Doonesbury by Garry Trudeau for July 15, 2010

“What we’ve got here is…failure to communicate.” ⟹the warden from Cool Hand Luke ❪played by Strother Martin❫

…and USA lost their sons (and OURS!) in that sandbox for this… Couldn’t you think BEFORE?

Have you noticed how many groups try to justify their bad behavior by calling it part of their traditional culture? It’s not limited to Islam, but they sure take it to a new level.

yes, Sandfan, like the way US justifies wild west gun laws in modern-day society

…or torture, firing squads, censorship, mail-tapping, killing of children..

The behaviour in the recent cartoons is not part of Islamic traditional culture - Afghani maybe. Such broad-brush tar strokes really don’t help in understanding the situation.

Yeah, pretty much. Dictatorships all over the world call us barbarians for executing children.

And Grimma, are you smoking whacky weed? It plainly is part of Islamic culture to glorify these suicide bombers, or there’d stop BEING suicide bombers.

I was referring to the bribery/looting behaviours - these aren’t part of Islamic culture. But, since you go back to the opening strip and the suicide bomber - no, actually that isn’t part of mainstream Islamic culture either. Most Muslims are as appalled by it as most Christians or Atheists. Unfortunately ,yes, some extremist muslims do buy the lie of Jihad and paradise, but to call it ‘islamic culture’ is a gross distortion. By analogy, we wouldn’t say that planting bombs was part of ‘Christian culture’ based on the (hopefully past) behaviour of the IRA, would we?

Grimma, that may be so, but it would help if the mainstream Islam articulated that sentiment a bit louder.

(Undoubtedly, it would also help if the USA behaved a bit more respectfully towards other cultures and didn’t start wars every few years, but that wasn’t the question.)

By the way, Truckers is awesome, especially Grimma :o)

but it would help if the mainstream Islam articulated that sentiment a bit louder.

It would - but they’re up against the problem that the voices of moderation never make the headlines. A bomb makes a louder noise than a rational voice :-(

Nagut, even more awesome in Diggers, don’t you think? ;-)

The distinction Grimma makes is between Islam, which is based on the Koran, and Islamism, which is based on the radical, 19th-c. mutation called “jihad.” Think of Islamism as the Koran read in terms of Lenin or Trotski.

It is characteristic of neo-libs to overlook this distinction. Since jihad, for a neo-lib, is just another expression of cultural diversity, the ISF captain makes what seems to them a valid criticism of American justice.

I hadn’t noticed a pattern, Sandfan, of groups justifying bad behavior by calling it “traditional culture”, but now that you mention it: Donaldo points to our “wild-west gun laws” (good point); one could also mention the confederate flags I see (living in the South), claiming “tradition, not racism”, as if people can have one w/out the other in the Confederacy; in addition, people have tried to oppress women throughout history by citing “traditional roles”. Yes, I suspect that there are many examples.

Thanks, Grimma, for pointing out the narrow reporting, that America’s right-leaning mainstream media does for Islam. I have no more respect for Islam than I do for any of the Abrahamic religions (we should stow all three in history’s foot-locker), but it is no more intrinsically violent than are the others, and American Muslims speak out against fanatical violence consistently. The mosque a few blocks from my house posts a Qur’anic message of peace each week.

Replying to yesterday’s later comments:

Drome, I thank you for disposing of loaded but uselessly vague or undefined terms. I look forward to our future discussions. I enjoyed your recounting on the start of Bush-Dick’s invasion of Iraq. It has a few problems: One, Colin Powell was never convinced by the intelligence supplied by the C.I.A. When he made that foolish case in 2002, he insisted on George Tenet’s sitting right behind him, taking part of the responsibility. If the American media had not been on such a post-9/11 pro-Bush kick, then many would have seen through the weakness of Powell’s presentation.

