Hakki Alacakaptan
"Already, some Leftist friends of mine wrote me that, in these difficult moments, it is better to keep one's head down and not push forward with our agenda. Against this temptation to duck out the crisis, one should insist that NOW the Left should provide a better analysis - otherwise, it concedes in advance its political AND ethical defeat in the face of the quite genuine acts of heroism of ordinary people (like the passengers who, in a model of a rational ethical act, overtook the kidnappers and provoked the early crash of the plane ... )" Slavoj Zizek: Welcome to the Desert of the Real - II
Good news -- many deplore bombing Afghanistan Stephanie Salter Wednesday, October 24, 2001 ©2001 San Francisco Chronicle URL: http://www.sfgate.com/cgi-bin/article.cgi?file=/chronicle/archive/2001/10/24 /ED28536.DTL (...)no column I've written for The Chronicle has garnered the volume or tenor of response that the Oct. 17 column did on why I think bombing Afghanistan is "shortsighted, counterproductive and immoral." Given that every major poll says Americans back this military strategy to the tune of 90 to 94 percent, I hunkered down for what I was sure would be a tsunami of you-traitor, love-it-or-leave-it response. I'm elated to report I was wrong. While the missives still roll in (more than 1,500 e-mails alone), they are running about 6 to 1 in support. Part of this is due to the alleged liberal inclination of the Bay Area -- although previous columns have shown me that this region hardly lacks for conservatives, hawks and George W. Bush fans who love giving lefties like me a haircut. More telling is that the Internet makes every newspaper columnist a national voice. Readers from St. Cloud, Minn., and Woodville, Miss., have weighed in on my Afghanistan column. So have people from Cornwall, U.K., and Strasbourg, France. One Peninsula woman, who abandoned newspapers long ago for National Public Radio, was alerted by her son in Germany. According to these supportive readers, the column has been photocopied, attached to e-mails and linked on Web sites, mentioned on the Canadian Broadcasting Co. and tacked onto convent bulletin boards. The primary, recurring sentiment in these messages: gratitude. Because of the polls and the opinions of most of my fellow pundits, lots of people believed they were alone in their outrage and sadness over the bombing of Afghanistan. As New Englander Jane Livingston put it: "Thanks for restoring my faith in the capacity of the 'mainstream media' to serve public good, and for lighting a lamp of hope in the darkness." A Chicago man, Paul Fowler, echoed another common theme: "Your courage gives me strength to speak my truth and stand by it, despite the prevailing winds of our troubled time." (...) I let out a scream and it was answered by legions of Americans in like-minded pain. We may be a minority, but we are not alone.