Looking back to that horrible day, seven years ago:
We must also engage, however, in the more difficult task of understanding the sources of such madness. The essence of this tragedy, it seems to me, derives from a fundamental absence of empathy on the part of the attackers: an inability to imagine, or connect with, the humanity and suffering of others. Such a failure of empathy, such numbness to the pain of a child or the desperation of a parent, is not innate; nor, history tells us, is it unique to a particular culture, religion, or ethnicity. It may find expression in a particular brand of violence, and may be channeled by particular demagogues or fanatics. Most often, though, it grows out of a climate of poverty and ignorance, helplessness and despair.–Barack Obama, Hyde Park Herald, Sept. 19, 2001.
“This is obviously an act of war that has been committed on the United States”
– John McCain, September 12, 2001
One last reminder: Osama bin Laden? Pretty fucking wealthy. So to “connect with” his “suffering” would have meant empathizing with his desire for a new Caliphate and a return of pan-Arabism — while pretending that the wealthy educated Arabs behind modern radical Islamism are victims of poverty, helplessness, and despair, instead of noticing that they are modern-day megalomaniacs and wannabe prophets acting out of a desire to undermine the ideological sway of western liberalism.
Food for thought, at the very least — and an insight into the worldviews espoused by the presidential candidates for 2008.
(h/t kelly)
Comment by Puck on 9/11 @ 2:03 pm #
Also from John McCain, on September 13, 2001:
“I say to our enemies: We are coming. God may have mercy on you, but we won’t.”
I’ll take that guy for President, please.
Comment by Bob Reed on 9/11 @ 2:07 pm #
I may be wrong, but I’m pretty sure that there is something more in play than a fundamental lack of empathy when a suicide bomber pulls the lanyard on their explosive vest, or when one fly’s an airliner into a large building.
It’s also true that this is not some revolution of the Arab proletariat. Osama is not just rich, he’s looooooooaded! His movement is a bunch of well to do elitists, who use populist, and religious, demagoguery to exploit the regular working folks; they tell them that what they propose is in their best interests…
Kinda like O! and the New Democratic Party !
Comment by Jeffersonian on 9/11 @ 2:14 pm #
[sob] We need to get that Osama into therapy, and soon.
Comment by Mikey NTH on 9/11 @ 2:17 pm #
Today in central Michigan was a day almost as beautiful as seven years ago.
I think Orrin Judd’s assessment on where we are now seven years later is pretty good. The USA and its allies have been incredibly successful. Not completely successful, no, but on any rational assessment we have been more successful than many would have thought we would be seven years ago. For that I am grateful.
Comment by B Moe on 9/11 @ 2:18 pm #
Most often, though, it grows out of a climate of poverty and ignorance, helplessness and despair.
Doesn’t everything?
Comment by Roland THTG on 9/11 @ 2:19 pm #
I think OBL is/was some class of community organizer. Just in his own way.
Comment by kelly on 9/11 @ 2:23 pm #
In O!’s world, apparently yes.
Comment by Roman on 9/11 @ 2:23 pm #
…ain’t that some shit…
Call me a hilbilly but give me the President who can crystallize the thoughts of a Nation in one sentence.
Fight with me. Fight with me. Fight for what’s right for our country…
Comment by Mr. Pink on 9/11 @ 2:24 pm #
“a climate of poverty and ignorance, helplessness and despair.”
Sounds like inner-city Chicago.
Comment by kelly on 9/11 @ 2:30 pm #
The sheer, towering narcissism of the Left is breathtaking to me. As in The One’s response to 9-11. “Oh, wait, we must have made them do this.” For allegedly being so fucking smart, you’d think he’d know the meaning of the word “volition.”
Comment by psycho... on 9/11 @ 2:32 pm #
…
He’s clean, though.
Comment by Percy Dovetonsils on 9/11 @ 2:34 pm #
As I’ve noted before, I wonder if Omessiah’s search for understanding the motives of terrorists extends to the Ku Klux Klan.
