64 thoughts on “I’m Rudy Giuliani, and I Approve This Crass Ad”

1. Short-term benefit, meet the long term repurcussions, aka Blowback.

   Great song, btw (blowback, that is).

   nala, I don’t think Harbeer is arguing that it is acceptable for someone to become a hatemonger because the U.S. helped arm a conflict (or engaged directly) in a way that led to a family member dying. That said, I do think there is a huge disconnect within mainstream American coverage of “Islamofascism” (or whatever the weird word of the day is) between current events and very real political decisions the U.S. made that have contributed to things falling out this way. In short, the “they hate our freedoms” line gets played way more often than the “oh, we just armed both sides of the bloodiest war since WWII” or “oh, we fought proxy wars throughout the ‘Cold War’ that devastated homegrown democracies” or “oh we train, aid, and abet dictators.”

2. Obama!

3. Obama!

   Huckabee! Jenny Craig for Veep!

4. 40 · muralimannered said

   32 · Harbeer said

   Ok, I expressed myself poorly, too. Let’s be friends again. You’re obviously one of those annoying “mature” people.

   First of all, you could have said that by quoting Brzezinski I was actually substantiating your point (about the left downplaying Islamofascism) because he was Jimmy Carter’s National Security Advisor. I would then counter by saying that Democrats are not really “the left” and then where would we be? What I really meant to say is, if Islamofascism is indeed a problem, how do you solve that problem? By killing people? They don’t want to be killed and they will fight back. In the process, innocent people will die. People who love those innocent people will then become Islamofascists. Or we could arm their enemies, but we see how that played out before (Asian Dub Foundation has at least two songs about this.) Best response I heard to 9/11 came on 9/13. I had a ticket to see Thich Nhat Hahn in Bezerkeley on 9/13. I had bought my ticket weeks in advance, but then the wheel of history turned and provided an even bigger context to hear this great advocate for peace. But you know what? It was hot up in there, and Thich Nhat Hahn is a very slow- and soft-speaking man. I got bored and fell asleep, but I tell you what, I didn’t mind so much because Nhat Hahn’s opening act rocked my world. Seriously. This other monk spoke before him. She spoke of America’s greatness. “America is a great nation,” she said. “Nobody doubts that. And America has been hurt, we all know that, and sympathize, too. But how much more greatness would it show if America took food and books and medicine to the people of Afghanistan instead of bombs?” I held up my lighter like I was hearing an encore of “Every Rose Has Its Thorn.” That’s what I was trying to say. That and global warming isn’t nearly as much fun to say as Islamofascism. And finally, how can I be condescending when I use phrases like “very realer?” do we have to give credence to the “Islamofascism Awareness Week” folks by ever using the term uncritically(i do see the humor at the end)? I think the ADF songs you speak of are Blowback and Enemy of the Enemy

   Even the Dalai Lama supports force if it prevents/reverses/neutralizes terrorism. I supported and I continue to support our Afghanistan operations. I think that if the Americans should give books, medicine, and food, along with military assistance to win over the hearts/minds of the folks there. Which is what we’re doing anyways.

   Are you suggesting that the USA not use force over there? Those battle-hearted criminals are so over-the-top evil that they had a 12-year old behead an Afghani “spy”, and this was on video-tape. Even forcing them to listen to ‘Poison’ and CC Deville guitar solos won’t reform them. Neither will withholding pancakes.

5. 42 · nala said

   Snark aside,

   First of all, you could have said that by quoting Brzezinski I was actually substantiating your point (about the left downplaying Islamofascism) because he was Jimmy Carter’s National Security Advisor. I would then counter by saying that Democrats are not really “the left” and then where would we be?

   Except you brought it up as an example of how ‘most Americans’ don’t recognize how U.S. foreign policy has interplayed with the rise of Islamic terrorism, which I agreed with.

   What I really meant to say is, if Islamofascism is indeed a problem, how do you solve that problem? By killing people? They don’t want to be killed and they will fight back. In the process, innocent people will die. People who love those innocent people will then become Islamofascists. Or we could arm their enemies, but we see how that played out before (Asian Dub Foundation has at least two songs about this.)

