No, I'm Doug

[Tiarnân Ô Corrâin]

On Tuesday 30 October 2001 18:33, Terrance wrote:
> Phil Wise wrote:
> > Please.  First Mike Moore (Former NZ Prime Minister, now head of the WTO)
> > who conflated protesters with the terrorists, then Peter Beinart (New
> > Republic resident dry rave) and now you.  I'm surprised and shocked,
> > frankly, unless you are being ironic, or speaking in the voice of others.
> > You don't actually believe this conflation, do you????
> >
> > phil
>
> I'm not conflating. There is a huge difference between the the fanatical
> hatred for the West exhibited by the Terrorists and the anti Western and
> anti-American hatred exhibited by the most militant anti-globalists. 

Unless hate is singular and absolute, which I fear it is. I note that the
terrorists now deserve a capital T. Is this an attempt to conflate *them*? I 
know Bush has talked about a war on global terrorism, as if it was a PLC with 
an annual (bombable) convention. Terror is everywhere, in Ground Zero in New 
York, in the dust-heaps of Gaza and the cafes of Tel Aviv. Those who practise 
terror, who use it as a tool, are terrorists. These include the U.S.A., 
Israel, the IRA, the PLO, the Chechens, the Russian Army in Chechnia. States 
are violent entities, and often express themselves repressively: they bomb 
hospitals, they subvert democratic governments, they commit war crimes, and 
many other unspeakable things. They evoke powerfully negative responses from 
those they treat so badly, these people bomb cafes, they act like tyrants, 
they kill civilians and call it war, they commit atrocious, inexcusable acts. 
And people get caught in the middle. This is tragic. It's been going on ever 
since we descended the trees (or the sky-ladder, depending on your beliefs).

What is remarkable is the babble that ensues when apologists claim that one 
or other is right, that the attack on the World Trade Centre was a vicious 
assault on a beautiful city (true) in an innocent, freedom-loving country 
(false). Nothing can excuse the attack on the World Trade Centre, just as 
nothing can excuse what the United States is now doing, like a playground 
bully, in Afghanistan. There is no need to counterpose the clauses in the 
last sentence and find a contradiction.

One may attempt to understand why it happened, but only if the knowledge will 
help us do something to prevent it happening again. Did the US have it 
coming? Many would say yes, but that doesn't excuse it, or lessen the scale 
of the tragedy.

For on the world stage, where states become people, it is a tragedy, it has 
the ethical neatness of a tragedy. The assault on New York was an assault on 
the United States from the view of the person who planned it. It was an 
attack on the body politic. Even the headlines read 'Attack on America', as 
if America were a komic book superhero or supervillain. Beneath the word 
America a lot of people died, but it subsumes them, gathers them into 
itself. It is as if one person has been injured, one contestant must stoop, 
stunned, before springing back into the global mud-wrestling match.

In its anger, and its foolishness, America has decided to personify its 
grief. It has named bin Laden as the Satan du jour. Unfortunately, the US 
army, designed to wage war on the Soviet Union, is sadly ill-suited for this 
kind of job. So bin Laden must be given a country, and who better to chose 
than the hapless (and barbarous) Taliban, the world's most publicly reviled 
regime. So the people of Afghanistan are subsumed by the Taliban, and the 
Taliban are subsumed by bin Laden. Bin Laden must die, and so therefore the 
Afghan people must die too.

This is terribly unjust, as unjust as the attack on the World Trade Centre. 
Innocent and ignorant people will die, so that these prehistoric monsters can 
continue clawing at one another, incapable of communication. The hundreds of 
years old United States, in all of its indisoluble continuity, and the 
millenarian war-hounds of Islam.

Tiarnan

-- 
Tiarnán Ó Corráin       <ocorrain at esatclear.ie/ocorrain at yahoo.com> 
Q:      How many supply-siders does it take to change a light bulb?
A:      None.  The darkness will cause the light bulb to change by itself.