I’m guessing, somehow, that for him some terrorists are more worthy of understanding than others.
Comment by immiseration of the proletariat on 9/11 @ 2:34 pm #
Poverty & despair do indeed breed terrorism, you capitalist running dogs. Hence the wave of suicide bombers from Mexico.
Any who disagree are instructed to report to Room 101 for rehabilitation.
Comment by Gringo on 9/11 @ 2:34 pm #
Obama’s words on 9/11 appeared on the 19th of September. IIRC, by then enough had been discovered to link the attacks to Bin Laden. That is, by then even Obama knew that a mega-wealthy Arab was behind this.
Comment by happyfeet on 9/11 @ 2:36 pm #
Also there are lots of people that are free that used to be all stompy-face. America has a lot to be proud of, so it’s important that Baracky wins so America can be said to have rejected the successful policies. It’s kind of confusing, but you’re not supposed to think about it.
Comment by ducktrapper on 9/11 @ 2:37 pm #
Hey look! Obama’s nwance is showing!
Comment by Jeffersonian on 9/11 @ 2:37 pm #
The sheer, towering narcissism of the Left is breathtaking to me. As in The One’s response to 9-11. “Oh, wait, we must have made them do this.†For allegedly being so fucking smart, you’d think he’d know the meaning of the word “volition.â€Â
Wow, what a can of worms that opens.
Distilling it down, kelly, the Left cannot allow that volition exists, at least not in identified victim groups such as those Mr. Obama fantasizes about. To do so would confer some degree of culpability on said victims, never good politically, particularly when denying them free will sets the Left up in the position to be Master of said groups in order to apply the healing balm of the therapeutic State. Make your mascots into free, independent actors and your entire reason for existing, politically, evaporates.
Comment by Jeffersonian on 9/11 @ 2:42 pm #
Determinism, it’s what’s for dinner!
Comment by Aldo on 9/11 @ 2:44 pm #
There have been good studies debunking the assumed link between poverty and terrorism. The “root causes” of al Qaeda terrorism are explained perfectly well by the psychology of cults and mass movements. There is no better source than Erik Hoffer’s book The True Believer.
Comment by Clint on 9/11 @ 2:47 pm #
OBL’s Declaration of War against the US in 1996. Best not to think of that too. And while we’re at it, let’s just ignore all instances of terrorism supported by, and carried out by, Islamic Fundamentalists since 1979, if not before.
It’s all about the Poverty. They’re being crushed by the weight of the oil!! It’s oppressive!
Comment by happyfeet on 9/11 @ 2:54 pm #
Well I mean I think the difference is more that McCain responded to the terrorist attacks while Baracky capitalized on them.
Comment by Alec Leamas on 9/11 @ 2:55 pm #
Jeff, we’re forgetting the charming little bug cum feature of the new Islamists – wrapping terrorism in the grievance language of the Left, to the extent even of citing Chomsky, as I recall.
Comment by Big Bang Hunter (pumping you up) on 9/11 @ 3:05 pm #
- Never say in a few sentences, anything you can say in a babble of words, particularly when you want to slip in a kick in the teeth to the “America you love”.
Comment by N. O'Brain on 9/11 @ 3:15 pm #
“Comment by Percy Dovetonsils on 9/11 @ 2:34 pm #
As I’ve noted before, I wonder if Omessiah’s search for understanding the motives of terrorists extends to the Ku Klux Klan.”
Ah, but the KKK was the terrorist arm of the Democrats.
Comment by BJTexs on 9/11 @ 3:21 pm #
Let me be the first to say: Obama doesn’t know jack shit about radicalized Islam.
If he did, he would know that the origins go back to the early 1800’s when Wahhabi and Saud were forming their little holy alliance and started building their madrassa universities. Students came from all over the Middle east, including India, Aphganistan and present day Pakistan, where some formed their own version of Wahhabi scholarship with the Deobandi Madrassa. Islamic radicals (then known as “Hindustanis”) were at the center of several uprisings against the British, having planned, financed and executed of the “beef fat bullet” revolt in which they used their network to spread the rumor about the “religiously tainted” rifle ammo.
