Theos-Talk Archives (October 2001 Message tt00094)

http://www.msnbc.com/news/638280.asp#BODY

  

(intro only)
   
This one’s the phony war     
After retaliation, risk of a larger conflict looms    
 
By Jonathan Schell
THE NATION  
    
 
NEW YORK, Oct. 5 — On Sept. 1, 1939, Hitler’s armies rolled
across the western border of Poland. On September 3, England and France
declared war on Germany. But the two great powers, unable to intervene
in strength in Poland, did not take action right away. A lull —
“prolonged and oppressive,” in Churchill’s words — followed. The “phony
war,” as many called it, had begun. (Churchill called it the “twilight
war.”) England promptly sent bombers over Germany — but only to drop
millions of propaganda leaflets. And so the time was also called “the
confetti war.” Everyone knew, however, that the die had been cast, that
real war would come. And it did come, of course, at a cost of some 46
million lives. ............



-----Original Message-----
From: Frank Reitemeyer [mailto:ringding@blinx.de] 
Sent: Thursday, 4 October 2001 11:39 PM
To: theos-talk@yahoogroups.com
Subject: Re: Theos-World Fw: [nadervt] Warning: The present 
condition of the U.S.


Thank you for this excellent analysis, one of the best I read 
so far. It expresses well what I think and what nearly everyone 
in my country thinks (actually I have since the last three 
weeks met no single one who would not sign this analysis - 
Theosophists, academics, students, workers, Arabic people), 
despite the fact that our mass media is still under control of 
the foreign power which still occupies our country (with 
hundreds of nuclear rockets on our land) and our thoughts and 
our media is drumming for war. Cui bono? Frank

----- Original Message -----
From: "Pendragon" <Pendragon@fix.net>
To: <Undisclosed-Recipient:;>
Sent: Wednesday, October 03, 2001 2:11 AM
Subject: Theos-World Fw: [nadervt] Warning: The present 
condition of the U.S.


In September, over 6,000 Americans were lost
when the biggest and best funded military in world history was 
defeated by a handful of guerillas armed mainly with knives.

In normal circumstances there would be talk of courts martial 
(as there was in the case of Pearl Harbor) and impeachment (as 
there was during the Vietnam War). Instead we have been conned 
into waving the flag on behalf of an establishment that has 
shamefully failed the country through a combination of 
arrogance, greed, stupidity, unpreparedness, carelessness, and 
corruption.

Consider, for example, the fact that we are now getting lessons 
on patriotism from politicians and journalists who spent the 
past decade tossing American sovereignty down the drain in the 
name of "free trade." Consider that our military, alienating 
the restless in scores of country, turned out to be a cause of 
our troubles rather than of their elimination. Consider an 
intelligence establishment that help train the guerillas who 
have now turned on us. Consider the politicians who undermined 
our safety to please the oil and defense industries or who 
endangered our lives in order to support Israel and gain the 
campaign rewards that followed. Consider a foreign policy 
intelligentsia that could not tell the difference between 
realpolitik and realstupid.

This is not cause for unity, flag-waving and loyalty to the 
latest political puppet of a decadent elite that has led us 
into such a crisis. It is cause for shock and anger, for 
citizen inquiries and investigations into the questions the 
think tanks, Congress and the media refuse to ask, and for a 
Solidarity-type movement in which Americans who love their 
land, the freedom they once possessed, and the decency to which 
they aspire come together not just to bring peace in a war-mad 
moment but to cause a transformation in how power is exercised.

I was asked the other day what I would do if I were president. 
I declined the hypothesis because, I said, the only way that 
would happen would be if the Green Party had come to power, 
which would mean that America would have already have been 
acting in a far different manner than it is today and thus the 
attacks would have been far less like even to have occurred. I 
might have added that it was a little late to be seeking the 
advice of those who have repeatedly sought a different course 
and who, in return, have been scorned, kept off the ballot, not 
invited to debates, and blacked out of the media.

Further, the American establishment, despite its shameful and 
disastrous failure, refuses even now to listen to other than 
itself. Check this out by counting how many minutes on 
mainstream TV or inches in your paper are devoted to 
non-military, non-violent solutions to our problem.

Of course, the establishment would have you believe that the 
guerillas sprung from the global forest like the Big Bad Wolf 
going after Little Red Riding Hood. It relies heavily on the 
American faith that bad things have only two sources: accident 
or someone else's evil. The idea, such as was imbedded for 
centuries in maritime law, that a collision often involves 
divided fault, is alien to us save in a few instances such as 
when an abused spouse shoots her husband. Yet we must now face 
our proportional responsibility not only in the name of honesty 
but in the name of survival. Nations can not well endure on 
such a diet of denial as ours.

The question of what one should do at this moment is clouded by another
truth: there may actually be no adequate defense against that 
which we fear. To believe that we will be safe if we only ban, 
search, and spy on enough things, and jail enough people on 
enough specious grounds, is a path towards madness. Like the 
individual suffering from agoraphobia, we will become prisoners 
in our own rooms.

The possibility of no available defense is frightening until 
one realizes that we live happily with it every day in other 
contexts. For example, no husband and wife adequately protects 
themselves from being murdered by each other or by their 
children. Yet, most do not sleep in bulletproof vests nor pat 
the kids down each time they walk in the house. That's because 
we have found other ways of assuring the safety in these 
relationships based on means beyond those used by the military 
and police. Similarly, despite the often heated nature of labor 
negotiations, I have never heard of a mediator going into the 
conference room fully armed.

To define the possible solutions to this crisis as only those 
of war and security is to admit defeat, for it is on this level 
that we are most vulnerable. Yet these appear to be virtually 
the sole tools our establishment understands. Thus not only has 
it brought unprecedented shame and danger to this land, it 
proposes with unbridled hubris to compound its errors by more 
of the same.

The rest of us, whether out of moral sense or pragmatic grasp, 
must no longer enable such madness but tell those who have 
failed and betrayed us that they may not, must not, damage 
further our lives, our fortunes, and our sacred honor. SAM SMITH


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