Thursday, October 21, 2004

Posted here Thursday, October 21, 2004 at 8:58:18 AM     That Bush responded to 9/11 by militarizing the world rather than legitimizing it by a police action plus highly surgical military moves plus a strong effort to bring equity to the world. This is I believe, the big failure. Guns or butter at the level of the world, and whether globalization means a surveillance society or a society of deeply embraced human development. http://www.nytimes.com/2004/10/21/opinion/21friedman.html Friedman in the Times says that it comes down to "The big question about Kerry is, Will he pull the trigger?" Mr. Allison said. "And the big question about Bush is, Can he aim? With Bush, we know he can pull the trigger, but it's like he shot himself in the foot - and the tiger is still out there. It's the tiger who needs to be shot, not us." The language reveals too much. Tiger? An object of beauty and grace and getting our sympathy, knowing that he/she can be dangerous.  you don't deal with a tiger by destroying the habitat. But to reduce it to aim and shoot, rather than creating a more just world will actually lead to something else: not man vs tiger, but Huntington's clash of civilizations. We are not dealing with a tiger, but with people, which means above all culture, perceptions and expectations. To call them tigers is to take the old colonialist approach of dehumanizing, while fanging, the "other".   ********