   I don’t know the answer to that question. I do know that fear-mongering is not the answer though, and I expressed several times in this thread my aghastness at this ridiculous ad. I don’t think it’s as simple as ‘we killed their family members so they became extremists’ though; there are larger political issues that have to be addressed. By that account, it would be perfectly acceptable for someone whose family was killed by Islamic terrorists to become a hatemonger, right? And yeah, ‘Islamofascism’ is kind of a fear-mongering term in itself. I’ll refrain from using it.

   The Islamofascists are stupid, and they are morbidly pessimistic. They would have found a reason to hate us no matter what! Even the Kuwaitis don’t like us as much as you think, even though it was Americans (via Exxon lobbyists) who saved them in ’91. No matter what the Americans do, they will get pissed off. Even in India, the Islamofascists there have declared India as an enemy. Is anyone familar with the leader of the biggest mosque in India? This Maulana requested that Saudi Arabia boycott Indian goods. For what? Well, they’ll find reasons to hate.

6. 55 · boston_mahesh said

   The Islamofascists are stupid, and they are morbidly pessimistic. They would have found a reason to hate us no matter what! Even the Kuwaitis don’t like us as much as you think, even though it was Americans (via Exxon lobbyists) who saved them in ’91. No matter what the Americans do, they will get pissed off. Even in India, the Islamofascists there have declared India as an enemy. Is anyone familar with the leader of the biggest mosque in India? This Maulana requested that Saudi Arabia boycott Indian goods. For what? Well, they’ll find reasons to hate.

   Right. They are subhuman.

7. 42 · nala said

   I don’t think it’s as simple as ‘we killed their family members so they became extremists’ though; there are larger political issues that have to be addressed. By that account, it would be perfectly acceptable for someone whose family was killed by Islamic terrorists to become a hatemonger, right?

   Well, I’m not saying that any of this is “acceptable,” I’m just describing a version of reality. If somebody whose family was killed by Islamic terrorists became a hatemonger, I think, to quote Chris Rock, I’d understand. My point though, is that history matters, even if nobody in this country remembers it. Sure, many other factors play into it, like unemployment levels, people’s optimism, and real opportunities for people to earn a dignified livelihood.

   Again, I think it’s telling that the Bush Administration farmed out all the Iraq rebuilding to US-based private contractors, who further subcontracted to people who subcontracted to people who subcontracted who brought in foreign workers from India and Pakistan and Indonesia and took away their passports thereby rendering them captive, slave workers and paid them a pittance while charging them an arm and leg for crappy shipping container accommodations, worse even than the US troops, while management from said US-based private contractors stayed at all the fancy hotels in the Green Zone. (No, not the one where the Al-Jazeera crew got “accidentally bombed” like the Chinese embassy got “accidentally bombed” in Yugoslavia.)

   So US corporations are skimming all the malai off the top while sub-sub-sub contracting to South Asian slave labor and all the while young, able Iraqi men are sitting there unemployed, nothing to do, a mom or a wife (or both) who’s nagging about the kids need milk and there isn’t even water to drink or electricity for most of the day and your homeboy stops by to see if you want to take a walk. What do you do? Check the classifieds?

   Anybody read Hanif Kureishi’s short story “My Son the Fanatic?” I like the movie, too, but the story has its own charms. Homegrown Islamic fundamentalists–now that’s a whole ‘nother topic–and one that deserves to be spoken of in the same context as Christian Fundamentalism in this country and also Free-Market Fundamentalism.

8. 50 · Harbeer said

   38 · muralimannered said

   so you’re just thinking of a “military effort” vs. “non-military effort” kind of dichotomy?

   Not at all. I am thinking systemwide holistic change–a fundamental change of consciousness–that might be better characterized as a multichotomy. Let’s start by respecting other peoples/cultures/nations as equals. Let’s stop supporting oppressive dictators who serve the short-term interests of an elite micro-minority in this country. Let’s stop forcing privitization of public resources the world over. I guess I’m thinking of a “justice” vs. “get everything we can force them to give us” kind of dichotomy. Sure, we can kick any countries ass, in the short term. We can make them dance at the snap of our fingers. But don’t we dehumanize ourselves as much as we dehumanize them when we do that?

