Are you saying Frederick that anyone who lives under a government
which exercises power should shut up?

Reading Bush in the paper today saying that liberties have to be
excised in the name of liberty, which gives me that windy Orwellian
feeling, and given that anti-terrorism laws are being enacted even
here, I assume that means that anyone who protests that these are
excessive and unjust laws is living in "airless moral heights",
whatever they are.

Your nation is not "punishing the attackers by the most effective
means"; if it were, it would be pursuing justice along the lines of
the international courts which it refuses to ratify, in the same way
it prosecuted Timothy McVeigh. And I do not think that most of the
Afghan(i)s who have been bombed out of their homes had anything to do
with the bombing of the wtc. What bothers me most about all this is
the cynicism (yes, maybe I am an idealist, I do wish things were
otherwise): it seems there is a good case that Afghanistan was going
to be attacked by the US in October anyway. They certainly
threatened to in July (as reported in the Guardian, but not followed
up in any way that I've seen, though if anyone knows better I'd like
to know) well before September 11.

Why? Well, surely we all know about the oil pipeline?

Whether "capitalist exploitation" is "better" than anything else
surely depends on where you're standing. Those on the trash heap
might have other ideas. I am no supporter of bin Laden. But I can't
see that the Northern Alliance is any better for women. Its track
record isn't exactly good.

I'd like to get past this kind of yes-no-you'rewrong-etc nyah nyah
nyah to more interesting discussion. The things you're glossing
about US foreign policy are on the public record. The fact that
European powers (including Germany and France as well as the UK) are
just as culpable by no means mitigates any of it; the fact that some
M-E countries are corrupt and ruthless ditto.

I was very interested in the speech the Iranian PM Khatami gave to
the UN recently. That seemed some cause for hope, and certainly an
ocassion for admiration at his courage, since in some quarters I'm
sure he's written his death warrant. Why isn't the US, if it is
interested in real justice, getting behind him?

Best

Alison



>
>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.

--


Alison Croggon

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