Inauguration Speech 2005
If the speech was a surprise, you haven't be reading your Rummel.
When both sides of a debate agree (Clinton and Bush), the policy is set and the direction clear.
World peace without world domination is entirely possible. The path to it is clear. What remains is to prove it.
When both sides of a debate agree (Clinton and Bush), the policy is set and the direction clear.
World peace without world domination is entirely possible. The path to it is clear. What remains is to prove it.
posted by joseph at 3:18:00 PM
2 Comments:
I see you read Rummel. I left this comment over there but I don't think you saw it.
"Hey ModDem,
You might find this link interesting as realted to Iraqi WMDs;
http://128.121.186.47/ISSA/reports/Libya/Jan3004.htm
An explaination is offered as to why the Iraqi-Libya WMD program got buried."
Also you might like what this Iraqi bloger has to say about the "resistance";
http://hammorabi.blogspot.com/
What bothers me so much about the suicide type "resistance" and brutal murder and beheadings, in other words terrorism, is that it isn't grounded in normal rational thinking. Rational people understand why their emotions and motivations are what they are. For rational people this serves as a system of checks and balances regarding one's actions. You are a rational person, would you strap on a bomb and kill yourself and others believing that 72 virgins await you? Would you cut the head and limbs off of an unarmed, tied up, and helpless woman? I can understand taking up arms against an armed invader but never beheading and other terrible acts those terrorists commit under the false flag of fighting for freedom. That is not a rational resistance. Iraqis killing their fellow Iraqis is not a rational resistance. Arabs killing their fellow Arabs is not rational resistance. There have always been Iraqis willing to do exactly that, like Saddam and his sons. There have always been men willing to kill their fellow men in the most brutal way they could think of. There have always been men who influence, with much indoctrination and hate, their fellow men to irrationally commit such acts. These barbaric acts have the effect of the so called resistance losing its authority or legitimacy. Take the Beslan terrorism for example, it cannot be explained in rational terms much like one could not explain why Jeffery Dahmer killed and ate his victims. Such behavior is not rational. And in case of Beslan the terror wasn't even rational in the minds of older terrorists who chose not to take part in it. Those older terrorists didn't even know exactly what the younger terrorists really wanted in Beslan. These brutal acts seem more easily explained as being comitted by mentally ill or brain-damaged natural born killers. Maybe it is drugs, some terrorists in Iraq are using drugs. What ever the reason it seems there will always be the irrational Jeffery Dahmers, and barbaric terrorists with the rest of us.
Jesse
Jesse,
Thanks for the links.
There is a lot more that bothers me about the terror bombings than just the irrationality.
"Rational people understand why their emotions and motivations are what they are."
That is an ambitious claim. I might understand a few important factors but I'd have difficulty claiming that I understand all the causal factors of my emotions and motivations, nor would I make that a crition for rationality.
Further even if it were deemed a rational individual decision to slay a person in exchange for a promise of a blissful afterlife, this does not justify it. An act could be both rational and selfishly narcissistic.
Better would be to show the societal problem of incitement to violence as exhibited by extremist clerics that foster such behaivors and the irrationality of such incitements from a societal basis. Bring in the ideas of Kant. Reputedly, Benjamin R Barber (Author of Jihad vs McWorld, 1995) does some of the work on the Kantian imperative and the war on terror in his book, Fear's Empire. I haven't read the book myself yet, but it is on my list.
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