For instance, who could fail to be dazzled by this Clintonian insight: "Tom Friedman is our most gifted journalist at actually looking at what is happening in the world and figuring out its relevance to tomorrow and figuring out a clever way to say it that sticks in your mind -- like "real men raise the gas tax." You know what I mean?"
Mr. Clinton also lauded "big thinkers on the question of identity" like "Samuel Huntingdon, who wrote the famous book, The Clash of Civilizations."
But others like Nobelist Amartya Sen (author of Identity and Violence), who claim that Huntingdon's magisterial wisdom is in reality somewhat lacking in intellectual heft and moral substance; some go so far as to claim his work is actually shallow, reductive, highly toxic racist tripe
Clinton nails the truth about terrorism:
Terror mean[s] killing and robbery and coercion by people who do not have state authority and go beyond national borders.
Killing and robbery and coercion by people who do have state authority is,
- humanitarian intervention
- liberation
- preservation of national security
- maintaining great-power credibility
- restoring hope
- pre-dawn vertical insertion
If it comes from a state, then it is legitimate, it is good, it is necessary, it is noble. And even if mistakes are made these mistakes are the result of good intentions gone awry
what terrorism is depends on who does it. the legitimacy by people who have state authority is dependent on the state from which that authority derives: America.
All others are
- "rogue states,"
- purveyors of "state terror,"
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