Xah Lee's Unixism

[Greg Menke]

Bulent Murtezaoglu <bm at acm.org> writes:

> Soo, another lisper cannot resist the temptation.  
> 
> >>>>> "GM" == Greg Menke <gregm-news at toadmail.com> writes:
> [...]
>     GM> They're pretty convinced of that already- after all Dubya
>     GM> called this a crusade from day 1.  [...]
> 
> In all fairness I think that was plain dumbness in use of langauge.
> He didn't mean a crusade in the historic sense.  Even if he thinks it,
> that was nothing more than an unfortunate choice of words.  I am 99%
> sure of this as I vividly remeber my jaw dropping when I saw him say
> it in the window to the left of the one I was reading this very
> newsgroup in.  The men in that family are not good public speakers 
> and they seem to have trouble expressing themselves to reporters.  
> I see no malice in that.

You may or may not be right about the dumbness of language, but thats
not germane.  What is important are the conclusions people in the
middle east draw from it.

> 
> [...]
>     GM> I'm not vastly fond of Dubya Sr., but I think he did the right
>     GM> things in Iraq; he was a better president than his son in all
>     GM> respects.
> 
> He was, but the Iraq thing wasn't done right back then either.  Of
> course it is easy to say this with hindsight, but saving a shiekdom
> and a kingdom while ending up in a position where you cross your
> fingers that Saddam supresses uprisings w/o too much visible carnage
> is not a good outcome.  Maintaining a state of embargo against, as it
> turned out, the people of Iraq indefinitely was not a good option
> either.
> 
> It is one of those cases where it's pretty clear that any obvious
> option is not good, but it is not clear what the right thing to do is.
> Had it been possible to leave the region alone after (or indeed
> during) WW-I, some reasonably stable state of affairs might have
> emerged.  Actually, this is not unlike the Balkans.  There, oil was
> not in the equation but once Tito was gone, things that should have
> happened between the Balkan wars and maybe 1950's ended up happening
> in the 90s with much bloodshed and no clean ending (think Kosovo).


What if what if what if.  The problem is we're stuck in a hugely
expensive, poorly planned and strategically stupid situation.  We
weren't before we invaded.

 
> Presumably the people who get elected to positions of power are called
> leaders because they are supposed to have better ideas and visions on
> these things than us geeks do.  That has clearly not been the case so
> far.

To be sure. 


> 9/11 seems to have gotten rid of any chance of sane action by the US in 
> the region, anyway.  So basically the problem is no longer how the 
> civilized and reasonably free world will exert its influence in the 
> middle east, but how the world can try to influence the lone superpower 
> so it doesn't do too much damage to itself and the rest of the world.
> Now that, I suspect, could have been prevented had the influential 
> people in the states (be it the press, the congress, whatever) showed 
> some backbone.

One problem with the situation was Dubya & Co succeeded in strongly
hinting that disagreement was akin to treason.  There was simply no
policital room for debate after 9/11.  Bush was well on his way to
sinking into his own incompetence by September 2001- the incompetence
hasn't changed, but he sure got his mandate to Do Something.

Gregm