Posts Tagged ‘terrorism’
UPDATE: Notebook, 17 May 2012: Covered in Glory
Sorry, Diane Dimond, but regarding Sgt. Robert Bales and the armed forces of the United States, your opinion means nothing. For that matter, neither does mine.
In her HuffPo piece, and certainly on her talk radio show (that should send a red flag up right there. This was in error on my part. When called on it by Diane Dimond (here, I rechecked my source for that and found that I should have read her HuffPo bio more carefully. She is correct. She is not a talk show radio host, but a moveable feast, who writes for The Daily Beast and appears frequently on television news outlets) she stands In Defense of the United States Military and in the process, manages to trash Sgt. Robert Bales. She must feel very comfortable. She must have that warm fuzzy feeling you get when you take a position you feel is unassailable. A position you know many “right thinking people” will rise to defend on your behalf.
Which probably explains a lot.
Notebook, 9 January 2010: Tucson Shootings and False Equivalence . . .
A lot has already been said about yesterday’s shootings in Tuscon, Arizona, about mentally imbalanced individuals bearing arms, the Virginia Tech shootings, about the culpability of Daily Kos, and lots here about the state of political rhetoric.
At least one new fact has emerged since last night: Congresswoman Giffords was specifically targeted. This makes it a political assassination attempt, by definition an act of terrorism:
the use of violence and threats to intimidate or coerce, esp. for political purposes.
LQD: No Consensus on 9/11
I usually stay away from stories concerning terrorism because they’re just too predictable, but I found this one interesting, and as I consider the implications on the idea of legitimacy of the positions and acts of the US government, I thought I’d share it. From July 15 to August 31, World Public Opinion conducted a survey in 17 countries asking the open-ended question, Who do you believe was behind the 9/11 attacks?. The topline results here.
The results surprised me. On average, 46% of respondents thought Al Qaeda was guilty, and in no country outside of Africa, did an overwhelming number of people say they believed Al Qaeda was responsible for the attacks. In some cases, a significant number of people thought the US government was behind the attacks. Particularly in Mexico and Germany, where 30% and 15% respectively of the people who were asked said they thought the US government itself was responsible.
All of which seriously undermines the perception of legitimacy of our invasion of Afghanistan (forget Iraq, I’m not even going there). To take matters a little further, all of this is something Indian officials should give serious consideration to in the wake of the Mumbai attacks, and their aggressive stand against Pakistan. Especially in light of of the possibility that this story in the Economist may have more than a grain of truth.
Here’s what you get when you give classics scholars a little leeway. The Crimson reports that the Hapsburgs may be asked to reign over the student body at Harvard.
