Q&A: IS THE US A FAILING SUPERPOWER? & IRAQ/AFGHANISTAN SENT TERRORISM VIRAL?

This episode of Q&A broadcast Monday 4th October 2010 from the Sydney opera house Australia & featuring panelists from the ‘festival of dangerous ideas’; was hands down the best episode of Q&A I’ve ever seen.

Tariq Aligot got an enthusiastic round of applause for his views on the Afghanistan war. He truly did have some profound & brilliant things to say.

I am posting this here because I think all ATSer's could benefit from hearing the clear concise & wise discussion of these topics by this panel, and might not otherwise know of this Australian program, let alone this episode.

I highly recommend this episode to anyone with an interest in these topics…

IS THE US A FAILING SUPERPOWER?

RACHAEL LONERGAN asked: If we are to believe what we see and hear on the news, America which was once the land of wealth and opportunity, is now a country of failure. Since Hurricane Katrina, the USA has displayed a failing economy, a failing sense of confidence from society as a whole, as well as failure on multiple war fronts. Are we seeing the beginning of the end of America as a global 'super power'? And what implications might this have for their 'junior' allies such as Australia?

IRAQ/AFGHANISTAN SENT TERRORISM VIRAL?

AMY COOPES asked: Journalist Mark Danner argues that by invading Iraq and Afghanistan the US not only failed to defeat al-Qaeda but prompted terrorism to go 'viral'. Could we have foreseen that conventional methods were always doomed to fail in such a sweeping ideological war?

Other question topics this episode -

CHILDREN AND GUILT
EUTHANASIA
POPE AND SOVEREIGNTY
Pope - Hiding Guilty Priests

Panelists were –

Tariq Ali –

British-Pakistani historian, novelist, film-maker, campaigner and political commentator - has been a leading figure of the Left internationally for more than 40 years.

Geoffrey Robertson –

international jurist, human rights lawyer, academic, author and broadcaster – is best known to Australian audiences for his celebrated Hypotheticals, television productions featuring a wide range of panellists plunged by Robertson into ethical dilemmas.

Lenore Skenazy-

is a New York newspaper columnist and author of the Free-Range Kids Blog. She worked for The New York Sun and the New York Daily News for many years and is the author of Free-Range Kids: How to Raise Safe Self-Reliant Children Without Going Nuts with Worry and has proposed the first Take Our Children to the Park & Leave Them There Day.

Ratih Hardjono-

Ratih Hardjono is an Indonesian author, journalist and policy advisor.

Paul Kelly-

Paul Kelly is one of Australia’s most authoritative and respected authors and journalists.

You can watch the full episode here-
Q&A Ep35 - watch

Or download it (200mb) here-
Mp4
Wmv

there will also be a transcript of the episode available* from 2pm, Tuesday (aust’ time).

*at the 'watch' link above

Here's what some people on twitter had to say about it -

ladoco RT @Andrew_W_Harper: These clear, lucid, polite people are really showing our politicians up for the squabbling brats they are. #qanda

HiltonT I enjoy the political Q and As, but this *has* to be the best Q and A ever. Brilliant panel selection. Congrats team. #qanda

MarkHopp #qanda "I think for a limited time we should permit euthanasia for politicians" ROFL quote of the year!!!

J_kiama_normal jayamyler And call of the night goes to Tariq Ali #qanda

So…

What do you think……?

-B.M

reply to post by B.Morrison


Personally I think Tariq Ali was on the money with everything i heard him say, and I wouldn't have answered the questions much differently (other than that i'd not be able to answer nearly as well)...

Geoffrey Robertson waffled on a bit and seemed to buy into some ideas I had thought false or propaganda, as did Paul Kelly, though Geoffrey seemed to have more original things to say, where as Paul seemed to reiterate alot of what other panelists said before him...

Ratih Hardjono was by far the most annoying with little to offer, an inability to stay within the context of the questions & this weird talking style where she seemed to get increasingly louder almost painfully so

and finally,
the only American on the panel - Lenore Skenazy,
seemed the most 'normal' out of them all often providing the everyday-person point of view - but no less thoughtful or intelligent than the other panelist.

I thoroughly enjoyed watching these discussions and I'm particularly interested to hear what Americans themselves think of what has been said, and to hear from people who have invested far more of themselves into these topics than I...

-B.M

reply to post by B.Morrison


Tomorrow afternoon when the transcript becomes available I'll post an excerpt from Tariq's points on iraq/afganistan and the US questions, firstly because he bluntly states facts regarding the Iraq war that some of us would rather ignore and that I didn't know about at all...
and secondly for those of you who can't afford the download quota or don't have the speeds to watch online.

-B.M

Question - Is the U.S a failing superpower??

