Complicated.
Apr. 23rd, 2012 11:58 am![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
usernamenumberNote: I've gone back and forth about making this a private post, or just removing my commentary. It's more emotion and frustration than reason and education, and I don't feel like I've made a real coherent statement about much, if I even have one to make. That said, I'm leaving it for now, if only for the link and to stand by my statement about how insights into where people on the other side of a conflict are coming from are valuable.
I've been meaning to post a link to this for a while, along with some longer commentary, but I don't seem to be finding the time, and a lot of said commentary would probably just be an elaborate restatement of what I said on Twitter:
Complicated world is complicated :(
The link in question is the pre-sentencing statement of Tarek Mehanna, read before being sentenced to 17.5 years for aiding jihadist groups in the form of translating and distributing propaganda materials. It's worth reading if for no other reason than he is able to very eloquently describe where he and, I suppose, others on his side, are coming from and I figure that's always valuable.
To be honest, I haven't been following this case as closely as I wish I'd been, so I really can't speak to it that much. As an aside, though, much of the coverage I have read, particularly after the release of Mehanna's statement like the article linked above, exemplifies one of my biggest gripes ("gripe" is putting it too lightly) with journalism today-- specifically the number of articles that editorialized on and excerpted from the statement without linking to the source. It's 2012. We live on the internet. Any piece of "journalism" that purports to cover something that is documented in full context online without explicitly linking to it so readers can draw their own conclusions loses 90 million cred from me. But I digress...
What's really been grabbing me has been my reaction to Mehanna's statement, and thoughts around that. The man is eloquent, I'll give him that. I found myself genuinely sympathizing with him, but also thinking that he's being foolish if he thinks he can no-true-scotsman his way into effectively saying "I only support the jihadists who are fighting what they sincerely see as a hostile foreign occupation of their homelands and only attack military targets, not the ones who murder civilians in the most intentionally grotesque ways in order to make examples, inflict fear, or just express hatred, nor those who take advantage of fear and tensions to foment conflict in furtherance of their own agendas".
...but here's the thing. Don't I do the same thing with regard to my own people? Everything in the above sentence after "...not the ones who" has been done by "my" side, too.
I tell myself that unlike, I assume, most jihadists, I want to see the members of my side who have committed atrocities nailed to the wall and made an example of, and I've never supported the wars in which we're involved... but it's more complicated than that. I haven't actually *done* anything to affect either of those things, and don't feel like I really can. I also have friends and relatives who are over there and have been over there, and I try to support them, at least in the sense that I trust them to be doing right by their own consciences, hope that they end up doing some net positive thing, and resist lumping them under the same heading as the otherScottsmenAmericans who do inexcusable things in my name. Some of those friends and relatives may read this, and I hope they aren't hurt by my equivocations, many of which get uncomfortably close to trying to defend, or at least sympathize with, guys who are killing their buddies... and yet... aren't I? Kind of?
It's at this point I want to crumple up my laptop and toss it in the waste basket in frustration.
Fuck war. Fuck what it does to us. And fuck this complicated world.
That's really what it comes down to for me, but even that's just so many words on the Internet.
I've been meaning to post a link to this for a while, along with some longer commentary, but I don't seem to be finding the time, and a lot of said commentary would probably just be an elaborate restatement of what I said on Twitter:
Complicated world is complicated :(
The link in question is the pre-sentencing statement of Tarek Mehanna, read before being sentenced to 17.5 years for aiding jihadist groups in the form of translating and distributing propaganda materials. It's worth reading if for no other reason than he is able to very eloquently describe where he and, I suppose, others on his side, are coming from and I figure that's always valuable.
To be honest, I haven't been following this case as closely as I wish I'd been, so I really can't speak to it that much. As an aside, though, much of the coverage I have read, particularly after the release of Mehanna's statement like the article linked above, exemplifies one of my biggest gripes ("gripe" is putting it too lightly) with journalism today-- specifically the number of articles that editorialized on and excerpted from the statement without linking to the source. It's 2012. We live on the internet. Any piece of "journalism" that purports to cover something that is documented in full context online without explicitly linking to it so readers can draw their own conclusions loses 90 million cred from me. But I digress...
What's really been grabbing me has been my reaction to Mehanna's statement, and thoughts around that. The man is eloquent, I'll give him that. I found myself genuinely sympathizing with him, but also thinking that he's being foolish if he thinks he can no-true-scotsman his way into effectively saying "I only support the jihadists who are fighting what they sincerely see as a hostile foreign occupation of their homelands and only attack military targets, not the ones who murder civilians in the most intentionally grotesque ways in order to make examples, inflict fear, or just express hatred, nor those who take advantage of fear and tensions to foment conflict in furtherance of their own agendas".
...but here's the thing. Don't I do the same thing with regard to my own people? Everything in the above sentence after "...not the ones who" has been done by "my" side, too.
I tell myself that unlike, I assume, most jihadists, I want to see the members of my side who have committed atrocities nailed to the wall and made an example of, and I've never supported the wars in which we're involved... but it's more complicated than that. I haven't actually *done* anything to affect either of those things, and don't feel like I really can. I also have friends and relatives who are over there and have been over there, and I try to support them, at least in the sense that I trust them to be doing right by their own consciences, hope that they end up doing some net positive thing, and resist lumping them under the same heading as the other
It's at this point I want to crumple up my laptop and toss it in the waste basket in frustration.
Fuck war. Fuck what it does to us. And fuck this complicated world.
That's really what it comes down to for me, but even that's just so many words on the Internet.
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no subject
Date: 2012-04-23 08:08 pm (UTC)Yes.