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Sunday, August 15, 2004
A Thousand Words
Posted by Kate McMillan on August 15, 2004 in Sports | Permalink
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» Une image vaut mille mots from Le blog de Polyscopique
A picture is worth a thousand words.Une image vaut mille mots.Members of the Iraqi delegation pose with members of the United States' delegation during the Opening Ceremony of the 2004 Olympic Games in Athens, Friday, Aug. 13, 2004. (Trouvé via... [Read More]
Tracked on 2004-08-16 5:49:07 PM
Comments
Wow. That made my week!
Posted by: Kathy Shaidle | 2004-08-16 6:33:07 AM
Genuine gratitude there -- the Yanks offed the psycho who was running their team and ruining their lives.
Posted by: Ben | 2004-08-16 9:37:18 AM
A thousand words indeed. Great find, Kate.
Posted by: Jerry Aldini | 2004-08-16 10:17:50 AM
http://www.chrenkoff.blogspot.com Good News From Iraq, Part 8.
The Iraqi Olympic team was flown from Baghdad to Athens by the Royal Australian Air Force. Another gold medal for Australia.
Posted by: gg | 2004-08-16 11:21:08 AM
Let's hope one of them wins a Gold Medal, and thanks Allah, George Bush and the American people for liberating Iraq from Saddam Hussein.
You couldn't buy publicity like that.
Posted by: Scott | 2004-08-16 3:06:11 PM
Good to know that the most relevant people of all don't mind the US Olympians in their uniforms. And may I add that the Iraqi uniforms appear surprisingly smart.
Posted by: Kelvin | 2004-08-16 7:04:10 PM
This photo-op doesn't in anyway mean that Iraqis forgive (or morally sanction) the death of 11,000 of their fellow country men at the hands of the US government, or that a majority of Iraqis support the US occupation (which is going on as long as the US has soldiers there). So save your ideological-inspired, pro-war tears for another occasion, when they'll be genuine.
Assuming this photo-op wasn't as staged as Bush's aircraft carrier landing, it shows that people can place good will above war and death -- nothing which any supporter of the war has any moral right to celebrate (since it's the very opposite of what they wished).
And why are all those the Iraqi 'athletes' middle-agged, balding men. Are you sure those aren't American-approved diplomats?
PS The real story is that the US was booed louder than any other team for a reason conservatives -- what genuine conservatives they are left in this movement -- often forget and themselves disapprove of: people resent interventionist government action. On foreign policy, the United States is the most interventionist government in the entire world: more interventionist than China, more interventionist than North Korea, more interventionist than Iran, Iraq (before the occupation), and India. It occupies 200 countries with military bases. It has intefered in (and in some cases controlled) the politics of most countries on earth. And to people on the receiving end of intervention good intentions and relative harm mean nothing. If America, like a good neighbour, minded its own business, it would celebrated for those things that make it great: commerce and domestic liberty. But because it is the foremost proponent of international intervention people the world over resent it. And for those conservatives who haven't completely bought into the internationalist liberal ideology that domenates the conservative movement today: please reject this crap.
Posted by: Michael Cust | 2004-08-17 9:30:44 PM
"more interventionist than China"
Michael, I don't think you could go that far. While at this moment in time - a SnapShot of 2002-2004 that is true -- I tend to suspect that Communist China has had a lot more to do with funding terrorism against the United States than has been reported on, or investigated. FWIW I am far more concerned about Hostility from China and the EU towards America, than I am about "the Muslim Menace"
Furthermore, lets put things in some kind of perspective -- by comparison the United States has never engaged in the kinds of mass genocides - slaughter of millions that some of the less interventionist countries you cite.
I admit that the Neo-Con Imperial Liberation theology that is being spouted in the past couple of years is pretty daunting, overall - America has done far better things, than evil things overall.
Posted by: MWW | 2004-08-17 9:47:58 PM
Michael, here's one piece that shows why I'm more of a neo-con (and like the older generation, I came by way of the left):
Mark Steyn on NATO and other alliances:
http://www.telegraph.co.uk/opinion/main.jhtml?xml=/opinion/2004/08/17/do1702.xml&sSheet=/portal/2004/08/17/ixportal.html
It's true, if one is a true conservative -- limited government, freedom of commerce, domestic liberty, being a good neighbour (good fences and all that) -- then an anti-war (or, at least, anti _these_ wars) position is an honourable one to take.
But here's why I suspect that _any_ Iraqi Olympian will go and buy the Americans a drink or three:
http://sportsillustrated.cnn.com/si_online/news/2003/03/24/son_of_saddam/
Posted by: Ben | 2004-08-18 6:08:11 AM
Meaghan,
Yes, the Chinese have engaged in terrible evils that America never has. 35 million dead under the Communists and another 15 million (I think?) dead under the nationalist regime. But those were domestic non-combat deaths. America on is much more sound than these other nations domestic policy (minus its prison state).
On foreign policy, China has interfered with who? Taiwan, Tibet, and several other countries in the area.
America has kept one party in power in Japan since WWII. It has interfered in German politics (monetary policy), Canadian politics (drug policy), Chilean politics (empowering Pinochet -- who was better than Allende -- but that's besides the point -- it was unwarranted intervention), Columbia, Peru, central American countries, the Middle East, Asian countries, African nations. No other country is that interventionist. The Soviets were, but they're gone and so are any reasons for American foreign intervention.
China, North Korea, Syria, Iran. None of these brutal, backwards dictatorships have interfered as much with other countries.
I think American domestic ideals and foreign policy are perfect contradictions.