If we're to believe what we see and hear on the news, America, which was once the land of wealth and opportunity, is now a country of failure. Since Hurricane Katrina the USA has displayed a failing economy, a failing sense of confidence from society as a whole and failure on multiple war fronts. Are we seeing the beginning of the end of America as a global super power? And what implications might this have for their junior allies such as Australia?

Answer by TARIQ ALI:

Well, I think Australia should now grow up and stop being a junior ally, either to Britain - for years it was a junior ally to Britain. Australian Prime Ministers just mimicked the British. Now, they're doing the same as far as the United States is concerned and this is a country now which has lots and lots of young people from many different cultures and nationalities and it should just realise which part of the world it's in and settle down to it.

Now, as far as the United States is concerned, you know, it's tempting to agree with you and say there are all these disasters happening. The American economy is on the decline. The war in Iraq has gone bad, the war in Afghanistan is getting even worse, and this is the end of America. It's not as simple as that.

It isn't the end of America and it isn't the end of the American military industrial complex and America remains the world's most powerful militarised state, with a military budget that is 10 times more than the six countries after it put together and one just has to be aware of that.

It's been written off before and it's also a world hegemony now with no rivals.

You know, the notion that China is a serious military, political rival to the states is nonsense. It's an economic rival. That's absolutely true. The European Union isn't a rival so where is the threat to American hegemony coming from? I think it's overrated, this threat, and what will change the United States is not going to be defeats abroad, but what will change the United States is if there are movements of its own people within that country.

That is what will bring about organic change so I hate to disappoint you.

I wish I could agree with you but I can't.

Rebuttal by TONY JONES:

Barack Obama's rise to power was considered to be a movement. You've very disillusioned about that.

Final word by TARIQ ALI:

Well, it was a movement but, you know, and the - what changed in the United States with Obama was not so much there was a big policy shift. In fact he escalated the war in Afghanistan and Pakistan. What changed was the mood music. It was nicer. Nice smiles all around. Yes, we can. Do what? Change we can believe in. Which direction? You know, so I think a lot of Obama's own supporters are incredibly disappointed at the moment. He is not going to be defeated by the Tea Party or Sarah Palin or that crowd. What could bring him down is the fact that his own supporters, disappointed, decide to stay at home saying, "We tried you. You've let us down and we're not going to vote," and this is what we will probably see in the mid-term elections.

Now I've skipped to the final comments on that question by Lenore -

TONY JONES:

Lenore, let's hear from you because you actually do live there.

LENORE SKENAZY:

The token American.

TONY JONES:

Do you feel like you're sort of living in a collapsing super power?

LENORE SKENAZY:

I feel like I'm at my own funeral. I'm just listening to, like, "Oh, and they have no more power and no more money and everybody is underwater," but, you know, it does feel rotten in America these days. I mean, all my friends are losing their jobs. That's how I gauge it and a lot of them can't find new ones. So I think you're right. I mean in America what we really care about now is, "Please fix the economy." On the other hand just because some of us who voted for Obama are disappointed, we're certainly going to go out and vote. I mean we're not going to go back to the Bush years or people who represent that so even if we think that, you know, we wish Obama did more and for all we know he's done a tonne and we just don't see the results yet. We will definitely be out there voting to make sure that Palin doesn't get in power.

The Next post containing excerpts will be regarding the other question I have highlighted from the show for the purposes of this thread.

But what do you think of what was said to this question.....?

-B.M

Well seeing as this thread hasn't gotten any activity yet I'll post the 2nd part....

QUESTION - IRAQ/AFGANISTRAN SENT TERRORISM VIRAL?

US Journalist Mark Danner argues that by invading Iraq and Afghanistan the US not only failed to defeat Al-Qaeda but prompted terrorism to go viral. Could we have foreseen that conventional methods were always doomed to fail in such a sweeping ideological war?

TARIQ ALI:

Well, I think the attack on Iraq planned by the Bush/Cheney Administration had very little to do with Al-Qaeda or terrorism because Al-Qaeda didn't exist in Iraq.

One of the things about the Saddam Hussein regime was that it was secular and even harshly secular and very vicious in dealing with extremist religious organisations in its own country.

In fact, Al-Qaeda landed up in Iraq together with the US Army, you know, like flies to honey. That is what happened.

So the attack on Iraq very little to do with terrorism but just a desire on the part of this administration to remove a government and replace it with something else, which has backfired quite badly.

I mean, this is a statistic people don't like hearing in the western world especially but according to medical experts and expeditions, over a million Iraqis have died; five million Iraqi refugees; five and a half million orphans in Iraq; the entire social infrastructure of that country destroyed.

Now, naturally, it angers some young people and then they decide to take the law in their own hands and say, "We've got to do something."

All the intelligence reports in Britain said that the bombers of July the 7th were fired up by British foreign policy backing Bush and had very little to do with religion as such.

