Comment by Ken

December 15, 2006 @ 10:32 pm

Jarad, in some ways I think you’re right, but in some ways I’m not so sure.

From my point of view, the latest attack on American soil is destined to go down the same way.

Is the part I’m not sure about. For 9/11 to end up like 12/7, for them to be remembered in a similar way, we’d have to have the survivors end up shaking hands with the pilots, which we know isn’t going to happen.

I agree that the memorial will be used for maudlin drumming up of patriotic feelings, instead of a true tribute to those who died and the suffering they endured. They died for the same reasons I would die should a jetliner crash into the building where I work: trying to make money to pay rent and buy food for my family.

A big attempt was made to consider 9/11 ‘a military attack” in parts of the US media, and thankfully that failed.

Comment by ken

December 16, 2006 @ 12:49 am

I didn’t quite get at what I wanted to say in that comment - was distracted by trying to fix a laptop.

Anyway, if 9/11 and 12/7 are to become ’similar’ in a larger way, that would mean that Bush would be successful. If 60 years from now, Americans and Arabs meet to shake hands, have lively economic exchanges (aside from oil, which won’t be there in 60 years), and are at least somewhat co-operative in the international diplomatic forum, then we would have to conclude that the neocon experiment worked.

Today, in 2006, we all sit here and say, “No way,” for a variety of reasons. In reality, the Middle East has much going for it, and in some ways and in some places, is stronger than Japan was in 1946. At that time, I think the average American could never imagine driving a Japanese car or supporting the buildup of the world’s second largest economy-to-be by becoming their largest export trade partner. So, in terms of the middle east today, stranger things have happened. Yet, I think it to be unlikely since Japan had the benefit of being able to control its factions that still desired to destroy the US, had a capitalist system (warped as it is) that could be revived, and a populace that was willing to ‘play along’ with the US/LDP master plan for Japan.

Comment by DeOrio

December 16, 2006 @ 2:31 am

Japan also had a modern infrastructure prior to the war, had had homegrown democratic(ish) institutions for well over half a century, had civil and social systems such as widespread education and an established bureaucracy in place, and had not really been under autocratic rule for at least a generation, arguably quite a bit more. Japan was an industrialized nation with some validity to its claim to be on the same level as the European powers.
The differences between Japan and the Middle East abound. World War II was also a state-on-state war, which is important in terms of the Japanese government having had the power to speak for the country. Who in Iraq has that? Other Middle Eastern governments would also have a tough time proving such legitimacy.

That said, it sounds a bit, Ken, as though you’re saying the descendants of current terrorists and Americans could not shake hands in 60 years because that would prove Bush right. Am I misreading this? While I don’t think Bush is right, either, to say that a future outcome is unlikely because it would mean he’d been right is not that sound a reason.

Comment by Ken

December 16, 2006 @ 2:48 am

yeah, you’re totally misreading it.

I’m not saying it’s unlikely because it would prove Bush right. And, even if it did happen, that does not necessarily prove Bush right. There are too many other factors to be controlled for.

It’s just that the idea that Bush could be right is quite contrarian now, isn’t it? Not Bush, but the whole neocon project in the middle east. We generally feel it to be a disaster and in terms of foreign policy, just as bad as Vietnam.

Nonetheless, there is the ‘what if’ - I think those who shrug off the idea that middle eastern nations can be a vital part of the global economy in 60 years (aside from oil), could be the same sort who would have said the same was impossible about Japan in 1946.

And, as we’ve seen, free and open democracy is not necessary to be a vital player in global affairs and economy.

Comment by James

December 16, 2006 @ 8:39 am

9/11 will go down in history just like Pearl Harbor did: with legions of conspiracy theorists trying to prove our government had direct knowledge of the attacks and let them happen. Hell, we’ve already got a large percentage of the American population who thinks there was some sort of conspiracy, so it’s alread well ahead of Pearl Harbor in that respect…

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December 16, 2006 @ 9:04 am

[…] -Will 9/11 be remembered in the same way as Pearl Harbor? Trans-Pacific Radio discusses this question. […]

Comment by Ken

December 16, 2006 @ 9:14 am

Hey James - Haven’t you seen ‘Loose Change’ yet?

Comment by DeOrio

December 16, 2006 @ 1:19 pm

So 9/11 brings balance to the force. Nutty FDR-hating right-wingers can blame FDR and Democrats for allowing Pearl Harbor (although they don’t now oppose American involvement in WWII) and now nutty lefties can balme Bush for 9/11 (although they oppose American involvement in Iraq, so the balance isn’t perfect.)
(Of course, really off the deep end lefties might also blame FDR for Pearl Harbor and guys holed up in compounds with guns to defend against government attack would also blame Bush, I suppose, so the analogy springs another leak.)

Comment by DeOrio

December 16, 2006 @ 1:28 pm

Ken, I wouldn’t say that the Middle East couldn’t play a vital non-oil role in the world economy (meaning oil in the strictest sense), but they have a lot less going for them now than Japan had at the end of WWII. I think it’s also safe to assume that the Middle East’s vital role will be established through oil money, much as the most important role played by the Middle East now is investment in foreign bourses and, in the case of Gulf principalities and emirates, funneling oil money into other forms of investment.

