The Forum > Article Comments > Talking up a war: Bush's rhetoric exposed > Comments
Talking up a war: Bush's rhetoric exposed : Comments
By Anabelle Lukin, published 24/1/2005Annabelle Lukin argues that President Bush's use of rhetoric made war with Iraq possible.
- Pages:
-
- Page 1
- 2
- 3
- 4
-
- All
Posted by ozaware, Wednesday, 26 January 2005 5:22:22 PM
| |
OZAWARE.... you really are a 'rip snorter' :) u said a lot of what I was planning to.
My take on the whole thing.. is that the WMD thingy was more of a public relations exercise to massage an understandably reluctant public into accepting 'what had to be done', in terms of strategic advantage as well as liberating a country from a mass murderer. We are at war with fundamentalist ISLAM.. this is not an opinion, it is a very clear fact. A newsreport today kind of says it in one word. A group the Russians are currently hunting down for some recent terrorism is named "YARMUK". Anyone with a few clues about how Islam expanded will know that the decisive battle of Islam, between them and a Roman/Byzantine Army the 'Sword of Allah' Kalid bin Al Waleed, was the Battle of Yarmuk. to quote from an Islamic source: ~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~ It was a complete victory. The Romans had been fought in a set-piece battle after the regular imperial fashion, and were not only defeated tactically but also slaughtered mercilessly. ~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~ So, the thinking in these 'extremists' is very much linked to the 'normal' history of the expansion of Islam. A close examination of that battle, shows that the Romans had 4 times the numbers of the Muslims, yet they were defeated. The main reason was that their leading general (George) converted to Islam before the battle even began, unsettling the soldiers no end. The lesson in this, is that a society which 'doesnt have a clue' about its moral and spiritual convictions, will be easily defeated by those who DO have such convictions, however invalid or false they may be. In regard to Yarmuk.. the battle and its significance..and George Bush, and the current military superiority of the west and the invasion of Iraq.. and Bush's own faith, and his support from the religious right, one can only say, that its 'our turn'. There is no less justification of a 'Christian' west, invading a 'Muslim' east, than for the Muslim armies invading the Romans in historical terms. We only have our 'today' as we know it because of the Battle of Tours in 732, where the Arabs were stopped from spreading Islam all over Europe. its almost a joke how they understand their loss there. "OH.. they were just after 'war booty'...thats why they lost" hmmmmmm.... Posted by BOAZ_David, Thursday, 27 January 2005 11:54:12 AM
| |
I hope Annabelle will be responding to our comments.
Or should I not hold my breath? Posted by ozaware, Thursday, 27 January 2005 2:35:18 PM
| |
Hello my friends. What a great response. Prehaps the 'Blind Annabelle' could enlighten us as to why the USA is hated so in The Middle East.
Is it Israel? - No. Is it Imperialism? - No. Is it Resources? - No. Bernard Lewis discuss's these themes in his great book "The Crisis of Islam" & offers some startling opinions. Ist country to cause European Jewry to emigrate to British Mandate of Palestine = Germany 1930 - 1939. 1st country to recognise Israel - Soviet Union & France gave immediate recognition to the Jewish state, USA only 'defacto recognition'. 1st country to sell arms to Israel - Checkoslovakia, then France. The USA only sold arms to Israel AFTER the Soviet Arms deal to Nasser in the 50's. The USA is the enemy of 'Islam' as it represent us, THE WEST. It is "House Of War", not of the bossum of Islam, therefore must be destroyed. Please Annabell, read Bernard Lewis tome, look at his other works (for perspective) understand what we are up against. Posted by Sayeret, Friday, 28 January 2005 9:19:43 AM
| |
The USA is the enemy of 'Islam' as it represent us, THE WEST. It is "House Of War", not of the bossum of Islam, therefore must be destroyed.
