"Blowback"

[Tiarnan O'Corrain]

> From: David Morris [mailto:fqmorris at hotmail.com]
> >"The suicidal assassins of September 11, 2001, did not 
> 'attack America,' as 
> >our political leaders and the news media like to maintain; 
> they attacked 
> >American foreign policy.
> 
> The distinction being attempted above is a joke.  

Compare Albright on the Iraqi children, or the noxious notion
of 'collateral damage'. Is the US justified in bombing Iraq,
with immense cost in human life, to prosecute a war with 
Saddam Hussein, the dictator of that country?

If anything, since the USA is a democracy (unlike Iraq), it 
could be argued, cold-bloodedly, that US citizens have far
more responsibility for the actions of their leaders than
the subjects of the tyrant Saddam. In which case the
attack on the World Trade Centre is less seriously criminal
than the US's undeclared war on Saddam.

> I guess we should just consider those 6,000 people as 
> incidental unfortunates in a war of foreign 
> policies.

As the Americans do consider the Iraqi civilians. The nasty 
thinking behind much American outrage is that Iraqi lives are
worth less than American ones, that while the US is justified
in bombing Iraq in order to strike at its dictator, bin Laden
is not justified in bombing US civilians to strike at American
foreign policy.

I believe neither position is tenable, but on sheer number of
lives, US foreign policy is immensely more evil and destructive
than Mr. Bin Laden and his cohorts (if he is really responsible
for the WTC).

It is disturbing that while Blair and Bush claim to have incontrovertible
proof of Bin Laden's responsibility for the WTC, they have failed
to furnish any proof at all to their people. Is democracy so frail
that it must be abandoned in times like these? Is there any real
proof of Bin Laden's involvement?

> http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/articles/A50491-2001Sep30.html
> By Boris Nemtsov
> Monday, October 1, 2001;
> MOSCOW -- The Russian people recognized instantly that the 
> tragedies of 
> Sept. 11 were attacks on the fabric of the whole civilized 
> world. As we 
> watched on television, no country could avoid imagining the 
> same types of 
> attacks happening in their homeland.

Well, they happen in Iraq, they happened in Nicaragua. State-sponsored
terrorism has been a popular modus operandi for the US for quite some
time now. As to the Russians, they've been fighting their own nasty
little war in Chechnya for a number of years, also against Muslim
terrorists (such is their phrasing), so it's not surprising that
they have common ground with the USA.

> I counter that the reverse is true.  The author's desire to 
> skewer "American Imperialism" leads him to ignore, actually 
> to argue against, the most obvious truths.

As American public opinion constantly ignores the obvious
truths about American Imperialism, its destructiveness, rapacity,
commerical motivation. The reason for this is plain, if Americans
really knew what was done in their name, they wouldn't stand for
it. Better to keep them in the half-light. Rarely suggestio
falsi (a dangerous comrade), usually suppresio veri (the stock-in-trade
of the successful liar).

> David Morris

Tiarnan