Doug Henwood:
> Yesterday, the Financial Times began a series investigating al Qaeda.
> Not much new in yesterday's installment - haven't gotten to today's
> yet - but it repeats the claim that 70,000 alums of al Q training
> camps are scattered across 50 countries. Maybe this is a complete
> crock, though the FT isn't exactly USA Today, and it doesn't make
> much sense for the newspaper of the international bourgeoisie to lie
> to its readers. But if anything like this is true, ObL & the Taliban
> certainly bear responsibility for their trainees, no? And insofar as
> they need coordination and finance for their bigger operations,
> someone other than the direct perps has to know, right?
>
> And if anything like the 70,000 number is true - divide it by 5 if
> you want, and it's still a big number of people hellbent on
> destruction - what do you pacifists and fatalists and revolutionary
> defeatists suggest be done? Just let them be? Act nice? Invite them
> over for coffee?
The problem with this question is that, in practical terms, it is impossible to disengage it from the present rampage of liberal imperialism, and at the same time, the leftist, indeed, any moral or rational person must do this, because the wholesale slaughter being practiced and contemplated is immoral and irrational. So there is no answer to your question, no way of taking back Mohammed Atta's gift to our rulers. At the moment all I can think of is inflicting truth on them, so that at some future time its poison will weaken them, but I don't know how long we'll be permitted to do even that.
-- Gordon