From: joedees@bellsouth.net
Date: Mon 08 Sep 2003 - 03:49:47 GMT
Date sent: Mon, 08 Sep 2003 12:43:40 +1000
To: memetics@mmu.ac.uk
From: Jeremy Bradley <jeremyb@nor.com.au>
Subject: Re: The Text of Dubya's Terrorism Speech
Tonight
Send reply to: memetics@mmu.ac.uk
> At 08:47 PM 7/09/03 -0500, you wrote:
> >Go to:
> >
> >http://www.whitehouse.gov/news/releases/2003/09/20030907-1.html
> >
> Joe
> What has this propaganda got to do with memetics? Surely, if the USA
> went to war against the advice of most Nations in the civilised world,
> should they not now shoulder the burden of rectifying that rogue act
> alone? Why expect the UN to pick up the pieces now when the US, has
> killed up to 10,000 inocent Iraquis, destroyed infrastructure,
> denigrated the UN's ability to detect WMD's, told lies and even
> refused to pay their dues? When I wanted to discus the 'Might is
> Right' meme that lies at the core of US arrogance, you inflamed the
> topic so that the meme could not be rationally, and academically,
> addressed. So why should you now want to insult our intelligence with
> GW's latest BS Bulletin? Jeremy
>
Let's begin with your factual inaccuracies and go on from there.
The so-called few countries in the 'civilized world', (and far less
than half of even the European Union), France, Germany and Russia
among them (plus the encircled Belgium), who used the UN as a cynical
tool in order to block the liberation of twenty-plus million people, were
acting from selfish and not globally responsible motives, considering
that they had surreptitiously circumvented UN resolutions to sell
weapons and weapons-producing technology to Iraq and were upset at
seeing their fat oil contracts, which they had received in payment from a
grateful mass-murdering dictator, lose their multibillion-dollar worth
before their eyes with the despot's fall. I suppose that if these nations
decide to help with Iraq's democratic reconstruction, that they may get
those Saddamic bribes revalidified; they certainly would not do so out of
principles such as democracy, personal freedom and self-
determination.
The US has killed far fewer than 10,000 civilian Iraqi
noncombatants; in fact, the Iraq war was indeed the most
civilian'conscious in history (followed closely by the Afghan war). Most
credible counts put the Afghan civilian casualties at around 3000, and
the Iraqi casualties as much lower (this in comparison to a dictator who
has caused the deaths of more than 2 MILLION Muslims during his rule,
more than any other human being in history, and would have continued
to do so ad nauseum had he not been stopped).
The US pays about 20% of UN dues, even though there are
190 other member countries. It recently paid a large chunk of its
arrears to the UN, in spite of the nakedly self-seving obstructionism of
some of its more globally irresponsible and greedy members, and its
bizarre policies of putting terrorist-harboring dictator-lead countries like
Syria and Libya at the head of important disarmament and human rights
committees.
Infrastructure? The vast majority of it was left standing by the
US action, which did NOT resort to heavy bombing, but rather utilized
precision smart bomb strikes against command posts and troop
concentrations as an adjunct to a ground war that should have forever
dispelled the Al Quaeda myth that the US was a cowardly paper tiger
that would turn tail and run in the face of casualties (although that myth
was already pretty much already destroyed in Afghanistan). The only
reason that the infrastructure is not completely functional now (and it
operated badly under Saddam, but no one dared complain THEN, did
they?) is as a result of Baathist holdouts and Al Quaeda jihadists
continuously attempting to sabotage it as a means to obstruct the
democratic reconstruction of Iraq, a process that is making great strides
in the Kurdish north and the Shiite south and is only facing a degree of
difficulty in the Sunni triangle which forms Saddam's power base.
As far as lies go, the info. that Dubya's famous 'sixteen words'
was based upon came from British intelligence, and he did not assert
that Saddam had SUCCEEDED in obtaining fissionable uranium from
some African countries; merely that Saddam had SOUGHT it there - a
charge that is almost certainly true.
WMD's? There is credible evidence that, following Russian
advice, Saddam moved some of his WMD's to a burial location in the
Lebanese bekaa valley and destroyed others. There is also the
evidence of the gas centrifuge pieces found buried in an Iraqi nuclear
scientist's rose garden, and his testimony that he had been told, by
Qusay Hussein (one of Saddam's late sons) to hide them there until the
heat was off, at which time they would be unearthed and used to purify
fissionable uranium for use in building nuclear weapons. And what
would the purpose of these weapons be? To allow Saddam to threaten
any nation that dared to try to expel him once he completed his next
planned move to take over the Saudi Peninsula (Kuwait was only his
first objective in 1990), and then he could perpetrate global blackmail
by strangulating the world's oil supply. And he would not need long-
range missiles in order to effect such an attack, merely need to smuggle
those weapons inside the borders of his target country and have them
detonated onsite by either his own operatives or members of terror
groups (the same thing he had been doing for years by paying 10K per
suicide bomber to their families, only writ large).
Now, the question is, why would you, with an obvious lack of
knowledge and study of the relevant issues, make such egregious and
demostrably false claims? I think that it is as a result of unreasoning
hate. In other words, I believe that it is because you have been infected
with the "Dubya is the Antichrist" meme, and quite irrationally view him
as worse than Hitler, Stalin, Pol Pot and Mao combined, and even
worse than the Al Quaedans, who OPENLY wish to destroy all
freedoms of religion, thought, action and choice, and annihilate all
traces of democracy from the entire world, replacing all these with a
repressive global theocratic islamofascist Ummah run according to
sharia law.
Let me be clear about this; I am no Dubya-lover. I consider his
borrow-and-spend fiscal policies to be as economically undermining as
the democrats' borrow-and-spend policies (at leat Clinton realized that
even the federal credit card would have to be eventually paid). I also
am distressed by his undermining of church-state separation, as
evinced by his support for religious school vouchers, federal support for
faith-based initiatives, and opposition to abortion (none of which have
passed into law). However, I agree with his pursuing the terror plotters
to their bases so we have less of a chance of once again seeing them
wreak their carnage on our streets. Iraq is serving as an Al Quaeda
flypaper (although it couldn't function as such without their
cooperation). Let the jihadists journey to Tikrit and fight armed and
alert US troops, rather than journey to the US and massacre unarmed
and clueless civilians on local streets. I do not see a single Democratic
candidate that 'gets' this, so, for the first time since I was 18 (I am 47), I
may have to sit the next presidential election out (and no, I have
NEVER voted for a Republican in a presidential election).
Or perhaps it is because you are infected with the "David and
Goliath" meme, and cannot wrap your mind around the concept that
sometimes might and right can indeed occasionally coincide (as ended
up happening in WW II).
(Scratching my head and shaking it sadly all at the same
time)...
> ~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
>
> Jeremy Bradley
> 3200 Oxley Hwy Hartys Plains 2446
> Phone:02 65856652 or 02 65856134
> E-mail: jeremyb@nor.com.au
>
>
> ===============================================================
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This was distributed via the memetics list associated with the
Journal of Memetics - Evolutionary Models of Information Transmission
For information about the journal and the list (e.g. unsubscribing)
see: http://www.cpm.mmu.ac.uk/jom-emit
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