Terry Hastings emails:
Since we all “know” that terrorism is driven by
1-) US policy in Israel
2-) US presence in ArabiaHow does Bali tie into this? Is Bali secretly sending troops and supplies to Iraq? Is Bali suppressing the peace loving Palestinians? Is the US actively involved in Bali governmental affairs? Or, is it much simpler than that?
Perhaps the terrorist element within Bali could not gain control through normal political process, and have resorted to their usual diplomatic bargaining tools—suicide bombers targeting innocent civilians. The solution is obvious.
Bali needs to ask itself what it has done to make the terrorists hate them so much.
Heh.
And while they’re asking themselves what they did to deserve the slaughter of innocent tourists and Indonesians, they should probably apologize for racism, potentially misinterpretable dessert wrappings, swine, and any pink locker rooms they might have tucked inside the country.
Oh. And Abu Ghraib. May as well cover all the bases.
and Gitmo
I’m all for apologizing to terrorists. It’s just the polite thing to do, really.
‘Course, that’s not to say I’m against killing every last one of the fuckers.
Just, you know, a simple card like, “Sorry you had to be such barbaric pieces of shit to warrant sending a rocket up your collective asses.”
That kind of thing.
Don’t forget their military hegemony and economic imperialism.
And vice-versa.
Umm… I don’t want to play Devil’s advocate here, but the article lists identified dead at 2 Australians and 1 Japanese and identified wounded as 68 Indonesians, 20 Australians, 6 Koreans, 4 Americans, 4 Japanese. All the non-Indonesians come from countries participating in the Iraq war.
Indonesia will always be a terror target because being the most populous Muslim nation and a secular democracy makes them a political threat to al Qaeda types and God knows I think the whole Iraq-is-breeding-terrorists argument is total horseshit. In the case of this Bali bombing it seems like a bit of a stretch to immediately say there’s no Iraq connection though.
Since Bali is an almost entirely Hindu province of Indonesia it seems at least possible to me that this could have been an attack on Iraq participants in one of the only places that was both easily reachable and posed little collateral risk to Muslims.
So the victims weren’t innocent tourists and Indonesians?
There is no Devil’s advocate to play. Though you’re right: kudos to Al Qaeda for minimizing Muslim deaths. Allah will be pleased.
All the dead where infidels. That is all they need to have in common.
I’m not advancing that as a theory and of course they were innocent. This was almost certainly an attack against Indonesia in the place it would hurt most economically. I was just pointing out that this bombing is not as good an example for debunking or scoffing at the ridiculous US policy breeds terror argument (which seems to be the point of the post) as it appears on the surface.
Fine, I’ll take it down.
On second thought, I’ll leave it up. Just hope those who were killed from the coalition countries were vetted for their anti-war, anti-Bush coalition views beforehand.
Sean – The first Bali bombing happened before Iraq. This bombing happened on nearly the third anniversary of the first. I think this bombing has exactly as much to do with American/Australian hegemony as Jeff does: none.
Leave it up. This is not the first bombing in Bali, and it’s important to remember why they targeteed Bali in the first place.
Not to mention the statements by the bombers themselves that said the same damn thing. How many of those countries supported the Afghanistan campaign? Leave. it. up.
All these bombings are just goads on the course to the ultimate necessity of eradicating the Islamist threat. And all the words said in analyzing and condemning our actions or theirs are just noise made to conceal —from ourselves, mostly— the insistent message that History is delivering to us:
Islama delenda est.
Actually, on second thought, I should have said that this bombing is a reaction to Austalian, not American, actions. After all, it was Australia that freed East Timor.
Which, as far as I’m concerned, makes the point. Sometimes you have to do the right thing, whether it “breeds terrorism” or not.
Do I need to mention that East Timor was a pet cause of Noam Chomsky’s? Anybody ever ask him how many terrorists he’s created?
Sean H: you’re giving the Sean-Trio a bad name, here.
It’s clear that the Bali attacks on the Western nightclubs occured exactly because they were Western nightclubs.
The terrorists didn’t poke their heads inside the clubs and say: “Dirka dirka Japanese jihad American dirka Australian jihad.” No, they said “Dirka WESTERN jihad!”, cause everyone knows that the West is the root of all evil, and you just can’t have fun in a Muslim society.
Muslims simply cannot tolerate non-Muslims living in Dar al-Islam and following non-Muslims practices. So boom, and off with their heads.
Had to run to my in-law’s place for a bit, sorry to comment and run. Definitely leave it up, Jeff, it’s an excellent post and if it seemed like I was taking a shot at it I apologize because that’s not what I intended. Again, I’m not advancing that theory at all. I agree completely with the lot of you that this was an attack on Indonesia that had nothing to with US policy. Islamists hate the Indonesian government just for being a secular, democratic republic. Bali is a natural target for them because al Qaeda and its affiliates have demonstrated repeatedly that they understand economics and the tourism industry there is a major cash cow for the country.
The only reason for my comment was to point out that someone who held the US policy=terror position could make a halfway reasonable argument against the post. I’m not saying that argument would hold any weight or be anything but a shitty attempt to shift blame to the victims. I was just pointing out the argument was there to be made so it was out of the way. I figure better me than some freaking Kos diarist or their ilk.
The armadillo is gettin all those muslim babes. “Once you’ve gone ‘dilla the rest is a chilla.” They’re offin the tourists because 72 raisins is better than what they have to look forward to.
It’s all Jeff’s fault – he let the armadillo out.
As long as we’re covering all the bases, I migh as well step in and blame Israel. Because, well…duh.
Oops. Should’ve read Terry’s original email a little more carefully.
Still, I’m gonna go ahead and blame my mistake on the Joooooos. Sneaky bastards.
The last line of this post conjured a sudden image up in my mind:
Steve Martin, in his role as Ruprict the Retard in Dirty Rotten Scoundrels running around banging sauce pans together shouting, “Oklahoma! Oklahoma! Oklahoma!”
Replace “Oklahoma” with “Abu Ghraib” and you’ve got the modern anti-war movement.
And the lamestream media.
“Ruprecht! Don’t make me get the gential cuff!”