Tuesday, May 11, 2004

Head chopping and a sense of history

This is very very bad.



“So we tell you that the dignity of the Muslim men and women in Abu Ghraib and others is not redeemed except by blood and souls. You will not receive anything from us but coffins after coffins ... slaughtered in this way.”

This will be very very bad for a long long time.

Americans have no sense of history. We are a baby nation, with only 500 years of History That Counts (the White European Kind). We don't get that in most of the world, 1000 years ago is last week. We have Fake Presidents who use the word "crusade" and don't get why it's offensive. (The very root word of crusade is cross.)

We will be paying for the prison torture for 500 years. And it's not "a few bad apples" that did it. Punishing them will do no good, because to history it's AMERICA that did this.

I hear this a lot from white Americans arguing against, say, slavery reparations or Native treaty rights "It's not MY fault. I didn't do it. Why should I have to pay?" There's a disconnect between history and present injustices.

The Germans get it.

There's only one thing we can do:

Start an immediate Manhattan Project of energy independence. Then get the hell out of that part of the world.

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