Help me respond to this article by a right-wing professor:

[PinkTiger]

http://thechartonline.collegepublisher.com/news/2004/09/24/PublicForum/Freedom.As.America.Knows.It.Is.Not.Free-729073.shtml

(Snip)

Freedom as America knows it is not free

By Dr. Richard LaNear

Published: Friday, September 24, 2004

On Sept. 11, 2001, a terrorist attack, masterminded by Osama bin Laden, was carried out against the World Trade Center in New York City and the Pentagon in Washington, D.C. In a blatant disregard for humanity and a blatant acceptance of barbarism, an excess of 3,000 innocent lives were snuffed out of existence. This was arguably the worst single-day loss of life in the U.S. history, surpassing even the day losses at the Civil War's Battle of Antietam, D-Day and Pearl Harbor. To many, this date with "infamy" was a direct response from the Muslim world in regards to our support of Israel; nothing could be further from the truth, as many countries lost lives at the Trade Center, including Pakistan and Turkey (the most "democratic" of all the Muslim countries).

This barbarous attack upon innocent people was an unmitigated assault upon civilization, rule of law, capitalism, globalization, material well-being, secular (not clerical) government and the essence of democracy, whereby power is subjected to the people. . . . . .

Instead of looking at a translucent glass window and seeing the world as it could be, they are looking at a mirror and only see the wretchedness of themselves.

No longer will we be led by the political expendiency(sic) of President Lyndon Johnson fighting with "one hand tied behind his back" in Vietnam, or President Jimmy Carter sending only eight helicopters on a rescue mission, or President Bill Clinton not supporting the Rangers in Somalia with the armored vehicles they had requested, or President John Kennedy getting cold feet at the Bay of Pigs. No longer will 19 service men be killed at the Saudi Arabian Khobar Towers in 1996 and the Hezbollah perpetrators go unpunished. No longer will the killing of 12 Americans at the Embassy bombings in Kenya and Tanzania by bin Laden go unpunished. And no longer will bin Laden get away with attacking the USS Cole (killing 17 sailors), and President Clinton's only response is firing an expensive missile at an aspirin factory. With this kind of weak and tepid response, no wonder bin Laden took on New York City and the Pentagon; he figured we had lost our resolve. He was wrong as we now have a president who is waging "war on terrorism" and not just talking about it.


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[rwenos]

1. Play Him the Sam Kinnison

monologue from "Back to School."

That should do it. You take the Rodney Dangerfield lines.

[mark414]

2. ask him

if america is waging war on terrorism, why then are we in iraq?

of course he won't get it, but...you know

also, re: clinton and somalia...is he talking about those troops that Bush the Elder sent into somalia and left it over for clinton to handle?

[HawkerHurricane]

3. Yes, he is...

the same ones that Bush's people wouldn't give the armored vehicles to in the first place. Read Richard Clarke's book; he hammers Bush era appointees in the Pentagon recomending no armor vehicles to Clinton while the troops in the field (the men at the scene) were begging for them.

Meanwhile, the men who planned Khobar Towers are dead...
The ones who planed the first WTC bombings are in prison...
The ones who planned the planes into buildings are still at large...
But Saddam, who had nothing to do with any of it, is in jail.

He wants us to not understand the enemy; to just kill him. But unless your willing to understand and change the enemy, you'll have no choice but to kill them ALL. 1.5 Billion of them.

And by change I mean give them a reason to NOT hate us. A Marshall Plan in Iraq, with American Money paying Iraqis to rebuild what we destroyed would help.

[PittLib]

4. I find it interesting that this guy ...

seems particularly sensitive to American losses, yet maintains his "shoot now, ask questions later" ideal in regard to terrorism - cherry picking needless death. A dead human is a dead human as far as I am concerned. I'm so tired of having to point out the double standards and contradictions. I love his little jab at intellectuals ... once again promoting the testosterone fueled, knee-jerk reaction that has worked so well thus far (dripping sarcasm).

[Ohio Dem]

5. I notice he doesn't mention the 240 or so Marines lost in Beirut.

(To terrorists).

Reagan's response? Invade Grenada.

Sound familiar?

[tom_paine]

9. Sure, such OldFacts do not exist in the universe of BushFacts

and NewFacts

Imperial Amerika's descent into Totalitarian Tyranny has beeen aided and abetted by thousands of self-seeking opportunists and cruel monarchists (undoubtedly, they would not see themselves this way).

But we are ALL to blame, for thinking post-WWII egalitarian "New Deal" America would last forever without citizen effort and participation.

Now, we stand at the dawn of a new Age of Totalitarianism, of Managed Democracy, of BushPutinism.

And still we continue to deny while we enjoy the last few burning embers of the Fire of Liberty, as they are snuffed out by Busheviks and their Mighty Propaganda Machine.

[Diogenes2]

6. This poorly written jingoistic piece of crap

doesn't even rise to the literary level of a C- student essay... & this guy is an INSTRUCTOR? Heaven help us!

[bemildred]

7. Yep. Why bother?

From his on-line CV:

"Dr. La Near has extensive community service."

http://www.mssu.edu/international/Japan/LaNear.htm

Appears to drink massive quantities of KoolAid(tm).

[primavera]

8. "...barbarous attack upon innocent people"

I wonder how he would describe the difference between the barabrous snuffing out of 3,000 innocent American lives and the barbarous snuffing out of 50,000 Iraqi lives who, as now everyone knows, were also innocent.