In short, it’s possible that the Middle East could be an economically powerful, developed region in sixty years, but I’d be surprised first that it had happened given all the obstacles and second that I was still alive at almost 90.

Comment by John S

December 16, 2006 @ 1:32 pm

Where are the firms developing post-oil energy solutions located?

Comment by DeOrio

December 16, 2006 @ 2:12 pm

Headquartered or actually working? What exactly counts in that category? I think Middle Eastern, specifically Arab countries will play a big role there, as well as in finance, but the money to do it came from oil. So, not only will they involved in post-oil energy solutions, it’ll be a post-oil economy in that it couldn’t have happened had they not been big players in the oil game.

Comment by James

December 16, 2006 @ 11:49 pm

Have I seen ‘Loose Change’? You bet I have. Every other gaijin English teacher I run into out here, especially the non-Americans who dislike America, are quick to bring up Loose Change and how AmeriKKKa and the evil Bush attacked the WTC with drone planes that had their passengers removed, fired a cruise missile into the pentagon, and crashed some an empty plane in the middle of PA. Oh, and they put bombs in the buildings too, can’t forget that one. After all, if some guy with a scratchy voice said so in an internet documentary, it has to be true!

Maybe we should get together and make some cool documentaries that prove that the planes that bombed Pearl Harbor were actually polited by American agents? Better yet, let’s make a documentary that proves once and for all that absolutely nothing bad happened to Chinese civilians during the Japanese conquest and occupation of China in the 1930’s-1940’s.

Comment by DeOrio

December 17, 2006 @ 1:49 pm

Good idea, James. Wait, isolationist Republicans in the late 1920s recruited FDR and had him call himself a Democrat to get elected, even though he was actually in Herbert Hoover’s GOP, so they could then use their agents Hitler and Tojo to start a war in which they could challenge them and make insane profits for a company that would later be known as McDonald’s. Ray Kroc was just a face for the evil Republican Party of the 1920s and ’30s, which had engineered the 1929 stock market crash as a way of distracting people from the way they were controling people through Coca-Cola. After a few years they needed a way to divert the attention of people in East Asia, so they used their stooges the Chinese Nationalists (who were actually Young Republicans) to stage the massacre of Chinese civilians in Nanjing and implicate the Japanese through a series of photos faked using technology developed by the USOPM (the US Office of Photographic Manipulation), headed by Robert Oppenheimer, which would later incorporate as Microsoft (no one knows how deep the connections between the US Government and American business run.) World War II distracted everyone from the way the US Government was attempting to cause large natural disasters in the US in order to award contracts to buddies of the Presidents, many of whom have met each other and been photographed together, which shows there must be some kind of conspiracy.

If you can do dark and grainy Ridley Scott-type filming, I’ll swing research that I’ll do by finding a way to fit together every theory except the most likely one and we could have a whole series of widely distributed documentaries. I think I can implicate the US Government, McDonald’s, Disney, any given oil company, or Sony in just about anything since the French Revolution. We’ll be a hit with Australian backpackers-turned-eikaiwa teachers.

(Oh, and it goes without saying that Opus Dei, Freemasonry, the Illuminati, the Skull and Bones Society, and the Notre Dame football team, which are actually all the same group, are behind everything.)

Comment by ken

December 17, 2006 @ 6:29 pm

Wasn’t Ray Kroc just a bit young in the 1920s and 30s to be doing the things you speak of? I’m not buying it.

Comment by DeOrio

December 17, 2006 @ 7:00 pm

He was a face for them later on. Either that or he was cryogenically preserved to appear youthful in the 1950s.

Comment by Jarad

December 17, 2006 @ 9:12 pm

Okay before this turns into a long drawn out exercise in competing conspiracies of pernicious cabals, the only point I was trying to make was that for our generation the September 11th attack will go down as the moment when it all changed, just as the attack on Pearl Harbor came to be the moment the American Leviathan awoke. Some parallels I think could be made between the treatment of Americans of Japanese decent and the treatment of citizens who happen to appear as a threat on a list somewhere. In both cases the almost immediate erosion of civil liberties took place. As for “loose change” I have not seen it. Furthermore in case you were wondering a large amount of Saudi money is already invested in the U.S. However it would seem that a large portion of the Middle East is an economic backwater (minus petrochemicals) except for perhaps Dubai which is seemingly negligible except in cases of luxury goods.

Comment by DeOrio

December 17, 2006 @ 9:24 pm

What about dates, Jarad? Sweet, delicious dates.

Where do you weigh in on this, though? Do you really think Americans and Middle Eastern militia members or jiahdis are going to be shaking hands in 60 years? Is the Middle East going to be an economic power to be reckoned with? What is their big professional sport going to be?

Comment by Ken

December 18, 2006 @ 8:54 pm

Furthermore in case you were wondering a large amount of Saudi money is already invested in the U.S.

About 6% of US equities.