As always, even back then, the Hindustanis found comfort and help in the northwest territories especially Swat and Bruner. Sound familiar? Move ahead to 1970’s Pakistan when, as a result of Benazir Bhutto’s father robbing the country blind and crashing the economy, the state education system was all but destroyed. The Saudis, just becoming flush with petro dollars, were more than happy to spend hundreds of millions over many years building thousands of Madrassas and mosques, virtually all of which preached Wahhabi radicalized Islam to poor students given away by parents who could neither afford to teach or even feed them.
So yes, Obama, poverty has a hand in this as it does in many things but it is indoctrination lead by economic and intellectual elites who also happen to have illusions of grandeur like Caliphates and, as Jeff notes, pan Arabism in the form of medieval theocracies run by religious councils ruthlessly ruled by Shar’ia law. These are the real catalysts of fanatics who see repentance and redemption in flying planes into buildings.
History also shows us that appeasement has never worked because these theocrats have only one interest: the ascendancy of Islam through out Western Asia and, eventually, the entire world. This reflects the fact that radicalized missionaries were being educated and heading out to places like Indonesia, Malaysia and The Philippines by the middle of the 1800’s.
We reap the “benefits” of this mission work today.
No the only thing that has worked, especially in the northwest territories, is the careful and overwhelming application of force to the point at which the Hindustani’s melt into the mountains and the tribes that supported them come down from the hilltops and make peace. Remind you of Afghanistan? How about Anbar province in Iraq? This is an ongoing process that money can’t buy as the natives live simply and really want nothing other than to be left alone and practice their religion and back up their hospitality to radicals like the Taliban (grown primarily from the Deobandi Branch, two sides of the same coin with the Wahhabis.) If their lives are disrupted enough and both the Taliban and al qaeda are being as heavy handed in Swat as they were in areas of Iraq (and as the Taliban was when running Afghanistan) then at some point we have to prove that trouble from us is worse than turning on their “guests.”
The idea that the primary genesis for radicalized Islam is “poverty and despair” completely ignores the lifetime indoctrination and extensive history of this scourge on mankind that flows from Deobandi to Wahhabi right on the doorstep of Saudi Arabia.
Obama desperately needs to read “God’s Terrorists” by Charles Allen although I seriously doubt that it will make a dent in the community organizer’s “poverty and despair” force field.
Comment by BJTexs on 9/11 @ 3:26 pm #
Oh and Aldo, Eric Hoffer’s book on the psychology and indoctrination of radicalized terrorists is excellent. Also Obama should avail himself of any Bernard Lewis tome and, just for yucks, I’ll throw “The Age of Sacred Terror” by two of Clinton’s former National Security council members.
All the roads lead to the Saudi Arabian petro dollars. some of the minor terrorists may be poor but many are university educated from good families, especially the ones with half a brain.
Comment by Roman on 9/11 @ 3:29 pm #
Interestingly, being as, well, as continental as I am – I took a peak at that Kos Stephanopolous site looking for something that might serve as a remembrance of 9/11. And what did I find? Nada.
Unless of course, you count this diatribe against W:
http://www.dailykos.com/storyonly/2008/9/11/41021/9892/364/594599
… as remembrance.
Silencio = muerte
Of course, I scanned. Naturally, I could have missed something a bit more, shall we say, patriotic.
Comment by Fat Man on 9/11 @ 3:41 pm #
Roman 27 Check the NYTimes too.
Comment by Aldo on 9/11 @ 3:44 pm #
Let me be the first to say: Obama doesn’t know jack shit about radicalized Islam.
No prob. He has 300 foreign policy advisors, ranging from Warren Christopher to Madeleine Albright….
….
oh God. We’re so f*cked.
Comment by kelly on 9/11 @ 3:55 pm #
Hey, don’t forget George Clooney! He’s got him some FP chops, that dude.
