Lawrence Upton wrote:
>
> From: "Frederick Pollack" <[log in to unmask]>
> To: <[log in to unmask]>
> Sent: 01 December 2001 02:14
>
> Frederick, I don't have cosmic sympathy. I said I *can't empathise with the
> grieving relatives - and that would apply to the Afghan bereaved too. I can
> make a little inroad towards it, but that's it. All but one of those close
> to me who have died have died in bed. All of my family up to second cousin
> declined to participate in any of the C20 wars
>
> You suggest I benefit from global inequalities. Yes, of course, I do. I fail
> to see how that relates to what I said as any kind of an answer to what I
> said
>
> I am opposing in such ways as I can the continuance of that exploitation.
> You seem, in so far as I can understand you, to be saying that my freedom -
> is that the word you would use? - that my freedom derives from Britain's
> history of exploitation.
>
> It isn't entirely false, but it's far from true. However, to be any kind of
> a response to what I said, instead of just talking over me with insults, it
> must be a claim that killing other people creates freedom for the killer.
> Dirty Harry again.
>
> If not, please explain.
>
> It is self-evident that there is no need to kill to be free and I deeply
> resent self-appointed police insisting there is no alternative
>
> | 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 didn't say any death is important. I said every death is of *equal
> importance.
>
> You do not and
>
> I am profoundly glad that no one has the power to punish the
> | United States for the policies you mention.
>
> confirms, I believe, my suspicion that some USAmericans, yourself now
> included, treat USAmerican lives as more important than others
>
> Even if they did, I
> | wouldn't accept being blown up as just payment for them.
>
> Well, I didn't ask you to. But in supporting the bombing of Afghanistan,
> that's *exactly what you are wishing upon Afghans
>
> Again, the unstated formula is that USAmerican lives are more important than
> other lives
>
> If you came
> | down from your airless moral height,
>
> tiptoe upon a little hill
>
> you would have to say the same
> | about a thousand British crimes.
>
> Have to say what? That I don't want UK punished for its crimes? Yes, I do. I
> want just about every cabinet member for the last 20 years in the Hague.
>
> That I don't want to be blown up? What a damn fool idea. Of course I don't.
> Nor those I love. Nor, with less emotion - see above - any others. One of my
> subsidiary objections to the current murders is that it make sit more likely
> that I shall be
>
> | the nature of the forces we are combating,
>
> not "we", but as *you acknowledge it, I'll say _you_
>
> you didn't combat them, you bombed everything, killing many who were nothing
> to do with it and left the fuzzywuzzies to do the combating
>
> bloodsport
>
> now everyone who might hurt them is dead, your heroes are going in
>
> Further: the Japan of today is a better place than
> | the one our nations defeated.
>
> & I return to my original question - who the hell gives the us the right to
> make these decisions?
>
> you were silent on that (contained within that is "end justifies means" -
> one of the principles vehemently officially opposed during the cold war)
>
> I assume there is no answer beyond the racist assumption of superiority
>
> L
In an ideal world, there would be a world state, or at least an
international court with the power to make suspects appear before it and
to enforce its rulings. Right would make might. In a really ideal
world, there would be no need for might, for compulsion, even for a
court. In the real world, power is held by a few nations and large
corporations. Beliefs also have power, but to be real that power must
manifest itself in movements of armies and considerations of cost. This
statement applies even to Gandhi. His power to win India's independence
ultimately depended on the reduction of England's power, and the main
reason for that reduction was not his efforts but a war fought
elsewhere. For a belief, power means access to power; Stalin's question
about the Pope's divisions, though vulgar, was valid. Currently the
beliefs that have access to power are for the most part stupid ones:
religious fundamentalism, nationalism. My beliefs - in socialism,
equity, equality, a benignly inclusive universal culture - have almost
no access. So my task, if I want my beliefs to have any application to
the real world, is to compromise with and make use of other beliefs,
much less elevated, which I share with large numbers of people. One of
these beliefs is that my nation, if attacked, has the right to defend
itself and punish its attackers. And - yes - that the deaths in the
World Trade Center are of more immediate concern than those of
Mossadeqh, Victor Jara, Steve Biko, Salvador Allende, or the millions of
others in which my nation unjustly played, and plays, a part. Yes, at
the moment those American deaths are more important. In the real world,
any hope for social justice must ride the smelly back of some tiger of
social vengeance. I suspect this is the calculation that makes some
otherwise secular, progressive Moslems through in their lot with
Islamists. Their calculation, however, is wrong; it fails to take into
account either bin Laden's intentions or American resolve.
To you, as to the dear, sweet, highly moral people who demonstrate in
London and Berkeley and both Cambridges, the above must be highly
unpleasant. Two statements in your email make it clear that neither of
us could possibly convince the other. The first is this:
Further: the Japan of today is a better place than
> | the one our nations defeated.
>
> & I return to my original question - who the hell gives the us the right to
> make these decisions?
The right of America (i.e., its government, and the preponderance of its
people) to decide that corporate democratic capitalism was a better way
of life for Japan than State Shintoism was conferred by the attack on
Pearl Harbor. The right of England to decide that anything would be
better for Germany than Nazism was conferred by the attack on Poland and
ratified by the Blitz. That is how values negotiate in the real world.
The other statement was that your family were pacifists in World War II.
|