Two, the “pax Americana” was hardly “holding… [the] world together” in 2002. The 1990s saw a great many wars, more, in fact, than there had been in the 1980s. Bush-Dick invaded Iraq for its oil and in order to line the pockets of his rich friends. As DOONESBURY’s Uncle Duke said, “There’s no bidness like no-bidness!” The United Kingdom occupied & created Iraq for oil in the early 20th century. The United States invaded & occupied Iraq for oil in the early 21st century. (Plus ça change,….)

I still await a definition of “Islamism” (Check that: You finally defined it today. Thanks. I would certainly agree with you that Islamism is an evil, more akin to fundamentalist Christianity than to Lenin or Trotsky, however.) Osama bin Laden is a wealthy, fundamentalist Muslim terrorist. Call him & al-Qaeda what they are. Thanks, though, for reminding all about his Saudi connections. In addition, I am glad that you admit that Bush-Dick’s invasion was a HUGE mistake.

Nemesys, you must read what I wrote: Bush-Dick supplied Congress & us with distorted “intelligence” about Iraq in order to provoke an unwarranted invasion. FREEREPUBLIC rips quotes out of context and w/out citation, so none of these quotes substantially does what you (& it) want: proves that Bush-Dick was not alone in trying to foment an unwarranted invasion.

Even if you take, say, the first four quotes at their word & forego context, they do not state, as did Bush-Dick, that Iraq HAD weapons of mass destruction. They worry about what would happen IF Iraq had them. Further, none of them insists on an open-ended occupation of the country. Turning a concern about w.m.d.s into a reason to slaughter Americans & Iraqis was the talent of Bush-Dick & no other.

As to President Obama’s attempts to clean up & end Bush-Dick’s oily wars: Yes, all the soldiers I have asked approve of a timetable for withdrawal.

I am glad that you are against the imprisoning at Guantanamo. I trust that you voted against Bush-Dick & the Republicans because of it, that you have spoken out against it in more places, and that you have encouraged your representatives to find a solution to that Bush-Dick mess.

Freeholder, I agree, and I had not seen Charles Colson cited in years.

Well, today, the St. Louis radio is full of heat index warnings. The temperature will hit 33°C. & feel like 40°C. Yesterday was worse, however, and I bicycled 13 kilometers, albeit with two long stops at bookstores. Today, who knows? Writing & packing come first, but I must shop for supper, too. July 15th: One hundred forty years ago, the U.S. re-admitted Georgia, w/out, unfortunately, sending all its rebellious Whites out to sea on a barge. July 15th: the 118th birthday of Walter Benjamin & the 80th birthday of Jacques Derrida. Good day, all.

I wouldn’t worry too much about the recent content not accurately depicting ideals in Islamic countries, as the scene today could have easily occured as a result of gang tribalism in Ray’s hometown of Los Angeles. The bars on the windows are there for a reason. Substitute “Welfare recipients” for “Iraqui troops” in the second panel, and it even makes sense.

@Brian

Like Sheik says, “What we’ve got here is a failure to communicate.” My chief purpose in reviewing the “casus belli” in Iraq was not to show “that Bush-Dick’s invasion was a huge mistake” (all wars involve some mistake). I was trying to show what caused the mistake: our government’s belated discovery that al Qaeda was a real threat.

To persist in thinking that the Iraq war, because it was a mistake, can (or “should”) be disregarded as though it were not part of our ongoing historical experience—-to dwell like that on what OUGHT to have been instead of what is and probably will be—-THAT is to think like a neo-lib with your head in the shifting sands (clouds? pick your metaphor) of history.

Maybe we could export the spammers to Iraq.

palin drome, your second paragraph states elequently what I was trying to say about Vietnam a few days back.

However, I think you underestimate the degeneration effects of BDS if you think that facts, reason, and perspective can alliviate its long-term symtoms. The parasite causes the host to lose higher brain functions after being left untreated for at least 2 presidential election cycles.

Not to mention automobile accidents and death by fast food which are of course vastly bigger numbers.

Good grief! It’s Vietnam all over again. What we think is not what they think. Disaster ahead.

Neo-lib? That’s the best insult you got? That doesn’t make you sound too stupid.

I can hear Teviah singing “Tradition!”

