Comments on: Barbarism

By: David

David — Mon, 03 Mar 2008 02:49:57 +0000

All leaders are barbaric, Why they leaving to gay man to fack with all leaders in the world?Or your eyes are blind and your ears are deaf. If you can see and hear can you help to give answer and quesation to this barbaric washington?

By: eatbees

eatbees — Thu, 22 Nov 2007 20:58:21 +0000

@leblase — When I say I can fight against an attacker without calling him an enemy, and when you say you can decide that someone is your enemy without taking his humanity from him (or closing the door to a reconciliation) I think we are saying exactly same thing.

Only I still feel that having an enemy means there is a moral failing somewhere. Something has gone wrong for us to get to that point. I am more interested in identifying what has gone wrong than to fight my enemy. I would find it hard to pick up a gun even if I knew someone was stalking me. Perhaps I will end up dead because of this… or maybe not. There is no guarantee either way, but I prefer to not take the fatal step of choosing an enemy. And I am willing to pay the price for this.

Thanks for giving more concrete examples of situations where you found yourself facing an enemy. I was going to ask you for that. The situations you describe are real, but I don’t think they should be held up as a model for us to follow. They are an error in our programming. If the conflict can be resolved and fierce enemies can become friends, or at least share respect, then why did the conflict happen in the first place?

Do you consider Ghandi and King to be warriors? I do, and I feel that Che Guevara made a wrong turn when he picked up a gun (see my next post). Sometimes speaking and living the truth is a more powerful way to fight than with bullets. And maybe women are wiser than men, because they don’t often get drawn into this bullshit.

Finally, I know that you would never connect Muslims with the idea of “a group busy trying to kill you as an enemy.” The connection was made spontaneously in my mind because sadly, here in the U.S. so many people are saying it. So I used it as an example of just how dangerous such an idea is. Sometimes the attacker is real, but it is so easy for the idea of the enemy to detach itself from its source (or inspiration) and spread like a virus to contaminate one’s perception of much larger groups. And that is the reaction that Bin Laden provoked in the U.S.

By: leblase

leblase — Thu, 22 Nov 2007 13:25:04 +0000

eatbee,
Nowhere in my comment was the word and quality of “Muslim” associated with the term “enemy”.
Please forget the irrationality and abstraction corrupting the understanding of the world from within the USA
When bullets whirl around you, it is not irrational paranoia.
This conversation we’re having is confortable because we are behind our desks or at home, in peace. I am talking about the reality I’ve come across, wether in Yugoslavia, in different places in Africa, in Mid-East, as an observer amongst people fighting, sometimes from one side of the fight, then from the other side.
Enmity and war have been human stuff ever since we were in the caverns.
I assure you that warriors, resistant, civilians in-between do not ponder about the reality of enmity
What civilization, culture (and intelligence) can allow us is the understanding that someone who is now my enemy (trying to kill me as much as I am trying to kill him) can be talked and brought into peace.
Former enemies can become friends (I have lived that; I also have been mediator between fierce enemies).
For this, one must always keep in mind that the enemy is another yourself: a human, defending his stand, exactly like oneself: that’s what makes the great leaders, like Marwann Barghoutti for instance, who impressed me by his knowledge of his own people and the understanding of the fears and needs of his adversaries.
When people cease to grant the statute of mankind to their enemies, they themselves lose their own humanity.

By: eatbees

eatbees — Wed, 21 Nov 2007 23:12:49 +0000

@leblase — I’m going to have to think about what you said, because I still don’t think I would call a person an enemy in that case. Too often, what you said here—”a group busy trying to kill you as an enemy”—becomes the basis for irrational paranoia. I have read plenty of blog commenters (fortunately, not on this blog) who truly believe that Muslims are such a group. In your case, I’m sure you had more concrete reasons to believe this—but when I try to imagine a situation where I would call someone (person or group) my enemy I just can’t. Let’s say there is a gang who has decided to kill me, my family and friends. How did this happen? Either there was a horrible misunderstanding that needs to be fixed, and they think they have justice on their side, or they are working for someone who is the true evil. Either way, I don’t think it would help me to call them an enemy. They are attackers, and I need to defend myself and those who are with me, but the only real enemy is the true, hidden cause that made the situation violent in the first place.