So these wars, far from helping solve the problem actually exacerbate it.

But having said that, you have to understand that even in a country like Pakistan, which people often say is on the verge of falling into the hand of religious extremists, in every single democratic election in Pakistan religious extremist groups and sometimes even moderate religious groups have won less than six per cent of the vote.

The bulk of the country votes for non-religious political parties. So it's worth bearing that in mind, especially given what is going on in that country now with the spillage of the ground war into Pakistan, the drone attacks which Obama has increased; more drone attacks on Pakistan in the last two years than in the previous eight years of the Bush administration. That is the figure.

There's flood, which has made 24 million people homeless. It's a nightmare situation in that country so we need the wars to end so people can deal with other things.

*enthusiastic round of applause*

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

Tariq interjected during Geoffrey’s ‘bit’ also with interesting results…

GEOFFREY ROBERTSON:

Well, very quickly, I don't worry so much about Al-Qaeda. It's containable. What really worries me is the fact that the policy pursued by the Bush administration was to knock out the two governments that contain Iran and Iran, believe me, it's a question of state terrorism and is infinitely more dangerous when it obtains nuclear power, as it will in a couple of years.

TONY JONES:

Geoffrey, military intervention in that case?

GEOFFREY ROBERTSON:

No, this is...

TONY JONES:

There will be cases made by military people for military intervention.

GEOFFREY ROBERTSON:

There are cases being made at the moment. We should have thought years ago about how to avert this. Sanctions are not working. The prospect of military intervention would be a nightmare and America is too stretched anyway. The Security Council must put this as number one on the agenda. I've done a report on the prison massacres of 1988 where the administration of Iran - everyone still there, apart from the Ayatollah, approved the mass murder of 7000 political prisoners. They just went into the prisons at the end of the Iran/Iraq war and strung everyone up who would not agree with the Guardianship of the Jurist, the strange millennial thinking of this theocratic government. This is the danger. It's brutal. It's merciless. It believes in killing non-believers, the Moharabs, and it is, today, in Evin Prison, executing dissidents as Moharabs, enemies of God. So let us focus on this as the great problem that lies ahead and this is something that the...

TARIQ ALI:

Geoffrey, can I just interrupt you on that?

GEOFFREY ROBERTSON:

Yes.

TARIQ ALI:

I mean there are problems with Iran. I agree but surely the simplest way to put pressure on Iran not to build nuclear weapons would be for the United States to use its pressure and influence to make the Middle East a nuclear free zone, which is telling the Israelis, "No nuclear weapons for you either."

*enthusiastic round of applause*

TONY JONES:

Tariq, how would you propose disarming Israel of its nuclear weapons? I mean, seriously.

TARIQ ALI:

Well, seriously, by bringing about change in Israel not through any stupid interventions but, if necessary, through boycotts, divestment and sanctions as have been used against other countries with great effect in the past. You can't say to the Iranians, "The Israelis can have them, your neighbours; your neighbours Pakistan can have them; India can have them; US nuclear ships can patrol your seas; China has nuclear weapons but you can't have them." If you use force against Iran in that way you'd simply rally the population around the clerics. That's the problem, so other ways have to be thought of doing this.

GEOFFREY ROBERTSON:

Yes. They have to be found. The first step, I agree with Tariq the first step is to get Israel to admit its nuclear weapons. It's got several hundred, it's believed, but it hasn't admitted it. The problem with that solution is that you cannot rely on Iran. Iran lies and lies and lies. There's Armadinejad last week saying that the 9/11 attack was orchestrated by the American government and the Jews.

TARIQ ALI:

Well, unfortunately - I mean I agree with you. He made a nutty speech. But so many Americans I have to argue against when I travel the United States, who believe that, "Tariq, weren't the attacks carried out by ourselves? Didn't we do it?" And I have to argue against American citizens saying, "No, your government didn't actually knock out these two installations. It was Al-Qaeda who have admitted it." So there is this big conspiracy movement and a lot of them went actually and called on Armadinejad and congratulated him.

I learnt a lot listening to this discussion in particular…was thoroughly impressed….

What do you think?

-B.M

It was an excellent program and there were some pretty awesome answers, I'd have to say I agreed with Tariq for the most part but the human rights lawyer (forgot his name) had some interesting views in regards to the Catholic Church and child abuse, even going as far as saying that the Vatican isn't even a state, its a "fortress with guards" (close to verbatim?), fairly controversial viewpoint but one I personally find to be quiet appealing both to my logic and my sense of right and wrong.

Highly recommended watch for anyone who's interested in the questions the OP has posted above.

reply to post by serbsta


cheers buddy,

if the rest of the panel stepped up with good things to say in the other topics that night then I will definitely be downloading the full episode myself when i get the opportunity & thanks for pointing that out because I was only able to catch the last half of the episode.

-B.M