Bomb Them with Butter
In case you haven’t seen this already — I love this idea!
Bomb them with butter, bribe them with hope
A military response, particularly an attack on Afghanistan, is exactly what the terrorists want. It will strengthen and swell their small but fanatical ranks. Instead, bomb Afghanistan with butter, with rice, bread, clothing and medicine. It will cost less than conventional arms, poses no threat of US casualties and just might get the populace thinking that maybe the Tailban don’t have the answers. After three years of drought and with starvation looming, let’s offer the Afghani people the vision of a new future. One that includes full stomachs. Bomb them with information. Video players and cassettes of world leaders, particularly Islamic leaders, condemning terrorism. Carpet the country with magazines and newspapers showing the horror of terrorism committed by their “guest.” Blitz them with laptop computers and DVD players filled with a perspective that is denied them by their government. Saturation bombing with hope will mean that some of it gets through. Send so much that the Taliban can’t collect and hide it all. The Taliban are telling their people to prepare for Jihad. Instead, let’s give the Afghani people their first good meal in years. Seeing your family fully fed and the prospect of stability in terms of food and a future is a powerful deterrent to martyrdom. All we ask in return is that they, as a people, agree to enter the civilized world. That includes handing over terrorists in their midst. In responding to terrorism we need to do something different.
Something unexpected…something that addresses the root of the problem. We need to take away the well of despair, ignorance and brutality from which the Osama bin Ladens of the world water their gardens of terror.
Please pass this along. It is important that we learn to think in NEW ways. If we continue attacking in the old ways we will get the same old results. Look at what has been happening the middle east for thousands of years to see what we can expect if we attack with bombs and military force. Do we want to live a life of fear as people in the middle east do?
Jeff – what a splendid idea! Who sent you that? hehe. Wouldn’t it be splendid if it actually could work?
B-
that makes so much more sense to me than dropping bombs on the rubble that was once afghanistan. alas, we have a president who has said, “i’m not going to fire a $2 million missile at a $10 empty tent and hit a camel in the butt. it’s going to be decisive.” (source)
I’m afraid this is just as effective as throwing bombs. If we can’t beat them, let’s force them to join us???
In case you have forgotten: It is still not proven that Afghanistan has anything to do with the attack on NYC and Washington; Osama Bin Laden has been trained by the US government to fight the ‘communist threat’ from Russia – and the question remains if he is responsible for the attacks at all (which is still not proven either).
Mr. Bush’s ‘black and white’ doctrine is the same kind of simplistic approach of reality as the ‘bomb them with butter’ idea. It denies the truth and is aimed at solving symptoms instead of causes.
Unfortunately, massive food drops into Afghanistan, Iraq, or the Bekaa Valley (or any of our targets) will not stop a planned biological attack on one of our cities.
War ain’t nice… and it sure is no way to begin a new century.
But neither is a dead City (and we’re closer to that than you may think possible).
.rob
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If Berlin had been bombed with anthrax on VE-Day the city would still be a lethal zone today.
On the matter of treating just symptom rather than the root disease…
We need to make an example.
W.Germany was an effective example.
So was Japan.
The economic, political, and social stability and vivaciousness of these two “examples” helped both the Euro and E-Asian regions become bastions of Pro-American everyman sentiment. It also caused them to be relatively peaceful, when compared to their respective histories.
If we moved into Iraq in the same way we did in Japan or W.Germany, with retributive justice, and with an aim towards creating a healthy, prosperous friend, the region would be more stable in the long-term.
War is necessary to inject this Country-scale Example into the region.
.rob
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War should be avoided, and should never be glorified. War is like cleaning a septic system. It’s necessary, it’s not fun, and people who glorify it are bizarre at best, but more likely psychologically unsanitary. Now, those that advocate never cleaning their septic systems… just unwise.
I must join in this resurgent Tinman loveathon! Kudos to to the frightfully slim Mr. Kottke for leading me here, and while I applaud the buttery sentiments in this time of despair, I applaud even more enthusiastically the fresh vim and vigor you’re displaying lately, TM! After the loss of the glasses in the porcelain receptacle and the loss of the comments feature and so forth (so much loss!), I feared we were watching a turn for the worse; now I see it was all just a bump in the Tinman’s own Yellow Brick Road! Keep all the posts–from that brain in your head to the regions down below–coming at us!
i like this idea — in all seriousness — and at the same time, i find it flawed. i mean, this is not the first time i’ve heard it; this is becoming a familiar liberal rallying cry. “bomb them w/ butter!” my boyfriend shouted yesterday morning to his mother over the phone. i think she thought he’d gone nuts.
if lack of food and information was what turned people terrorist, exclusively, it really would be that easy. but feeding folks bread and feeding them notions of equality, democracy, a less ideological life, and tolerance, are not the same things. these people have intense ideas and guiding principles rooted in a faith, in tradition; those ideas do not just stem from the fact that their lives are nasty brutish and short. the notion that we can convince them to mellow out and not take shit so seriously — i.e.: abandon their way of life for our american approach — is as naive as it is optomistic.
all the same, i agree we should try. honestly. b/c what the hell are they going to do, throw the butter back at us? this isn’t like iran contra here; this can’t hurt us. it would simply show the world that we do care about the afganis as a whole, that we are looking to bring suspected terrorists to justice, not an end to their entire civilization.
Maybe food drops will kill the men who get those packages on their heads?
Lousy idea, they don’t want to be corrupted with our Western Standards.
This is NOT the answer, this is the cause of all this violence: assuming that our values are the only true & good values, and thinking that they want to get rid of their lifestyle & values.
Lame-ass part-time philosopher…