This exchange caught my eye, from 4&20 Blackbirds. It’s in the comments after a post by Lizard regarding a Montana candidate for Denny Rehberg’s House seat, Franke Wilmer. Wilmer had claimed, as is so easy to do without evidence, that the number one threat to our national security are terrorist attacks.
Turner: I’m not sure what your quibble with Wilmer is. Is there a greater threat to national security (if we understand this to mean an action leading to the deaths of large numbers of Americans) is terrorist attacks?
What would that threat be? What is Franke missing?
lizard19 terrorism is a tactic, that’s my first quibble. it’s used both by foreigners and by US citizens, so it’s a threat that shouldn’t be relegated solely to the area of foreign policy, where terrorism is used to justify projecting US imperial ambitions. in terms of actual deaths caused, not having access to affordable health care is a bigger threat than terrorist attacks.
and I thought I was pretty clear in voicing my concern over Franke’s endorsement of Obama’s military doctrine. obviously my opinions are perceived as pretty radical to some when it comes to criticizing Obama and the whole left’s obsession with humanitarian interventions, but if terrorism is such a concern, then actions taken by this administration to actually STRENGTHEN the boogemen [sic] in al-Qaeda should be examined just a bit more closely, don’t ya think?
Turner Wilmer didn’t say that “terrorism” (your word not hers) is the greatest threat. She said that “terrorist attacks” are. In light of the numerous Al-Qaeda-type attacks against our country, both ones that were successful and ones that were thwarted, I don’t see how you can argue with her claim.
We’re an imperialist country. That doesn’t mean that we should stop protecting our people against those imbittered [sic] by our imperialism.
What first caught my eye is something that I’ve noticed about people who are consumed by our propaganda system: when they encounter ideas that are not part of their indoctrination, they simply cannot fathom them, so that they bounce off. Lizard said that terrorism is used to further US imperial ambitions, and Turner is impermeable. I bet that if I asked him this moment, he would have no idea that Lizard wrote those words. They bounced off his shield.
That’s a fascinating aspect of human existence and a tribute to the genius of our propaganda system. The lessons are learned in youth, and like Jesus and ghosts and the Founders and all the other myths, are only rarely dispelled. Turner cannot fathom the concept of American terrorism. It does not exist in his mind.
It reminds me of the movie What the #$*! Do We Know? Which makes the audacious claim that native Americans could not see Columbus’s ships on the ocean because the concept of a ship was foreign to their intelligence. I take that with a grain of salt, but I do routinely see the phenomenon of otherwise intelligent people unable to grasp the concept of American terrorism.
Then there is this deeply ingrained idea that we are somehow threatened by terrorism. Lizard quite rightly points out a far greater threat – our godawful health care system. If we spent a fraction of what we spend on military hardware (used for aggression but supposedly there to protect us from nonexistent threats) on our health care delivery system, thousands of American lives would be saved.
If I were to accept the idea that 9/11 was pulled off by 19 ragtags and a guy in a cave, and that everything went right for them and everything wrong for us, then that one incident was a fluke. The incidents where supposed terrorists have tried and failed, as in shoe bombs and underpants and pizza delivery and Times Square … are easily explained when one understands that the US uses agents provocateur to stir up trouble. No doubt the poor chumps who pulled off those stunts were angry at the US. Who can blame them? They were also dumbasses who were put up to stupid deeds, two without enough powder, and others too easily apprehended. I suspect it is all bogus, part of our ongoing never ending agitprop saturation.
We should not even have the conversations we do. We’re not threatened, there is no reason for Turner to be as scared is he obviously is. Who was it said …
The whole aim of practical politics is to keep the populace alarmed (and hence clamorous to be led to safety) by menacing it with an endless series of hobgoblins, all of them imaginary.
… I forget who.
Piece of Mindful 
The external threat, however absurd, keeps us from the real threat: internal rot. When a country can no longer provide its citizens with adequate food and shelter, it helps to distract the suffering masses. If the American diet was better, our oil-dependent agricultural system and our health-care system would not be so costly and overburdened. If we had not allowed the banking-real estate-construction-logging and mining cartel from controlling the cost of a roof over our heads, we’d save more, and owe less. We must pick guns or butter, we can’t do both.
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You’re absolutely right. Terrorism is a tool used by the CIA to control us.
