NP Terrorism (Was Re: No, I'm Doug

[jbor]

ocorrain at esatclear.ie wrote:

>> 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.

So you're saying that an anti-globalist might resort to terrorism because
she or he feels powerless to achieve her or his ends by peaceful means, and
that the "U.S." or "the West" (or any authority for that matter) are
therefore legitimate targets of campaigns of terror?

> 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 latter two groups, in word and deed, have attempted to distance
themselves from the collection of individual terrorists (i.e. the particular
terrorist *network*) who planned and carried out the attacks on Sept. 11.
>From the perspective of the victims it's all one and the same, I agree, but
there are distinctions to be made, differing intentions and methods of the
various seats of power. Some courses of action are better than others.
Attempting to stop more terrorist attacks like those of Sept. 11 is better
than attempting to launch more terrorist attacks like Sept. 11.

> 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.

It's not a playground. The metaphor is inappropriate and offensive. And it's
not just the U.S.
 
> 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 a twisted perspective of what has happened. The Taliban, in word and
deed, confirmed their allegiance to Osama and his Jihad against the U.S. The
people of Afghanistan have been *oppressed* by the Taliban. To conflate the
two things ("subsumed") is rhetorical nonsense.

> 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.

It is still not a case of Islam vs. the West, despite what propagandists on
both sides of that particular false divide, such as yourself here, are
saying. I hope that it doesn't come to that. Do you?

best
 
> Tiarnan