Comment by thor on 9/11 @ 4:00 pm #
and an insight into the worldviews espoused by the presidential candidates for 2008.
More like insight in how to frame a political narrative through quote selection.
But I see the fish bit on it. Of course you don’t even need much bait for these particular fish, half ‘em will hit a bare hook.
Comment by Aldo on 9/11 @ 4:03 pm #
But I see the fish bit on it. Of course you don’t even need much bait for these particular fish, half ‘em will hit a bare hook.
I heard you like to beat women.
Comment by Spies, Brigands, and Pirates on 9/11 @ 4:04 pm #
Aldo: There is no better source than Erik Hoffer’s book The True Believer.
Word, brother.
Comment by The Lost Dog on 9/11 @ 4:10 pm #
“I’m guessing, somehow, that for him some terrorists are more worthy of understanding than others.”
Yup. And I’m sure he has no empathy for those terrorist Rethuglians.
Comment by thor on 9/11 @ 4:16 pm #
No, I do not beat women, never have.
Did your father ever beat your mom? Just asking, Aldo, since you brought it up.
Comment by BJTexs on 9/11 @ 4:24 pm #
Oh, thor: Do you have something substantive to offer as to Obama’s world view on radicalized Islam that doesn’t include fish bait, moose hicks or ad hominems?
Hmmmmm?
Comment by Jeff G. on 9/11 @ 4:31 pm #
True dat. Why believe what they said when they’re so SMOOTH.
Style over substance, baby! Anything else is for the bourgeois.
Comment by Pablo on 9/11 @ 4:55 pm #
The Wahhabi strain, no. The WF Muhammad/Elijah Muhammad/Malcolm X/Farrakhan strain I’m guessing he’s up to speed on.
Comment by JHoward on 9/11 @ 5:15 pm #
I guess this means you’re not standing up for Prez’s personally nursemaiding the whole damn globe, Jeff.
Diversity!
Comment by twolaneflash on 9/11 @ 5:24 pm #
Obama went on in his Sept 19, 2001 op-ed to tell America over a dozen times what “we will have to” do and “we must” do. This arrogant and elitist rant against America was before he was a U.S.Senator or a candidate for President. His opinion of the nation he calls home has not improved since then, from all the ugly he says he finds in it.
Speaking of finding ugly in America, where is Michelle Obama? Why has she been locked away and gagged? I want her, Barry O, and bye-bye Biden to have open microphones 24/7 till November 4th. They should continue to dig their own political graves, which are quite deep now. Americans used to hate communists. They knew Marxists/Leninists wanted to destroy our Constitutional Republic. Americans prized their freedoms. Now, not so much, especially if you are a Democrat.
Comment by Mikey NTH on 9/11 @ 5:26 pm #
thor is like Watson – he doesn’t shed any light himself, but by his statements he gives clarity to what is before us.
Comment by Sean M. on 9/11 @ 5:46 pm #
Why, indeed? Especially when it comes to the O!
Comment by Timstigator on 9/11 @ 5:47 pm #
Talking about Osama Bin Laden, in Gandalf’s voice: “They are coming. They are here. They press close to him. They are but shadows now. Deadly shadows. He feels their presence. They are coming.”
Frodo: “They’re the fuckin’ Marines, goddamm it!”
Comment by Timstigator on 9/11 @ 5:49 pm #
Gollum: “Beeyatch.”
Comment by Obstreperous Infidel on 9/11 @ 5:59 pm #
No better reason to vote for McCain over Obama. He just doesn’t get it. Yeah, Mohammed Atta and the good fellows were poor. That’s it. I’ve had to barricade the doors because the impoverished Mexicans/Nicaraguans/Hondurans/Romanians/Ukrainians/Indians/Russians are blowing themselves up. Oh wait, they’re not.
Comment by TerryH on 9/11 @ 6:21 pm #
[...]Most often, though, it grows out of a climate of poverty and ignorance, helplessness and despair.
