Comments on: Terrorism, American style

By: pw

pw — Thu, 01 Jan 1970 10:00:00 +0000

Bush doesn’t need to worry. He can start his new wars and McCain will pick up where he left off - if he wins. And with the American penchant for mindless but ordinary folky candidates, it just might mean that ‘uppity’ Obama won’t be calling the shots. God help us. Who knows what these lawless lunatics are going to inflict next on our hapless world?

By: errolb

errolb — Thu, 01 Jan 1970 10:00:00 +0000

I get and agree with the critique and injustice of the whole article but the Cuban analogy is trite and poor and it only detracts from the complexity of the problem as well. It is standard journalism reducing the issue to tit for tat or two wrongs make a right and illicits similar responses in the reader. Crikey is better than this - the analogy part. The rest of the article properly names good issues.

If legitimate Cuban forces knew of a real threat in Miami, it may well be possible to pursuade the American system to take some action allowing the Cuban forces to step back. The Pakastan authorities are powerless to do much but the real damning part of the American approach is that they don't get the part that they could help Pakistan rather than do it themselves.

This realisation requires lowering emotion but your analogy raises emotions past which reasonable solutions become self evident.

By: Andrew

Andrew — Thu, 01 Jan 1970 10:00:00 +0000

Not content with exporting the its entire productive (eg real) economy to China, the USA seems intend on putting up what’s left of its diplomatic influence up on the block as well.

By: James O'Neill

James O'Neill — Thu, 01 Jan 1970 10:00:00 +0000

Of course Bush authorised excursions into Pakistan without reference to the Pakistan government. After all, to actually comply with international law would set a precedent subsequent American presidents of either stripe would not like to bound to. Even a passing knowledge of post world war 2 american history informs one that the US is the world’s greatest terrorist nation in terms of countries invaded, bombed and destabilised, and in terms of the numbers of deaths for which they have been responsible either directly or indirectly.
As your correspondent “Claret” notes, US hypocrisy knows no bounds. One of the great tragedies is that the supine Australian media exist in an ahistorical bubble and never allow a hint of reality to taint their pages and confuse the minds of their readers. Inconvenient facts simply disappear down the memory hole and those who persist in stating the blindingly obvious or questioning the received version are dismissed as “conspiracy theorists” or worse.
Your readers might like to acquaint themselves with some of the 44 pieces of “anti-terror” legislation passed by the Australian parliament since 11 September 2001 in the name of “protecting” us from terrorist attack. It will give some insight into who really poses the danger to our civil liberties, and it sure as hell isn’t the CIA created al-qaeda. Again, if the media did not have an attention span as long as the average gnat they might like to acquaint themselves with some more historical reality. But that is surely asking too much. Hopefully Mr Sparrow will spend some time in reading recent history to better inform his comments.

By: Claret

Claret — Thu, 01 Jan 1970 10:00:00 +0000

The hypocrisy of the Americans knows no bounds. I’m glad you made the comparison with Cuba - after Palin’s comments this morning about the US having every right to launch premptive strikes if they know of an attack about to be made on the US, I wanted to say “then it would have been okay for Cuba to have bombed Miami when they learned of the Bay of Pigs invasion?”. The US has consistently authorised terror attacks against Cuba - including the blowing up of a civilian Cuban airliner killing 80 people. The CIA man known to be responsible is living in Miami and being protected by the US government - imagine if it had of been the other way around? It is really scary to think that Palin could be a heartbeat from being President - she said they should go to war with Russia to protect Georgia who were “invaded without provocation”! Yet another US pollie who has no clue about foreign affairs - she has only been outside the US once!!