yeahwho
01-06-2010, 01:57 PM
A thought provoking Ed/Op piece written in the NYTimes by Thomas Friedman lays out some intelligent insight into our domestic fight against terrorism and the domestic policy of terrorism of Arab and Muslim governments.
Let me copy and paste a few lines from the NYimes column (http://www.nytimes.com/2010/01/06/opinion/06friedman.html);
Mutallab did something that, as far as we know, no other parent of a suicide bomber has done: He went to the U.S. Embassy in Nigeria and warned us that text messages from his son revealed that he was in Yemen and had become a fervent, and possibly dangerous, radical.
Finding people with the courage to confront that breakdown — the one identified by the father, the one that lures young Muslims away from the mainstream into a willingness to commit suicide against innocent civilians as part of some jihadist power fantasy — is what matters most right now.
Friedman makes this excellent observation,
Yes, we need to fix our intelligence. Yes, we absolutely must live up to our own ideals, as President Obama is trying to do in banning torture and closing Guantánamo Bay. We can’t let this “war on terrorism” consume us. We can’t let our country become just The United States of Fighting Terrorism and nothing more. We are the people of July 4th — not Sept. 11th.
As one of the readers so eloquently posts in the comments section,
Perhaps one way we could persuade Muslim parents to measure up to our nearly flawless Judeo-Christian standards is to quit bombing them and their kids.
The overriding fallout from this soon to be decade long war is we have become consumed with extremist thinking, using extremist measures with the benefit being extreme financial loss, extreme bipartisan politics and an extreme escalation of physically, mentally wounded troops. So the best we can come up with is more extreme perpetuation of death.
Extreme thinking is ruling our lives. Simplicity and "Easy Does It" are no longer options our leaders use. What a fucked up day.
Let me copy and paste a few lines from the NYimes column (http://www.nytimes.com/2010/01/06/opinion/06friedman.html);
Mutallab did something that, as far as we know, no other parent of a suicide bomber has done: He went to the U.S. Embassy in Nigeria and warned us that text messages from his son revealed that he was in Yemen and had become a fervent, and possibly dangerous, radical.
Finding people with the courage to confront that breakdown — the one identified by the father, the one that lures young Muslims away from the mainstream into a willingness to commit suicide against innocent civilians as part of some jihadist power fantasy — is what matters most right now.
Friedman makes this excellent observation,
Yes, we need to fix our intelligence. Yes, we absolutely must live up to our own ideals, as President Obama is trying to do in banning torture and closing Guantánamo Bay. We can’t let this “war on terrorism” consume us. We can’t let our country become just The United States of Fighting Terrorism and nothing more. We are the people of July 4th — not Sept. 11th.
As one of the readers so eloquently posts in the comments section,
Perhaps one way we could persuade Muslim parents to measure up to our nearly flawless Judeo-Christian standards is to quit bombing them and their kids.
The overriding fallout from this soon to be decade long war is we have become consumed with extremist thinking, using extremist measures with the benefit being extreme financial loss, extreme bipartisan politics and an extreme escalation of physically, mentally wounded troops. So the best we can come up with is more extreme perpetuation of death.
Extreme thinking is ruling our lives. Simplicity and "Easy Does It" are no longer options our leaders use. What a fucked up day.