Lawrence Upton wrote:
>
> Well, I've been underground a while
> I come up, sniff the airwaves
> still deadly poison
>
> ----- Original Message -----
> From: "Frederick Pollack" <[log in to unmask]>
> To: <[log in to unmask]>
> Sent: 30 November 2001 23:24
>
> | The Taliban leadership was given a chance to repudiate their paymaster
> | bin Laden and to turn him and Al-Qaeda over.  They refused.
>
> & exactly who the hell are the US govt to issue ultimata to anyone? have any
> of them ever submitted themselves to the judiciary of the countries they
> have hurt?
>
> if the us wants foreign govts to account for their actions let it subscribe
> to a court to which it too is answerable
>
> It isn't as simple at all as one group being the paymasters of another - but
> we might follow some of the audit trails of us interventions and motivations
> over the years
>
> A few years ago, in defence of reneging on its dues to UN (this is before it
> reneged on so many other agreements, including now the Geneva Convention) we
> heard that the us did not want to be the policeman (sic) of the world
>
> well, large parts of the world don't want it either, especially when it's
> done in the style of dirty harry
>
> i was shocked and hurt by what i saw relayed on my tv and what i now know
> happened on Sep 11
>
> and as i have not been in the situation that so many are now, grieving for
> murdered dead, i cannot *know of it and so shall be silent of it, as advised
>
> nevertheless, aside from real individual grief, there is a lot of
> sentimentality in these responses and i'll repudiate that
>
> more people die on the roads of uk in a year, by a long way, than died on
> Sep 11; but that's ok because people like driving fast and petrol and cars
> must be sold
>
> i suspect that more people die every day world wide of avoidable disease and
> hunger and exposure than died in nyc
>
> what it all adds up to is an innate belief among some in us that usamerican
> deaths are more important than other deaths
>
> (and british too retrospectively - rather in the way that time off from
> purgatory used to be purchased, I suppose)
>
> well, they aren't
>
> they are as important as everyone else's but no more
>
> the american dead are no more important than afghan dead and therefore
> george bush no less a murderer than whoever organised that plane-crashing
>
> by all means never forget what was done to USAmericans on Sep 11 2001
>
> and though I wasn't alive then I shall remember what USA did to Hiroshima
> and Nagasaki
>
> you want terrorism, that was terrorism
>
> and Korea, and Vietnam, Cambodia etc etc with a really big flashing light
> over Nicaragua... A few outstanding charges to answer there
>
> It's bad enough having people killed and the world made more dangerous as a
> consequence
>
> but spare me the bullshit explanations
>
> powerful countries bully and you live in a powerful country

One of the points made in the Salon article is that you also live in a
powerful country, which has used that power freely in the past, and
which benefits from global inequalities.  You benefit from them.  One of
those benefits is the opportunity for this pose of cosmic sympathy and
transcendent evenhandedness.  Some progressives find this posture
meaningful; others outgrow it.  It has nothing to do with the real
world.

Any death is important.  Any victimization - of Nicaraguans or Chileans
or Ibos or Navajos or Palestinians or Israelis or aborigines etc. etc. -
is wrong.  I am profoundly glad that no one has the power to punish the
United States for the policies you mention.  Even if they did, I
wouldn't accept being blown up as just payment for them.  If you came
down from your airless moral height, you would have to say the same
about a thousand British crimes.  But as I said in September, the
argument is meaningless.  Al-Qaeda, the Taliban, and their terrorist
allies represent something worse than capitalist exploitation.  And even
if they stood impeccably for justice, the means they have chosen are
unjust.

Given those means, and the nature of the forces we are combating, there
is only one meaningful point: my nation was attacked.  My countrymen and
yours were killed.  Our nations are punishing the attackers by the most
effective means, and with as little injury to innocents as possible.

I will add, at the risk of incurring more blazing empty hysterical
moralistic self-righteousness, that fewer people died at Hiroshim and
Nagasaki than would have died, on either side, in the otherwise
inevitable invasion.  Further: the Japan of today is a better place than
the one our nations defeated.  Hopefully the Afghanistan of tomorrow
will be better - particularly for women - than the one of last year.
Even if it isn't, the death of bin Laden and all who aid him will be a
political and moral gain.