastern enemy the US had known was Iran. If they hated Americans this group hid it well.
They were as peaceful and polite of a group of individuals that I had ever come across. What was the most striking element was the we of their cultural ways. Almost the polar opposite of the me culture of the US.
During the attack of 9/11, almost 10 years after I met these folks, I was shocked to find out the pilots where almost entirely of Saudi origin.
They were apparently part of a group that had succumbed to their own cultural version of patriotism mixed with religious beliefs. Not entirely different from the results in America that ensued, in part, from the a new common experience of National Patriotism after the attack.
There are negative and positive aspects of everyway of life; it's comforting to think that one has found the right one, to the exclusion of others. But, the way of life for one that follows Islam evidences itself in positive ways as well as negative ways, similiar to all other ways of life.
You could have said the same thing about the British and their stiff upper lip, obsession with gardening charm in times gone by. It didn't mean that come WWI hundreds of thousands of young men weren't eager to throw their lives away climbing over the trenches. Can you imagine the mindset it takes to suffer 60,000 casualties in a single day and carry on a war for years?
You could say the same about the Japanese with their similar obsessions with politeness, formality and tea but come WWII they were as fanatical as it can get.
The problem with Islamic extremism is that it was really stoked up again by Pakistan asking Saudi to provide it with madrassas to train fanatics to fight India. When the USSR entered Afghanistan the madrassas were used to train fanatics to fight the evil empire, only now with super duper CIA training upgrades. When the USSR left these guys got completely abandoned. Back in Saudi the royal family was facing a bit of a rebellion from the clerics because of their liberal behaviour so the clerics got the schools to placate them and the royal family went conservative.
Fast forward a few years and you have battle hardened fanatics with CIA upgrades wondering around very pissed off with a score to settle and a sh** load of pampered fanatics coming out of Saudi schools.
Bang, 9/11.
Oddly enough the USSR warned the US not to leave these guys running around the place when they withdrew from Afghanistan, but the advice was ignored. Doh!
Chuck the internet into this equation and suddenly any pissed off wannabe can become a jihadi warrior and any old warlord has a blueprint for a standard issue jihadi army willing to do his bidding, motivational videos of americans blowing up comes free.
'Winning the war' against Islamic extremism is like trying to stop people downloading the latest trendy music album...
Now as we limp away from Afghanistan, the Taliban will claim that not only did it defeat and destroy the USSR it also defeated and bankrupted the USA. Give it a decade and 9/11 round two is going to happen.
I was born in time for Vietnam, and the divisive nature of the country that ensused after that point.
Before Iraq and the 24 hour news cycle, the 70's and 80's were a time of self-indulgence that continues, I'm not sure if the thought of nation crossed many minds, except for those that lived in previous generations.
The politics of 9/11 presented the split personality. The hated Al Quaeda in Iraq, that no one seemed to be able to put their finger on, and George W holding hands with an Oil Sheik from Saudia Arabia. The patriotism lasted long enough to get George W. a second term. Embellished terror threats were no longer necessary.
Interesting points on Europe; I try to present an objective viewpoint, but there is nowhere I would have rather of lived. The US has been isolated from real conflicts on our soil, unlike most countries in the world. I really can't imagine the other reality; 9/11 only brought a small taste of what some experience for a lifetime.
Bin laden predicted the reaction of the US to 9/11, as a slow bleeding of the US from within; even the conservatives right wing talk show hosts, in the US, are acknowledging now that the US fell into the trap that was set for them, and in effect Bin laden was correct.
The US is already ripe for another attack; terror attacks are as far from people's minds here, as they have been at any point in time, although thorough analysis by experts, provide the potential that it could realistically happen at any moment.
There is no telling what the result could be. But if the attack is as significant as 9/11, I wouldn't put a nuclear response, out of the realm of possibility. I suspect Iran could be the target of convenience this time, hopefully an alternate source of attack other than a nuclear one will be used, a scenario like this happened in the near future.
21 Mar 2012, 7:20 pm
