From: CurtAdams@aol.com
Date: Thu Sep 19 2002 - 09:53:17 MDT
In a message dated 9/18/02 15:56:43, Dehede011@aol.com writes:
>In a message dated 9/18/2002 6:16:45 PM Central Standard Time,
>CurtAdams@aol.com writes:
>>But the discussions are overwhelmingly driven by
>>these tribalistic conflict instincts and legalistic interpretations of
>>various international treaties. I would hope that in a list hypothetically
>>dominated by those who recognize the profound limitations and inadequacies
>>of both human instincts and modern governments the members would actually
>>have some useful stuff to say.
>
>Now is that really true? Or is it just a knee jerk reaction? I know many
>people discussing this thread that are painfully aware of the congressional
>inquiry going on at this time. We know from listening that a great deal of
>information or intelligence was known to the intelligence community, the
>"common" man and to the members of congress before 911. There was so much
>information that today it seems unbelievable that no one connected the dots.
>But we know that today our suspicions and attempts to connect dots are
>dismissed as "tribal conflict instincts and legalistic interpretations"
>instead of being recognized for what they are -- an instinct to live and a
>fear of being killed when the evidence points to a clear and present danger
Um, you completely misinterpreted what I was saying but in a very
instructive way. I wasn't criticizing the US at all (there) and in the
specific instance you cite I don't think they really did anything wrong.
My complaint was about how discussions between people on this list
on political (and sometimes other) matters seems so readily to turn
into "US: right or wrong?" And, lo and behold, when I'm not even
criticizing the US, you pop up with "US: RIGHT!" Which just makes
my point.
I don't see how it's a useful discussion to cite various instances.
Something the size and internal complexity of the US government
has to have done a lot of good things and a lot of bad things. I mean,
DUH! People on either side could cite instances until everybody
died of old age. You'd need to rate the US on some kind of "goodness
metric" and I see no effort to create and validate such metrics
other than some crude ones like total government spending
which don't show up in these fruitless discussions.
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