   Harbeer,

   I’m with you for most of this…although I do think that privatization, when not forced, is neither morally compromised nor imprudent from the risk-management perspective if implemented properly. Your last line reminded me of the comic primer for my very first post-colonial theory class in college (didn’t come in the US,funnily enough), which featured a generously drawn Ashis Nandy intoning, “Colonization dehumanized the colonizers as much as it brutalized the colonized.”

   It is easy now to say the Soviets were on the decline. We have that luxury of hindsight today.

   vikram,

   I think we all proceed on the assumption, well-intentioned at best(from the recent history of goof-ups in the intelligence services), that our government uses the best rational methods to analyze the date they receive. There weren’t many people calling for an end to the arms race from the perspective of, “they’re already goners” during the 80s but there were a few inside the military who wrote about the logistical implications of programs like Star Wars (which represented the zenith of over-the-top useless defense spending during the 80s). Hindsight is 20/20 but you must wonder about the analytical ability of those who set policy in the past.

   Free-Market Fundamentalism.

   harb,

   well i guess this is the time to admit that I read Marginal Revolution and Asymmetrical Information (as well as fire megan mcardle)almost every day. There should definitely be boundaries but after seeing how money was disbursed by the Government of Sri Lanka after the Tsunami I started to see more and more traditional governmental functions/duties/responsibilities that could be more ably discharged by the private sector–not waiting for the invisible hand to swoop in and make it happen but set public policy accordingly. I’ve had relatives who worked for the World Bank and so I’m very familiar with the hidebound nature of such organizations, and the damage they can cause by throwing money at problems that they’re not willing to consider at the macro level, but I’m not really willing to believe that anyone is a capable provider of aid simply because they say they care and that this development is sustainable.

   Regarding the proper level of intervention in the rest of the world, I think Binayavanga Wainaina said it best.

9. 58 · muralimannered said

   I think we all proceed on the assumption, well-intentioned at best(from the recent history of goof-ups in the intelligence services), that our government uses the best rational methods to analyze the date they receive. There weren’t many people calling for an end to the arms race from the perspective of, “they’re already goners” during the 80s

   Actually, the CIA under George H.W. Bush was predicting the fall of the Soviet Union as early as 1976. What you call “goof ups” are actually deliberate attempts to disprove real intelligence. Bush’s enemies (the neocons) politicized that intelligence and formed what they called Team B and, well, let’s just check this Time Magazine article from 1991 about Robert Gates:

   In 1976, when Bush was director, conservatives in Congress and in the Republican Party were savaging the CIA for supposedly underestimating the Soviet military menace. As a sop to the right and a demoralizing slap at the professionals on his own staff, Bush allowed a panel of outsiders, deliberately stacked with hard-liners, to second-guess the agency’s findings. Not surprisingly, the result was a depiction of Soviet intentions and capabilities that seemed extreme at the time and looks ludicrous in retrospect. [Link]

   So you see, Vikram, it’s not “the luxury of hindsight.” You’re indulting in the luxury of rewriting history, which doesn’t really do anybody any good.

10. 58 • muralimannered said

    I do think that privatization, when not forced, is neither morally compromised nor imprudent from the risk-management perspective if implemented properly.

    There are some resources (like water, genes, and basmati rice) and services (like education, fire departments, police departments, and health care) which I believe should be maintained as a commons, outside of the profit motive.

    58 • muralimannered said

    Regarding the proper level of intervention in the rest of the world, I think Binayavanga Wainaina said it best.

    That’s pretty well-put. I’m a fan of Marcos, myself.

    I saved an example of “humanitarian aid” for the chiapaneco indigenous, which arrived a few weeks ago: a pink stiletto heel, imported, size 6 and 1/2…without its mate. I always carry it in my backpack in order to remind myself, in the midst of interviews, photo reports and attractive sexual propositions, what we are to the country after the first of January: a Cinderella…These good people who, sincerely, send us a pink stiletto heel, size 6 and 1/2, imported, without its mate… thinking that, poor as we are, we’ll accept anything, charity and alms… That was in April of 1994. Then we thought it was a question of time, that the people were going to understand that the zapatista indigenous were dignified, and they weren’t looking for alms, but for respect. The other pink heel never arrived, and the pair remained incomplete, and piling up in the “Aguascalientes” were useless computers, expired medicines, extravagant (for us) clothes, which couldn’t even be used for plays (“señas,” they call them here) and, yes, shoes without their mate. And things like that continue to arrive, as if those people were saying “poor little things, they’re very needy. I’m sure anything would do for them, and this is in my way.” And that’s not all. There is a more sophisticated charity. It’s the one that a few NGOs and international agencies practice. It consists, broadly speaking, in their deciding what the communities need, and, without even consulting them, imposing not just specific projects, but also the times and means of their implementation. Imagine the desperation of a community that needs drinkable water and they’re saddled with a library. The one that requires a school for the children, and they give them a course on herbs.