Please Annabell, read Bernard Lewis tome, look at his other works (for perspective) understand what we are up against. SAYERET... can u 'interpret' that last comment of yours pls :).. I mut confess I haven't a clue what u mean by it.. are u Jewish ? Muslim ? who.. give us some more of a handle to 'who and what' you are. Warm regards BOAZ Posted by BOAZ_David, Friday, 28 January 2005 9:32:21 AM
| |
Boaz,
Must definately Christian, NOT THAT IT MATTERS. MY reference refers to the fact that it is irrelevant whatever foreign policy is used by the US towards the Middle East. USA inherited the 'mantle' as leader of the west once the British empire declined, & thus are hated. Simple us that. Check this out: http://www.townhall.com/bookclub/lewis1.html Posted by Sayeret, Friday, 28 January 2005 9:42:55 AM
|
Some of us even recognise another reality: to prevail against insane fanaticism unequivocally requires complete, unwavering steadfastness and certainty of purpose.
I for one am very grateful we don’t have a postponing Neville Chamberlain, a prevaricating Jimmy Carter or a sexually-distracted Bill Clinton leading the fight to safeguard our Western civilisation against the third great attack launched against it by Islam in 1300 years.
War in not made ‘possible’ by language, Annabelle. Two lions battling for pride supremacy don’t talk to each other, nor the pack of African Wild Dogs to the gazelle they surreptitiously hunt.
You say that to wage war, one must define an enemy and justify the human and economic costs of going to war. Shall we completely ignore that the enemy most often first defines himself—Hitler invading France, Saddam invading Kuwait, Japan bombing Pearl Harbour, Argentina invading the Falklands and al Qaeda flying planes into tall buildings?
Shall we blithley ignore the human and economic cost of NOT going to war, such as was paid by France and Poland in the early 1940's and has recently been paid by Christians in the Sudan.
Or are you happily willing to hand over your freedom to wear what you choose, talk with whom you you like, write what you write --and believe what you believe-- as the price to be paid for NOT standing firm against attack?
While not "made possible”, Annabelle, much of war certainly is covertly *waged* by the use of language. That reality is well demonstrated by not only your own subtle, linguistic war against President Bush in the essay you wrote, but by the general media’s relentless printed, televised and radio airwave attacks on both him and the US’s attempts to democratise Iraq.
Or do you think that our wide-spread and ‘common’ perception of President Bush being ‘an idiot’ stems from millions of Australians having personally met him? That they have made their own first-hand judgement and have not been brainwashed by the media?
For every one positive news headline in our major papers I read about the War in Iraq—and I can honestly not remember when last I did—I read ten or even twenty negative presentations. Scan your papers with honest, open eyes and you’ll be obliged to admit this reality.
I truly wish you could prove me wrong by demonstrating the inverse. In fact I publicly challenge you to do so.
As the Vietnam experience showed, a covert war of the very linguistics to which you refer—commonly known as propaganda—is particularly deadly because the great mass of the population do not recognise it for what it is. Read http://www.oz-aware.com/humvee.htm for a sad example of how it is waged and what response it can force upon the defenders of decency.
Because you, like so many, have been led by the intellectual nose by the media to believe there are many Islamic ‘moderates’, you might object to my broad use of the word ‘Islam’ when stating that it is attacking us for the third time. Before you do, consider that an expert on the Islamic faith, Middle East Forum director Daniel Pipes, has calculated the numbers of those who comprise what most media people and individuals like yourself chose to describe as a ‘fanatic fringe’ of Islam.
He says the that ‘fringe’ is made up of ‘only’ about 100 million-plus people.
100 million—five times Australia’s population—is reasonable validation for a ‘broad’ generalisation of the word ‘Islam’, yes? Were those 100 million to launch, as they would dearly and clearly like to, a concerted, organised attack against Western Civilisation—which, in case you forget, includes Australia fair—we would be in seriously deep strife.
You would be running and hiding for your life, Annabelle.
We can be thankful for two realities. They are not as well-organised as is the US. Secondly, President Bush’s perception of world realities—which you cynically refer to as his “constructed view”— is a lot closer to exactly those realities than are the perspectives of people like George Soros and, obviously, yourself. [There is a thoughtful explanation of why the perspectives pf otherwise well-educated and presumably intelligent people like yourself are so ideologically blinded. Read it at http://www.oz-aware.com/ideas1.htm.]
