Pure Stupidity? Something Else?

Max Sawicky sawicky at bellatlantic.net
Tue Nov 13 22:30:53 PST 2001



>To consistently maintain your position why aren't you suggesting we
>should bomb SA? They're marginally different from the Taliban;
>directly and indirectly funded the Taliban and by the Bushies own
>investigations, Al Qaeda*; the strategists - perpetrators mostly come
>from there. We're all familiar with the canard that the choices suck,
>but if the administration's claims to legitimize it's action is/was
>'to bring the perpetrators to justice,' doesn't that minimally require
>getting the target right? You've yet to answer that part of my past
>queries. If SA is innocent from your perspective, then why aren't the
>Taliban and, surely, the Afghan people? Ian

There are gradations of guilt and complicity. There is no evidence the Saudi state is complicit in 9/11, nor that it is sheltering OBL or the important al-qaida people. There is no lack of evidence that individual Saudi's are part of the OBL/al qaida network, and we could reasonably guess that the Saudi state is not turning its own country upside-down in a hunt for OBL cronies. That is quite different from the role of the Taliban in re: OBL and al qaida. The logic of linking support for some bombing in Afgh to bombing S.A. unfolds absurd conclusions from a fallacious analogy. I think this is an easy argument.

I am more bothered by Chomsky's argument that the U.S. should be bombed for what the Clinton Admin did to the Sudan or Iraq. My best answer is that there is no agency capable of using force against the U.S. on behalf of good that is inclined to do so. As I said once before, if there was some giant Sweden intent on curbing U.S. excess, my national loyalties, such as they are, would be under some stress. But that's a purely academic question.

The U.S. is the one and only superpower. The use of force against it in a military sense by anyone or anything is out of the question. Any such force can only exert pressure by being exerted on innocent Americans, which makes it unacceptable. It isn't fair, but that's the way it is.

mbs



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