Thanks for giving me something to think about. I want to reflect more about “what is an enemy” and may write a blog post about this.

By: Hisham

Hisham — Wed, 21 Nov 2007 21:16:12 +0000

Thank you for the tip. I think I’ll (try to) get that one!

By: leblase

leblase — Wed, 21 Nov 2007 14:23:28 +0000

eatbee,
We are not as you know well, in an era of universal love;-)
I don’t think that recognizing a group busy trying to kill you as an enemy is dehumanizing- it’s the appropriate term if you decide to fight back.
My path has found me in societies where the enemy is another self, similar to me, with adverse aims and goals.
Recognizing him as an enemy doesn’t take away his human statute – blinding oneself to reality in such environment can generate all kinds of perverse distorsions.
An enemy must be fought, but treated as human: then he will treat me likewise and I won’t lose my own humanity denigrating his.

By: eatbees

eatbees — Tue, 20 Nov 2007 20:40:55 +0000

@Abdurahman — I think I agree with you, but just to make sure, shouldn’t we define what we mean by civilized? When people say that someone is civilized, they usually mean polite, with good manners. In that sense, civilization is just a surface skin to conceal the cruelties we would rather not discuss at the dinner table. It is a lie the privileged class tells each other so they can live together. Yet there is a deeper sense, without which I don’t think the word can have any meaning at all. I would define civilized in this sense as a spirit of fairness or decency that is outraged at any injustice. Someone who is civilized in this way, like Aimé Césaire, cannot bear the thought that any human being would violate the dignity of another. This is the spirit of Islam also, in its most profound sense. Such a person sees the surface lie of civilization as his greatest enemy, because it is a coverup for cruelty, iniquity and barbarism. Perhaps we can agree that for two hundred years or more, Europe and the U.S. have been trying to be civilized in this sense, but all they have achieved in reality is the lie of polite society.

By: eatbees

eatbees — Tue, 20 Nov 2007 20:11:56 +0000

@leblase — “We are all human, hence all could-be colonizers or colonized.” I agree. Then you say, “We should only concentrate on never, never dehumaniz[ing] our enemy”—but doesn’t calling them an enemy already dehumanize them? My enemy is the dehumanizing machine itself. All humans, including those who might at one time have served the machine before coming to their senses, are potentially our allies in the poetic restoration of humankind. Yet I expect no final revolutions to solve our problems. Perhaps humans will stop being “complicated” a few thousand years after our deaths. Meanwhile, I wouldn’t trade the beauty of this adventure for anything else.

By: Abdurahman

Abdurahman — Tue, 20 Nov 2007 07:27:49 +0000

Pardon me but I think Aimé Césaire was trying to assert, despite all that says to the contrary, that Europe is civilized.

And that “the continent proceeds toward savagery”, after all this and it’s just moving to savagery. I think what Europe has done to the world in the past 2 centuries (and what it has done to itself) is the essence of savagery.

By: leblase

leblase — Sun, 18 Nov 2007 13:59:39 +0000

History should come to the rescue of mankind, if only those in charge were honestly in search of…Peace?
Your quote from Romney only shows he’s decided to call on the lowest level; Podhoretz isn’t doing better and I’m afraid their rivals from the Democrats aren’t too clean either.
With maybe -maybe- the exception (regarding the horror) of Mac Cain and Edwards..But this is not the subject.
History: do people know that the CIA’s headquarters in Kabul are situated exactly in the same building that used to be the KGB’s?
History: when asked if he had ever read the history of the French Army during its lost war against the Viet minh, General Westmoreland, the Gen.Petraus of the era answered: “Why should I read it, since they lost?”
People never were too disturbed to hear that the sanctions against Saddham Hussein didn’t bother the dictator but killed half a million iraki children, due to malnutrition and a lack of medecine and hospital equipment.
Asked about this, then Secretary of State Madeleine Albright said: “If that’s the price to pay, let us pay”.
Except she wasn’t the one to pay. Except she should have known better, being an immigrant from Tchecoslovaquie, where her parents suffered persecutions…
We are all human, hence all could-be colonizers or colonized.
We should only concentrate on never, never dehumanize our ennemy.
Keep going, eatbee. It is always energizing to read you