That Soros is a billionaire means nothing. So is bin Laden. They share one other characteristic: they made their billions by parasiting off the benefits of Western Civilisation, which they both now seek to undermine, each in his own way.
Was President Bush “constructing” that 300,000 people were butchered in Iraq by Saddam? Did he “construct” visions of jetliners flying into tall buildings? Did he “construct” a ten year cat-and-mouse game Saddam played with UN inspectors, or the endless Islamic-sourced attacks in the decades before he even became president?
Has he “constructed” the brutal reality of living under the rule under Islam, exemplified in such countries as Iran? [read http://www.oz-aware.com/islamiclaw3.htm ]
The most unfortunate aspect of your essay is that you—whether wittingly or unwittingly, I cannot say—deceive your readers not so much by what you say, but by what you haven’t said. There are many who will read your piece who do not know all the facts and therefore cannot know what you didn’t tell us.
But because you are a ‘Dr.’ with credentials that impress the unquestioning, they they probably will believe you and that is truly scary. There is nothing more fearsome than an uninformed, mindless mob, led by the nose by by cunning ideological manipulators.
You didn’t explain that, with 100 million ‘fringe fanatics’ wanting to wipe the global floor with us, were we to have anything but resolute, determined leaders to protect both us and a freedom only dreamed-of by ordinary people in Islamic-ruled nations, we would, before very long be forced to become Muslims, be enslaved, or be, very literally, killed.
In exactly that order of uncompromising choice, Annabelle. Before you even think of challenging this assertion do two things:
First read about Sharia law at http://www.oz-aware.com/islamiclaw1.htm.
Secondly, ask yourself why it is that, for some thirty years, the supposedly ‘moderate’ Islamists—whom, we are asked to believe, supposedly outnumber their fanatics by ten to one—haven’t publicly, vehemently and relentlessly declared their abhorrence of the ongoing acts of terror by their so-called lunatic fringe? Why is the great mass of Islam thunderingly silent—forget loud protestations—when an innocent Westerner’s head is brutally chopped off? Why have the great majority of Islamic people not determinedly and publicly worked to root out and rid themselves of that supposedly ‘small minority’ of their ‘lunatic fringe’?
Why have the vast majority of those Islamists who live in free, non-Islamic societies, not loudly encouraged President Bush to help their Iraqi and Afghani fellows towards being able to enjoy the exact same freedoms that they enjoy by residing in countries like Australia and the USA?
As with your essay, it is what they don’t say that loudly trumpets what they do think.
With regard to what you quite obviously fervently believe—and want us to believe—are ‘nonexistent’ WMD’s, you also didn’t remind us of the four months ‘warning period’ that Saddam and Syria were given between the time the US announced its intention to invade Iraq and the time it commenced that action. November 2002 to February 2003, remember?
You didn’t tell us about the hundreds—yes, hundreds—of road trains that immediately started convoying ‘something’ from Iraq into Syria. Huge trucks travelling non-stop back and forth for those four months, springs sagging on the way out of Iraq, bouncing emptily on the way back in for the next load of ‘whatever’.
Satellite cameras don’t lie Annabelle.
Those trucks certainly weren’t carrying bottles of Saddam’s champagne, suitcases of his gold bullion or his 70 heavenly virgins!
You didn’t tell us about the independent UN—not US—weapon inspectors who stated unequivocally that Saddam was relentlessly increasing his capacity to develop a nuclear capability over the ten year period during which Bill Clinton pussyfooted around. A period in which there were numerous attacks against the United States' people and property—Khobar Towers, Embassies, the USS Cole, to name but a few. We can even stretch further back to the Munich Olympics and the Achille Lara, which were the early salvos in this new Islamic War on the West.
These, and many others, are clear signals that, contrary to your closing assertion, the word ‘terrorism’ means exactly one specific thing to ideologically unblinkered people—and George W. Bush is merely one example of such a completely grounded and rational person.