Which by the reporting of world wide incidents in the last 20 or so years shows their appetite for world domination.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_battles_and_other_violent_events_by_death_toll
Busy little bees, aren’t they?
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I’ll pass on this, as it is your habit to drop little brain farts around the blogs but not be around to defend them.
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Did I misspeak? Replace CIA with “agents provocateurs”.
“The incidents where supposed terrorists have tried and failed, as in shoe bombs and underpants and pizza delivery and Times Square … are easily explained when one understands that the US uses agents provocateur to stir up trouble.”
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No – you’re just dealing in areas where your knowledge is very limited, and as I know you so well, filling in the things that you do not know about will do no good, but I’ll try. The list you furnished only lists acts of “terrorism” done TO us, and not those acts committed BY us. In Iraq alone, Opinion Research Business estimated Iraqi casualties to be 1.2 million, not to mention 2-4 million that had fled the country as a result of our (terror) attack. Your list totals maybe 15,000 total lives lost, nothing to sneeze at, but it does not Begin to approach the level of violence and terror that we inflict on the world, and remember, I’m just counting Iraq.
Regarding agents provocateur, of course I have no evidence to support my theory, but I do have a long experience with the US and how it operates going back long before 9/11 – I forgot to mention that the Murrah Federal Building in Oklahoma was probably an inside job.
Swede … Swede – don’t leave now. Don’t go – (door slams.) Have a nice day.
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By the way, you said “CIA” where I said “agents provocateur.” Those agents could easily be al Qaeda, as that group is well infiltrated, and was in fact originally trained by the US.
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Yeah, that’s the trouble with spooks.
They have no loyalty.
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It’s not “spooks.” It’s not a game. It’s corporations, governments, concentrated wealth, very powerful people, and high level chess. Politicians are usually only tools, bought by various factions. This is why Tester v Rehberg does not matter – each one is bought.
You do know that politics is for fools right?
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Do I sense a change?
Two years ago would you have included “governments” in your third sentence?
Reminds me of something Bruce Willis said in the original “Die Hard” movie.
“Welcome to the party, Pal!”.
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Last I saw our military was the biggest part of our government. The “anti-government” crowd only wants to do away with those parts of government that benefit regular people, like SS and Medicare, for instance.
It’s complicated, Ingy.
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“Anti-government crowd”?
Ya know a few years ago you’d reserve that term to the group that terrorized Roundup and Grassrange.
Now that crowd is wondering just how the regular people are going to receive SS and Medicare, both of which they’d paid into all their life.
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Social security is solvent and healthy I suppose I could say that several dozen times here and it would not register with you.
Medicare is highly efficient, but our private health care system is so bloated and inefficient that Medicare suffers as a result – that is, even though we have Medicare, we are still forced to buy private supplements that are major profit centers for the private companies, and Medicare has to reimburse bloated costs and pay for all of the crazy tests and procedures that private insurance demands. Ours is the worst health care system in the industrialized world, and it’s all your fault.
The most efficient and effective health care system in the country is VA, government owned and government run. Think about that.
Anyway, it’s been quite a spectacle to watch the right wing machine attack “big gubbmint” while at the same time increasing the size of government. “Big” is only bad where popular agencies are doing good work, but Big Military, Big TSA, Big Homeland Security, Big Bank Bailout … They like. They want a big and powerful government so long as they control it. Otherwise when they need a bailout, when their interests abroad are threatened, when they want access to our commons, who do they turn to? Who’s their sugar daddy then?
I know, you think that government threatens merely because of its size. Not true. It threatens when it is controlled by private wealth instead of popular pressure. The combination of right wingers and government, aka fascism, is what is eating us. That’s you, buddy. You’re the problem.
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No, it threatens because of illegitimacy.
“A regime has to be seen as an occupying power, unresponsive to the will of the populace, resting on arbitrary rule unconstrained by due process, relying instead on intimidation and use of disproportional force—home invasion in particular, networks of anonymous accusers, checkpoints and humiliating searches which can’t be predicted or avoided, indefinite detention and lack of genuine avenues for redress. This is the stuff of illegitimacy. — Ole Remus
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Indeed we seem to have an illegitimate regime, and Obama is part of it, as the two parties are owned by the same financiers. (It is essential for the sake of domestic tranquility for the population to beleive that elections matter.) But none of our problems with government are caused by social programs, if that is your inference.
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