The dominant (but wrong) narratives of Edward Said, Juan Cole, et al are contributory to this ignorance that fuels the state of perpetual victimhood that serves as a breeding ground for radicals and their terror based solutions.
It is only fitting that when up becomes down the academy is the source of the ignorance.
Comment by RTO Trainer on 9/11 @ 7:14 pm #
HAMAS is a whole organization of Community Organizers.
Comment by Trimegistus on 9/11 @ 7:54 pm #
I’ve heard it said that in a crisis people don’t change, but they do become more of what they already are. A brave man shows courage, a coward shows his fear. After 9/11 patriots gave blood, flew flags, and prayed for the defeat of our enemies. And liberals gave off billowing clouds of jargon.
Pingback by Six Meat Buffet » 9/11 on 9/11 @ 8:29 pm #
[...] G. looks at the difference in how B. Hussein Obama and John McCain reacted to the 9/11 attacks. [...]
Comment by JHoward on 9/11 @ 9:37 pm #
“War is an ugly thing but not the ugliest of things; the decayed and degraded state of moral and patriotic feelings which thinks that nothing is worth war is much worse. A man who has nothing for which he is willing to fight, nothing which is more important than his own personal safety, is a miserable creature and has no chance of being free unless made and kept so by the exertions of better men than himself.”
- John Stuart Mill
“People sleep peaceably in their beds at night only because rough men stand ready to do violence on their behalf.”
- George Orwell
Comment by Slartibartfast on 9/11 @ 10:18 pm #
I have this 2-hour History Channel special on 9/11 conspiracy theories Tivoed; just finished watching it.
If there’s any afterlife justice, Dylan Avery and his pals will be forced to, over and over, be killed by having a burning WTC 7 dumped on top of him. And then be revived, only to be killed the same way again.
Stupidity of that high a grade has got to carry some penalties. In a just world, that is.
Comment by MAJ (P) John on 9/12 @ 5:03 am #
““People sleep peaceably in their beds at night only because rough men stand ready to do violence on their behalf.â€Â
- George Orwell”
I’m not all that rough – but I do stand ready to employ violence on behalf of all of you.
Comment by Obstreperous Infidel on 9/12 @ 6:56 am #
And for that we are eternally grateful, Maj. John. Thank you doesn’t cover the whole of my gratitude.
Pingback by 9-11: Looking Back on Obama and McCain « Thespis Journal on 9/12 @ 7:58 pm #
[...] Looking Back on Obama and McCain A very interesting post at Protein Wisdom. Here’s how Obama reacted in 2001 and and how McCain reacted. It’s [...]
Pingback by Tennesseefree.com » Childe Obama to the fallen towers came. on 9/12 @ 10:05 pm #
[...] “We must also engage, however, in the more difficult task of understanding the sources of such madness. The essence of this tragedy, it seems to me, derives from a fundamental absence of empathy on the part of the attackers: an inability to imagine, or connect with, the humanity and suffering of others. Such a failure of empathy, such numbness to the pain of a child or the desperation of a parent, is not innate; nor, history tells us, is it unique to a particular culture, religion, or ethnicity. It may find expression in a particular brand of violence, and may be channeled by particular demagogues or fanatics. Most often, though, it grows out of a climate of poverty and ignorance, helplessness and despair. –Barack Obama, Hyde Park Herald, Sept. 19, 2001. “This is obviously an act of war that has been committed on the United States†– John McCain, September 12, 2001 “I say to our enemies: We are coming. God may have mercy on you, but we won’t.†– John McCain, September 13, 2001 So, which man would you want to lead the U.S. forward, today? Which man has the experience that counts, the proven guts and mental stamina to stand up to adversity and enemies that still want to kill every one of us if they could? [...]
Pingback by If only the wingnuts would stop it with their fear mongering and HATE… on 11/27 @ 9:44 am #
[...] from his statement, however, was this: We must [...] engage, however, in the more difficult task of understanding the sources of such [...]