unjust war
Jun. 8th, 2006 04:27 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
ricardienneI can't stand the local paper. The editorial page may be getting slightly less hardcore Republican, but the letters to the editor (which, granted are probably selected for their inflammatory content) and the columnists seem to be getting worse. If, heaven forbid, the governor tries to get the legislature to, say, actually fund the STATE Universities, we get a million complaints about how Arizona is turning into a communist state, and the next thing you know, we'll all have to stand in lines just to get bread. And then there was the kerfluffle about Sears making PA announcements in English and Spanish (the solution is to boycott this "treasonous" department store). Not to mention the proposed lynchings of Hillary Clinton and John Murtha which seem to show up every couple of days. And so Clay Thompson's Valley 101 column ends up being the most reasonable thing in the entire section:
I have been reading 1491 by Charles C. Mann. I'm a little late in getting around to this, because it came out last year. But there you have it.
It's all about what the New World must have been like before Columbus showed up.
Did you know that some people think that around the time the earliest European settlements got going as much as 90 percent of the people of some New World cultures might have died off from diseases such as smallpox or measles and so forth introduced by offshore fishermen or the early explorers? Geez.
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Anyway, you should read this book. It's interesting.
Now let's move on to today's cultural dilemma.
"I often see Americans cut with the knife, place it on the back of the plate, switch the fork from left to right hand and eat. Being British, I eat using both knife and fork in the logical way for which they were designed. When did Americans decide this was not their idea of etiquette?"
British, huh? Well, I hope while you're here you're speaking English and not British.
English is supposed to be our official language, you know, and we don't want any foreigners like you corrupting it or singing the national anthem in British or something like that.
I suppose I could complain, but I guess we need you people for low-paying tea-and-crumpets jobs or whatever it is British immigrants do when they get here.
There are a bunch of ideas about why Americans eat by cutting food with the fork in the left hand and knife in the right and then putting down the knife and switching the fork to the right hand. This is the one I found most often.
The introduction of the fork in Europe was a slow process and an even slower process in the New World. As the fork became popular in Britain, knife tips became rounded rather than pointed for spearing the meat and the knife sensibly moved from the right hand to the left so the fork could do the spearing from the right.
However, we New World bumpkins were still trying to emulate the zigzag method of our more refined British cousins, as opposed to just picking up a hunk of food and gnawing on it like my masters at a free buffet.
So we were still trying to catch up to the knife-fork switcheroo method when the British jumped ahead to a more practical style.
And we just never quite got around to changing our style even if it is silly.
Heehee.
David Brooks was his usually disgusting self today, arguing, although not actually coming out and saying, even though it was clear what he meant, that the only way to "win" Iraq for the population of basically decent Iraquis is to let our soldiers commit whatever atrocities are needed in order to get the job done:
Similarly, in our debates at home we are searching for ways to exercise enough power to defeat the insurgents while still behaving in accordance with our national conscience. We are seeking a sweet spot that satisfies both the demands of power and of principle. But it could be that given the circumstances we have allowed the insurgents to create, that sweet spot no longer exists.
* * * * *
One of the paradoxes of this war is that when U.S. forces commit atrocities, we regard it as a defeat for us because we have betrayed our ideals. When insurgents commit atrocities, it is also a defeat for us because of our ineffectiveness in the face of the enemy. Either way, morale suffers and the fighting spirit withers away.
And so the hunger to leave Iraq grows. A dissenting minority is furious that so many Americans are willing to betray the decent Iraqi majority in order to preserve some parlor purity. And the terrorists no doubt look at our qualms not as a sign of virtue but of weakness, and as evidence that savagery will lead to victory again and again.
What the hell? I've been making fun of the "refresher course in ethics" that the army is sending its soldiers through in the wake of Abu Ghraib and Haditha. But maybe it's actually needed. Since when are human rights and human decency "some parlor purity." Or does this mean that moral behavior is the privelege of the Enlightened West? Either way: OH MY GOODNESS DAVID BROOKS WHAT IS WRONG WITH YOU?
I have been reading 1491 by Charles C. Mann. I'm a little late in getting around to this, because it came out last year. But there you have it.
It's all about what the New World must have been like before Columbus showed up.
Did you know that some people think that around the time the earliest European settlements got going as much as 90 percent of the people of some New World cultures might have died off from diseases such as smallpox or measles and so forth introduced by offshore fishermen or the early explorers? Geez.
advertisement
Anyway, you should read this book. It's interesting.
Now let's move on to today's cultural dilemma.
"I often see Americans cut with the knife, place it on the back of the plate, switch the fork from left to right hand and eat. Being British, I eat using both knife and fork in the logical way for which they were designed. When did Americans decide this was not their idea of etiquette?"
British, huh? Well, I hope while you're here you're speaking English and not British.
English is supposed to be our official language, you know, and we don't want any foreigners like you corrupting it or singing the national anthem in British or something like that.
I suppose I could complain, but I guess we need you people for low-paying tea-and-crumpets jobs or whatever it is British immigrants do when they get here.
There are a bunch of ideas about why Americans eat by cutting food with the fork in the left hand and knife in the right and then putting down the knife and switching the fork to the right hand. This is the one I found most often.
The introduction of the fork in Europe was a slow process and an even slower process in the New World. As the fork became popular in Britain, knife tips became rounded rather than pointed for spearing the meat and the knife sensibly moved from the right hand to the left so the fork could do the spearing from the right.
However, we New World bumpkins were still trying to emulate the zigzag method of our more refined British cousins, as opposed to just picking up a hunk of food and gnawing on it like my masters at a free buffet.
So we were still trying to catch up to the knife-fork switcheroo method when the British jumped ahead to a more practical style.
And we just never quite got around to changing our style even if it is silly.
Heehee.
David Brooks was his usually disgusting self today, arguing, although not actually coming out and saying, even though it was clear what he meant, that the only way to "win" Iraq for the population of basically decent Iraquis is to let our soldiers commit whatever atrocities are needed in order to get the job done:
Similarly, in our debates at home we are searching for ways to exercise enough power to defeat the insurgents while still behaving in accordance with our national conscience. We are seeking a sweet spot that satisfies both the demands of power and of principle. But it could be that given the circumstances we have allowed the insurgents to create, that sweet spot no longer exists.
* * * * *
One of the paradoxes of this war is that when U.S. forces commit atrocities, we regard it as a defeat for us because we have betrayed our ideals. When insurgents commit atrocities, it is also a defeat for us because of our ineffectiveness in the face of the enemy. Either way, morale suffers and the fighting spirit withers away.
And so the hunger to leave Iraq grows. A dissenting minority is furious that so many Americans are willing to betray the decent Iraqi majority in order to preserve some parlor purity. And the terrorists no doubt look at our qualms not as a sign of virtue but of weakness, and as evidence that savagery will lead to victory again and again.
What the hell? I've been making fun of the "refresher course in ethics" that the army is sending its soldiers through in the wake of Abu Ghraib and Haditha. But maybe it's actually needed. Since when are human rights and human decency "some parlor purity." Or does this mean that moral behavior is the privelege of the Enlightened West? Either way: OH MY GOODNESS DAVID BROOKS WHAT IS WRONG WITH YOU?