    Murali, I’m not saying that there is anything inherently wrong with “free markets.” I just try to use that phrase (Free Market Fundamentalism) because there are too many people (on this site, in this country) who seem to believe that The Holy Market is a cure-all panacea. This is a broad, irrational belief, and in that respect it is not too different from “Allah will solve all our problems” or “Jesus will solve all our problems.”

11. So you see, Vikram, it’s not “the luxury of hindsight.” You’re indulting in the luxury of rewriting history, which doesn’t really do anybody any good.

    Ok, just so we know this is the track record of the CIA when it comes to “intelligence gathering” :

    1962 The Cuban Missile Crisis. On September 19, the CIA told Kennedy that the establishment of a Soviet missile force on Cuban soil was “incompatible with Soviet policy as we presently estimate it.” A month later, an Air Force U-2 took photographs of Soviet missile sites. This is another case where the CIA got it wrong, and then partially rectified the mistake. (The U-2 was a CIA program.) They still missed a hundred or so battlefield nuclear weapons on Cuba, and underestimated the number of Soviet troops on the island by a factor of three. 1965 The Soviet ICBM buildup. The CIA missed the Soviet missile buildup, partly in response to the humiliation of the Cuban missile crisis. A subsequent CIA director, Robert Gates, later wrote that the Agency “did not foresee this massive Soviet effort to match and then surpass the United States in strategic missile numbers and capabilities — and did not understand Soviet intentions.” This seems to be a case where the Agency swung from one extreme to another. Having overestimated the Soviet missile buildup in the Fifties, they underestimated it in the Sixties. 1978 The Iranian revolution. In August 1978, CIA issued an NIE that said Iran “is not in a revolutionary or even a prerevolutionary situation.” The Shah fled Iran six months later. 1990 Two blunders on Iraq. On July 31, The CIA dismissed the likelihood of an Iraqi invasion of Kuwait. Saddam Hussein invaded two days later. The CIA also significantly underestimated the scale of the Iraqi nuclear weapons program. 1998 The Indian bomb. The CIA failed to predict the testing of an Indian nuclear bomb in May 1998. The chairman of the Senate intelligence committee, Richard Shelby, bemoaned “a colossal failure of our nation’s intelligence gathering.” The CIA was better prepared for the first Pakistan nuclear test a few days later link

    And 3 years after 1976, the supposed declining Soviet Union invaded Afghanistan and remained there for almost a decade.

    With such a spotty record over the past 40 years, I can hardly blame anyone for taking the CIA’s reports with an few pounds of salt. That list doesn’t even include the whole fiasco over the missed/ignored/buried intelligence about 9/11. Me rewriting history ? I think not.

12. 61 · Vikram said

    With such a spotty record over the past 40 years, I can hardly blame anyone for taking the CIA’s reports with an few pounds of salt.

    Assuming that list is correct and reasonably objective, you call five mistakes over 40 years “such a spotty record?” I make five mistakes before noon every day (and I’m usually not even awake yet). But maybe you’re right. Maybe we should divide the world into “us” and “them” and then have at it.

    Some people think that competition is the only way to motivate people. No doubt competition is fun and satisfying, but so is cooperation. I’d like to see more “cooperation” in our national vocabulary and I don’t mean the “I know what’s best, you better fall in line or else!” variety of “cooperation.” I mean listening to people, trying out ways of doing things that might seem ridiculous to you, being willing to be wrong, and who cares if it slows down “progress.” Democracy is a messy and laborious process which does not guarantee that you will always get your way, but it’s worth it.

13. I like the music track.

14. That made my insides cringe.

    We New Yorkers remember the Giuliani pre-9/11. He did good for the city, but ever since that tragic date, I can’t stand him and his exploitation of that moment. GAH!