Very Funny: One tsunami too far
There is no accounting for some people's sense of humour, or what they imagine passes for satirical comment.
Take this picture, for example, and note the narrative (and subsequent comments) tacked on to it.
The logic adduced to this poster by the blogger suggests that the fifteen jihadists who perpetrated 9/11 were not human beings carefully hand-picked and groomed to carry out their evil scheme but were rather a random force of nature whose indiscriminate violence was not under the control of thinking, planning, deliberative human intelligence. Therefore, some people find American reaction funny in the extreme, since there is no way of retaliating and preventing natural disasters.
If any of you find this kind of bizarre "satirical" humour disturbing, I'd like to remind you that it is just one small example of a "new" type of thinking about America, 9/11 and the war on terrorism which has become pretty popular among an increasing number of members of the so-called "left".
Martin Amis once described it in a sort of "modest proposal":
... I started looking from face to face in the audience, and what I saw were the gapes and frowns, not of disagreement, but of disbelief. Then a young woman spoke up, in a voice near-tearful with passionate self-righteousness, saying that it was the Americans who had armed the Islamists in Afghanistan, and that therefore the US, in its response to September 11, “should be dropping bombs on themselves”! I had time to imagine the F16s yowling in over Chicago, and the USS Abraham Lincoln pumping shells the size of Volkswagens into downtown Miami – in bold atonement for the World Trade Center, for the Pentagon, for United 93, United 175, American 11, and American 77. But then my thoughts were scattered by the sound of unanimous applause. We are drowsily accustomed, by now, to the fetishisation of “balance”, the ground rule of “moral equivalence” in all conflicts between West and East, the 100-per-cent and 360-degree inability to pass judgment on any ethnicity other than our own (except in the case of Israel). And yet the handclappers of
Question Time had moved beyond the old formula of pious paralysis. This was not
equivalence; this was hemispherical abjection. Accordingly, given the choice
between George Bush and Osama bin Laden, the liberal relativist, it seems, is
obliged to plump for the Saudi, thus becoming the appeaser of an armed doctrine
with the following tenets: it is racist, misogynist, homophobic, totalitarian,
inquisitional, imperialist, and genocidal.
13 Comments:
Such an irresponsible poster from the WWF!!!
And then the comment on that blog is even worse.. It's amazing how vulgar these Arabs can be!
Sensitive fellow aren't you?
If you can't take it, don't dish it out.
Was just being sarcastic actually.. plus I was just making a point made already by the poster...
Anyway.. bloody Arabs!
Like I said, if you make a sarcastic comment about other people, be ready for some unflattering feedback. I don't do sarcasm. It's exhausting, pointless, and often ends in shooting oneself in the foot, as you do, however gratifying it can be to the speaker. I prefer to talk about what that sarcasm of yours might mean. If you disagree you are welcome to explain what you actually meant to say in your original post.
Humor? Mmm...
You are welcome to add those comments on my blog instead of talking to yourself about things.
However, broadly speaking I believe 911 was a big shock to the USA even if it was small in scale compared to other natural disasters. I don't know where you live, but here in the UAE we experience the results of 9/11 much more closely. The American 9/11 results. Afghanistan was invaded (the US army was not invited there) and OBL is still no where to be found. Iraq was invaded too, but oh where are those WMDs? Where is that 45min claim of attack? Where was that super-tough Saddam? Iraq's Army and the whole country just crumbled into anarchy.
So yeah, 9/11 damaged the Arab and Muslim world much more than it did to America. You fix a mistake where 3000+ people died with a bigger series of mistakes where 30,000+ and more people died.
Is the world a safer place after all these military exercises? No.
Do I support the killing of innocents? No.
I'm just lamenting that this whole mess started because the first innocents do die where in NYC and not some Afghani village.
"...instead of talking to yourself about things."
Any blogger who starts a blog talks to himself or herself. If we are lucky, we get a few visitors who come by and read what we write and sometimes even leave a comment. Since you are here, answering my post then I'm not talking to myself, am I?
But the fact that you try to belittle my blog means you want to demonstrate your contempt for it, or me.
If you find this blog contemptible then why are you even here trying to explain yourself?
BTW, you could make your points with just as much forcefulness without denigrating the people who suffered from 9/11.
And more to the point, it is a fact that there was repetition of 9/11 on American soil. What do you think accounts for that statistics?
Depends on how you define an INNOCENT.
NO American is Innocent. They are marked with a sub human standard the second they are born.
I have little respect for that country save that... no wait, Iron Maiden are british.
What's a "sub human standard"?
Something like the servant class in Dubai?
http://www.independent.ie/world-news/middle-east/the-dark-side-of-dubai-1705098.html
What's 9/11, the WWF, and Iraq/Afghan wars gotta do with slavery?
Hmm wasn't it the Imperialists at the time that created shipped the Africans all the way to europe and america?
This was not outlawed until the late 1800s in the UK. Remember the USA in the 1960s?
At least we have a religion that banned slavery in all forms 14 centuries ago for those who are educated enough to know.
I very much welcome intellectual and balanced debate as opposed to time wasted on biased and incongruous arguments that sometimes miss the point entirely.
"At least we have a religion that banned slavery in all forms 14 centuries ago for those who are educated enough to know."
And those who are not "educated enough to know", does your religion ban enslaving them as well? And what does it mean "educated enough to know"? To know what?
Besides, I wondering what Anonymous from Dubai meant by "sub human standard"? The servant classes? And are servants regarded as slaves? Are there actual slaves in Dubai?
And speaking of history, weren't a large number of the slave traders who "shipped the Africans all the way to europe and america" Arabs and Muslims themselves?
"At least we have a religion that banned slavery in all forms 14 centuries ago for those who are educated enough to know."
In theory, perhaps. But in practice, slavery is still practiced in the Muslim world. But you probably know that, given how smart you are.
Also, imperialism has a long history outside of the west. I suggest starting with "Islamic Imperialism: A History" by Efraim Karsh.
"I believe 911 was a big shock to the USA even if it was small in scale compared to other natural disasters"
So 9/11 was actually a natural disaster like the tsunami!
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