Actually what were consider in jihad is the power of the Imams to control their people. Only THEY could declare a jihad and then bless others to get to heaven that way. It was similar to the Catholic Priest traditions of Latin verse only they “interpret”, Papal excommunication for disobedience and using the idea of salvation after death to keep folks grief as a tool for manipulation. It merely allowed the Imams a positive slant on believers dying for their cause.

Bin Laden freed the people who follow him by saying ANYONE could declare jihad. He is like THEIR Martin Luther in that way. A Muslim can now get to heaven by his own declaration and chosen cause, not by a Imam’s calling. That’s why Bin gets protected so much as a patron of the people.

And this is about the Iraqi tradition of corruption by it’s armed forces, one that led to Sadaam in the first place and will likely lead to another like him after we are gone. We merely changed the face and name, not the way of thinking.

Remember Rumsfeld saying there was no real problem, the folks were just repeatedly driving past the camera with the same artifacts in the trunk. “Cultures like theirs”, like Watts, New Orleans, any U.S. town with a post football game riot, natural disaster, or rationale for looting??

How about all that sacking and looting in the Old Testament? Oh, right. ANY poor people who have an opportunity to steal what society, and war, has denied them, will take what cultural chaos allows.

“Bad” is a subjective adjective, thus “bad behavior” is and opinion only. “Wild West Laws” is not behavior. Thus, saying Wild West Laws is bad behavior doesn’t make sense as it is a useless, vague and undefined term. I was not aware that Lynyrd Skynyrd or Pantera was racist (no sarcasm) nor the Allman Brothers or the Dukes of Hazzard. The USS Columbia a cruiser used during WWII also sailed under this flag as it was named after Columbia , SC. When I was in England, I was told that allot of bars that play American country music will use hang flag on the walls.

Good point with the “real threat” statistics. But by that logic, since we’ve only had one successful presidential assasination in the past 100 years, the billions of investments we’ve made in security precautions, Secret Service personnel, investigations, etc. is truly out of proportion to the threat data. Let’s discontinue these precautions tomorrow.

Playing with statistics is a proven way of suppressing our anxiety about disaster or death. I like the old cigarette ads whose specious plausibility made us laugh at our anxiety: “95% of those who smoke are likely to die.”

That ad is no less true, and much funnier, than telling us how slim our chances are of getting killed by a terrorist. And what were the odds for those in the World Trade Center on 9/11? How many of them had ever heard of al-Qaeda, or of hijacking a flying tanker?

Quoting statistics is like selecting optimal examples from history. Both exercises, which merely rationalize the status quo, express a kind of rational idiocy.

It’s the same idiocy we saw when BP, after determining that the odds of a spill are less than one in a thousand, went ahead and drilled for oil a mile beneath the ocean.

Thought I might spare stebon/nobets the trouble of posting today. S/he’ll find Iowa more to her/his liking than GT’s strip.

http://thecaucus.blogs.nytimes.com/2010/07/14/tea-party-trouble-in-river-city/

RICHARDSRUSSELL I love stats. You began yours in 1980. Why not 1990? Oh, but then the terrorists would have killed more people per year. Hate using cartoons to make a point but on the TV, The Simpson’s

Disco Stu wants to sell disco franchises. Behind him is a graph of stats proving disco has increased 1000% between 1976-1980. He tries to show that this craze will continue.

Isn’t that what your doing? Between 1945-1950, hundreds of thousands died of atomic bombs. If this growing trend continues, you may not be able to buy bomb insurance for your loved ones tomorrow. But for a limited time, I can sell you Scarescam Nuclear Bomb insurance for the low price of—

A kid in Stats 101 would see through your figures.

so You think those right wingnut are attacking us through beds, pools, ladders, and bathtubs. Who’s behind it Bush1 or 2? Probably the same Repubicians who flooded the ghettos with drugs a decade ago.

There will be wars and more wars in Iraq until someone who kills more than the others becomes dominant in the government. This will be the NEW Democracy of Iraq.