Further, I'm embarrassed that George W. Bush and Dick Cheney are thought of as representatives of the cowboy culture. No two big government liberals could be further from live and let live philosophy of cowboy culture. These two are responsible for the highest levels of spending since that great liberal Lyndon Johnson and they are engaging in unnecessary wars in the tradition of great American liberals like Woodrow Wilson, Franklin Roosevelt, Harry Truman, and JFK. Whatever they are, they're not conservatives.
Posted by: Michael Cust | 2004-08-18 2:31:01 PM
Michael, go take your negativity and insipid attempts to hijack a photo of ordinary Iraqi and ordinary American athletes and use it as an excuse for yet another anti-American screed to a different post.
Better yet, go outside, lie down and invite someone to pound the soles of your feet with a two by four chunk of wood until they bleed.
Then, the next time you sit down at a typewriter to question the sincerity of Iraqi athletes in being able to compete at the Olympics without fear of torture, you will have some true empathy, instead of this left wing tunnel vision that has so infected you.
Posted by: Kate | 2004-08-18 9:51:53 PM
Kate,
Your lack of reason and penchant for vitriol cannot justify your taking any pleasure from American-Iraqi good will. As I said earlier, people who wished that bombs fall on Iraq have no moral right to enjoy the basic human empathy expressed between American and Iraqi athletes (assuming that empathy was genuine), because they wished the very opposite (by supporting the war).
Further, you have no right to call me anti-American. Your politics are a living and breathing insult to the ideals of America's founding fathers. You use the rights they rebelled for to worship a man, a state, and a military that at every turn is trying to take them away.
I condemn the American military and federal government -- NOT the American people, NOT American businesses, and NOT American state governments. And I do so because I wish to save all those things that make America great. The great nation that is America will fall like Rome if the imperialism of the last 50 years continues -- so those destroying the country must be stopped. (If you want to say terrorists are destroying America, remember that the liberal foreign policy you support caused them. I simply want to remove the cause.)
I love America for the reasons that make it great: entrepreneurialism, distrust of government, and love of liberty. This was the vision set out by America's founding fathers. And it's the vision anti-American, big government, pro-war socialists like yourself are helping abolish with your historical liberal pals: Woodrow Wilson, FDR, Harry Truman, and JFK.
To be anti-American is to be against the ideals that founded America. Anti-Americanism in not questioning the actions of the currently interventionist US military and federal government.
It's a sad day when a person who is a defender of the ideals of the Declaration of Independence and the Constitution is called a anti-American.
Posted by: Michael Cust | 2004-08-18 11:04:46 PM
I guess from now on, we're also only allowed to think and feel as instructed by the left.
Michael - she's canadian. If you want to lecture anyone about their 'Americanism' do it to me.
There is absolutely no reason to believe that anyone should not take pleasure in a positive event, and why wouyld anyone care about your complicated set of 'I hold this responsible, but not that' in an effort to stand in front of the left which hates everything, refute one of them, and then pretend to be a reasonable person with some criticisms.
<>
Think about it: how did you connect this specific set of things? They're all institutions made up of people who have a connection with service to others and to have a tradition of it. What do state governments have to do with Iraq anyway?
You're projecting. Go home and use that energy toward something positive, not just demanding that others ACT, THINK, and FEEL the way you do, just for your comfort.
Posted by: Joe | 2004-08-19 6:13:17 AM
"I guess from now on, we're also only allowed to think and feel as instructed by the left."
Joe, Michael Cust is not by any stretch of the imagination from "the left".
Perhaps I am mistaken, but I believe Michael has abandoned "planet false dichotomy" - and discusses issues from the standpoint of individualism vs collectivism or freedom vs statism.
In all honesty - I don't think Michael Cust has a left-wing bone in his body. That is just a knee-jerk ad-hominenem that is tossed off like some sort of party favour at posters on this board who dare to challenge the so-called neo-con "wisdom" on American Foreign policy and Civil Rights/Constitutional Violations via the Patriot Act and the Department of Homeland Security.
Posted by: MWW | 2004-08-19 11:00:05 PM
PS - in case anybody missed this link from Drudge earlier today. It looks like not ALL Iraqi delegates are as thrilled to be photo-op fodder for the Administration as the gentlemen depicted in this picture.
http://sportsillustrated.cnn.com/2004/olympics/2004/writers/08/19/iraq/
Posted by: MWW | 2004-08-19 11:02:54 PM
Anyone who displays the degree of moral relativism that Michael Cust does, is a leftist, no matter how lengthy or how absurd his protest to the contrary.
Posted by: Kate | 2004-08-20 12:09:58 AM
I don't think Michael is a "leftist" either. He has some really valuable (paleo con?) things to say about the intentions of the Founders, interventionism, and so on.
But when he wonders aloud if the photo was staged, or whether or not "balding middle aged" men might just be "secret agents" and not, like, oh I dunno, coaches or physiotherapists... I just tune him out. He does himself and his arguements a diservice by lapsing into Pat Buchanan ville. Sorry...
Posted by: Kathy Shaidle | 2004-08-20 9:23:48 AM
"Anyone who displays the degree of moral relativism that Michael Cust does, is a leftist, no matter how lengthy or how absurd his protest to the contrary." --
Hmmmmm - moral relativism. Would that be like being for free speech when it's Freedom to Bash Homosexuals - but opposed to free-speech when it's freedom to Promote Liberals in the election a'la Michael Moore?
It actually would appear that you are the moral relativist Kate. Not Michael Cust.
Posted by: MWW | 2004-08-20 12:12:17 PM
Meaghan - you are going to have to think really hard here:
If my delight in the irony of Liberal left-wing anti-speech laws being used to prosecute a foreign left-wing Liberal supporter....
...led you to conclude that I _support_ such laws, I can only suggest that you return to the high school where your reading comprehension skills were developed and nurtured .... and kick a teacher.
Posted by: Kate | 2004-08-20 12:34:37 PM
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