You didn’t tell us that it was clearly established that, while Saddam could ultimately not be directly implicated in September 11 —probably because he had plenty of money, received from the UN’s oil-for-food scam (see http://www.oz-aware.com/ungraft.htm), to ensure he wouldn’t be— he was found to be regularly ‘communicating’ with al Qaeda. That, notwithstanding all the ‘closed ranks’ of Islamic/Middle-East secrecy which would have made the job of discovery almost impossible, nevertheless there was a direct link established between the leader of the pilots on those fated September 11 Boeings and ‘training’ activities in Iraq. That, immediately after September 11, even Russian President Putin warned President Bush that Russian intelligence had uncovered that an Iraq attack on the US was imminent.
You don’t mention that, even if there were no weapons of mass destruction—which the evidence most strongly ‘suggests’ there had to have been, or that they were close to being produced— it was clear that Saddam himself was of a “Weapon of Mass Destruction”.
Or are 300,000 dead people not ‘mass’ enough for you?
You, and the media in general, conveniently forget to endlessly repeat—even though all of you so enjoy continually repeating the Abu Ghraib incident—that an unexploded bomb in Iraq was found to contain sarin gas, which meant it actually was a WMD. Which proved they must exist, if not now in Iraq, then somewhere close by.
Nor would you tell us that the terrorists are smart enough to quickly realise that hiding other such bombs and not using them would ensure that 'certain' mindlessly disingenuous people would start jumping up and down, loudly yelling that there were no WMD’s. Smart enough to know that propaganda, spread by unwitting media pawns and 'certain' leftist writers, can sometimes be far more effective than bombs in undermining the effort to rid the world of their terror.
You don’t tell your readers that you are quite thrilled that no WMD’s were found. Happy only because all who share your views—including the majority of the media—want to discredit and destroy President Bush at all cost, even if it means losing Western Civilisation to Islam.
Whether such people blatantly lie or simply leave truths unsaid in their covert war against him is not something they are particularly concerned about.
Read http://www.oz-aware.com.socialsuicide1.htm which offers a verbatim quote from such a person, given the opportunity to sprout her idiocy over the ABC’s airwaves. Said she, “I hope that these dishonest and disingenuous techniques might inspire everyone to go against President Bush.”
This is the ethical and moral standard embraced by people who subscribe to your ideologies, Annabelle. People whom I describe as being treacherous—even if sometimes unwittingly—to the safety and well-being of the Western civilisation that in the first place gave them the freedom to be treacherous.
You didn’t tell us that propaganda—using the very linguistic styles to which your refer—can be exceptionally effective simply because, by its very nature, propaganda is built on lies and deceptions—and important truths left out.
You certainly didn’t tell us that your essy is pure propaganda, Annabelle.
Given that this post is already long —as they often have to be to clearly expose the dishonesty behind so many leftists’ unctuously persuasive, short sound-byte appeals to mindless emotion— readers who are interested in straight-talking truth, not cunning and covert propaganda, are invited to read http://www.oz-aware.com/response1.htm for a much more honest, even if sometimes brutally blunt, perspective of the War in Iraq.
It is ‘brutally blunt’ because it is honest in addressing realities. Unfortunately, such realities as planes being deliberately flown into buildings, innocent people’s heads being sawn off or even just women being stoned to death for having sexual interaction with someone they love are indeed frighteningly brutal, even if you no doubt would prefer that nobody mentions them, Annabelle.
Brutal. Frighteningly brutal, as also would be the consequences of a *small* ‘fringe group’ of 100 million ‘fanatic’ people —with relentless propagandist help from people like yourself— prevailing in their ‘Jihad’ against us. A Jihad whose front line is currently Iraq.
But, Annabelle, even though there are about 100 million people out there seriously intending to either control your thinking by forcing you into worshipping their choice of a God, or intending to enslave you, or, if you resist, to literally cut your throat, you can still sleep soundly tonight.
Because, even if for the wrong reasons, you certainly did get that one thing right.
George Bush (and, if I may add, John Howard) indeed does maintain a determinedly steady, deliberately unwavering hand at the helm.
In the overview of the Oz-Aware Project [http://www.oz-aware.com/overview.htm], written long before your piece was published, I stated that most public commentators are woefully ill-informed in that which they absolutely need to know if they are to responsibly, intelligently and knowledgeably broadcast their views regarding important social or world matters.
Unhappily, Annabelle, you become yet another who proves the point.