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----- Original Message ----- From: "Frederick Pollack" <[log in to unmask]> To: <[log in to unmask]> Sent: 26 September 2001 02:59 Subject: Re: Letter to a leftist friend | > Do you include in that category "innocent American citizens" those who | > worked in the Pentagon. If so, why? If not, why not? | > | Yes. If one assumes that everyone who works in the Pentagon, including | janitors, clerks, quartermasters etc., is guilty of neocolonialism and | imperialism, one is following the same standard whereby already starving | (and perhaps apolitical) Afghans may soon be "acceptable collateral | damage." One accedes also to the idea, with which GWB agrees, that this | attack was an act of war. With respect, you haven't actually answered my subsidiary but essential question. Rather you have answered either what you - I imagine - think that my next question might be or what stands as an opinion behind my subsidiary question... I know now that you regard the citizens in the Pentagon as innocent, but not why. You have offered a refutation of one possible refutation of your position; but I didn't make any such refutation. How could I without knowing the basis of your position? This intransitive innocence is such an odd concept I was also disturbed by the "*American" citizens, because *USAmericans were far from being the only people to die and I have always assumed, without thinking about it, that death is much the same for all races. I haven't used the word "neocolonialism" and "imperialism" since and for a long time before the recent attacks on USA and I can't remember when I did use them. Not only do I not know what makes the workers in the Pentagon innocent, I also have no idea what makes a person not innocent (in the same intransitive sense, I mean) All the best Lawrence