WUI (Writing under the influence)

My question for peace mongers on GroveNet sparked a small controversy. First I received these two replies from the usual suspect: the Peace Studies Prof and his wife. First, the wife:

It is possible that the reason you don't already know an answer to your "question," or that you even have the "question," because of your habit of labeling people good or bad, up or down, always or never.

Think about it: There is logic in shades of gray.

Peace is a good thing. Someone who speaks out hatefully against people who are pro-peace should be suspect in a society. Disagreement on a few issues about how to go about peace (as one example) makes sense ... But using the word "peace" in a disparaging way against someone personally?!!

It is almost a certainty that you will respond to my response with more vitriol and hate, which you just can't seem to get rid of ... at least here on GroveNet.

Move past the personal hate, which you seem to have for some unknown reason, in singling out my husband and others of us who have less selfish philosophies of life. It does no one any good when you get personally hateful here.

I thought about writing you a personal email to discuss things with you. But since you like disparaging my husband and "peace mongers" personally, in public on GroveNet, I thought it only fair for the rest of GroveNet to see how I feel, too.

As I've said before, we would come to your defense in 1st Amendment matters (and others), even if you would not do the same for us.

"First they came for the Jews and I did not speak out because I was not a Jew.
Then they came for the Communists and I did not speak out because I was not a Communist.
Then they came for the trade unionists and I did not speak out because I was not a trade unionist.
Then they came for me and there was no one left to speak out for me."

Pastor Martin Niem?ller

That is ALL I have to say to you ... until any time ou show more decency to me and mine.

And then the husband:

I am quite familiar with having to deal with people who are prone to violence, verbal or otherwise, people who see only one rigid world view, people who have a difficult time empathizing with others, attack dog type people, people who are entirely lacking in dialogic skills...yes, I know them pretty well. We study them in Peace Studies.

Responses so far on this thread have pretty much covered the issue. The questioner was not showing up on G-Net when 9/11 happened. So, he missed my posting that day, the one that dealt with symmetrical and asymmetrical warfare. I took the wild guess back then that the US would not take three airliners, fill them with people, and start looking for tall Islamic buildings to crash into.

But the events that have unfolded since the attack, with fifteen people from Saudi Arabia among the nineteen terrorists, have demonstrated that we have tried to apply symmetrical warfare principles...with the exception that we chose to target Afghanistan and Iraq rather than Saudi Arabia. Probably too much Halliburton influence there anyway, right?

So, we have spent hundreds of billions of dollars in these two excursions, clamped down on our own freedoms, lost nearly 2,000 good young people, killed over 100,000 Afghanis and Iraqis, all the while failing to accomplish the mission and failing to find Osama Bin Forgotten. We are also seeing daily proof that our force structure is
ill-designed for responses beyond a certain limited range of thinking and planning.

Great track record.

Negotiation is beside the point at this juncture. What we have failed to do, miserably, is recognize that when we exploit people mercilessly, ruthlessly, while supporting tin horn dictators at virtually every opportunity...resentments will build up. One of my children is adopted, from Chile. When he arrived in the US in the spring of 1980, as a seven-month old, he was in terrible, terrible physical condition. Now, six years before he was born, a CIA-backed "insurgency" (ha! How
ironic, that word), assassinated the popular, populist and duly-elected leader of Chile, Salvador Allende, and replaced him with the brutal military figure, Augusto Pinochet, who promptly led the country into a terrible economic stagnation (per capita annual income then in Chile was $150) supported by horrifically repressive and violent tactics against any form of dissent. We backed this criminal to the hilt. So, when I held my child in my arms for the first time at PDX, I knew he was tiny and underfed, but I should also have been making the connections between
the CIA and his systemic physical ailments. How many children from that Santiago orphanage were also developmentally disadvantaged because of US policies that supported dictators? How many such children around the world suffer because of our policies, practices, and open arms for dictators?

Well, that sickly child grew up to be quite a fine young man and he is beginning to make his contribution to society. He will do well. Others may not be so lucky.

I believe we need to rethink our priorities totally. Instead of economic colonization and extravagant military expenditures, we would win countless more friends and reduce the number of violent mullahs and the cause they serve if we supported true democratic reforms (not like the tissue-thin reforms in Iraq, with more than 100 stipulations that guarantee Halliburton and the like total control in important areas...see Paul Bremer's directives), invested in economic infrastructure reforms that would lead to an enhanced standard of living, helped countries with large national debts get out of that vicious cycle (we are headed there quickly with Bush's idiotic policies), and reduced world-wide military expenditures...which drain national resources without adding true security.

Shalom.

I will comment on both replies later. The end result however is that I've decided to take a break from posting on GroveNet. There is no rational debate with people who label other people all the time and than turn around and accuse me of labeling them. There is no rational debate with people who use so called 'hate speech' in every sentence they write and then turn around and accuse me of spewing hate in my posts for simply attacking the policies they advocate. I challenge them to find one instance when I attacked one of them personally. On the other hand, there are countless posts where words like Fascists, Nazis and imperialists are hurled at certain Christians and, in general, at people who voted for Bush and support his policies.