[Southpaw Bookworm]

10. But those innocent Iraqis

Are just brown-skinned heathens who'd eventually become terra'ists . . . killing them isn't barbarous, it's prevention.
Or, at least that's what ignorant asses like this would say.

[PATRICK]

11. Professor of what???

Each casual damnation of a Dem with no basis in fact or addition of Repugs who followed the same policy.

Johnson- the Cold War had everyone with one armed tied behind their back.
That was the limitation of MADD. Carter AND Nixon(his abortive rescue attempt to rescue hostages was praised!) needed elite strike force and secrecy. The tactical difficulties did Carter's risk in early and probably saved lives if not the situation and the presidency.

This attack quickly descends into the moronic, but they have nothing to go on but the lust for platitudes and violence. Right up there with Bin Laden in a fanaticism that does not see the harm, the hypocrisy or the contradictions in their so-called ideals.

Moral bankruptcy sucks the gray matter out and leaves a shell of smugness or hate or both.

Doctor of what? The snake oil wars.

Not worth any respect.

[SteppingRazor]

12. Just look at how he starts the article

He begins by mentioning Osama Bin Laden. So, how come Bush never mentions Osama? How come we pulled troops out of Afghanistan, almost ensuring his escape? Why did we go to Iraq when we still had a mission to accomplish in Afghanistan? Why have we fomented terrorism in the Middle East through reckless foreign policy in Iraq?

Or you could just take the conservative route -- glare at him and growl, "Why do you hate freedom?!"

[ShanNYC]

13. We are not waging a war on terrorism

This point cannot be stressed enough. Out of 22 Arab countries in the Middle East, Iraq was the ONE nation in that part of the world that had a conspicuous lack of Islamist terrorists (prior to March 2003, of course). So when the good professor here parrots the administration talking point of Iraq as a front in the WoT(TM), his argument falls to pieces.

Let's put it another way...why is there no outcry over the war in Afghanistan (there is rightly an outcry over how that war is being waged, how we have diverted resources to Iraq which should be used to capture Al Qaeda operatives in Afghanistan/Pakistan)? The reason, good professor, is that the nation understands that those who attacked us on 9/11 had their base of operations in Afghanistan. In Iraq, however, the President has undermined the WoT(TM). To be sure, he has killed many Arabs; he has not, however, made us, or the world, any safer.

[newyawker99]

19. Hi ShanNYC!!

Welcome to DU!! :toast:

[starroute]

14. "Go unpunished," "go unpunished," "get away with"

This guy sure has his model of how the world works, and it's all based on dominance. If someone challenges you, you punish them. If you can't find them to punish, you punish whoever's available. If you don't find someone to punish, you're a wimp.

That model is such a closed system that it's hard to answer it directly. If you believe the world consists of nothing but the controllers and the controlled, then you obviously have to do whatever it takes to keep on being one of the controllers.

The only real answer is to ask what America's ultimate goals are and to suggest that those might not be compatible with a model based on control. For example, real strength means pursuing your goals in a steady way and not being distracted by side issues. But pursuing absolute control and feeling you have to "punish" anyone who defies you means you are going to be jerked around willy-nilly by any punk who shows up to go "nya-nya" at you from the sidelines. The end result is that American foreign policy turns into a game of whack-a-mole while America's real interests go down the tubes.

Bring predictable in that way makes you weak, and reacting in a knee-jerk way to any provocation makes you transparently predictable.

Another useful question might be the nature of freedom -- though this gets into some fairly subtle points, such as whether it is possible to become more free by making other people less free.

It's an old (but not unworthy) right-wing position to insist that freedom must be protected at times by sacrifice -- with the prime example being the patriots of the American Revolution, who were willing to sacrifice their lives and fortunes for the sake of liberty. But the control-based model twists that idea into one that mainly involves sacrificing other people's lives and fortunes for your own benefit. That distortion should not go unchallenged.

If the topic for discussion is "Freedom is not free," then there is every point in discussing seriously what the price is, who is expected to pay it, and who will benefit from that payment.

[RedCloud]

15. From one who knows professors...

Ask him somewhat naively how WTC-7 fell and why has there been no serious investigation into it since no plane hit it.

Since he is a Professor of Finance ask him to please research who got rich off the stock market 9/11 with the airlines stock.

He seems naive enough to believe that even more terrorist can be apprehended this way. His research might just overwhelm his xenophobic furor tempered by his megabuck (for professors!) salary.

[ismnotwasm]

16. Wow

Since he's a professor of finance, evidently he has come to think in terms of profit and self-benefit--psychologically his, but he projects that to the US. He is NOT a military expert, doesn't say where he was in Vietnam or what him MOS or rank was. This type of writing just pisses me off, because like that letter from a soldier in another thread, he uses almost romantic language to describe war. War is oozing, bleeding gaping wounds and body parts and piss and shit and vomit and insanity. Using language like this masks the reality. Just like not showing caskets. He sidesteps financial issues nicely, such as oil. Hell, heroin from Afghanistan is a part of finances. You could rebut him in his own territory. What an ass

[Jim__]

17. If the measure of barbarism is the snuffing out in excess of 3000

innocent lives, what does your professor have to say about Hiroshima? Nagasaki? Iraq? Bhopal?

[PinkTiger]

18. Thanks for your repllies

Lanear is a narcissistic, overpaid jerk who thinks the word "liberal" is tantamount to "traitor."
He is full of vitriol and hate.
I'm not going to attack him publicly, because he is a colleague. However, I knew you would "enjoy" his rather twisted ideas.
Unfortunately, there are quite a few out there like him.