> Michael Perelman wrote:
>
>> Doug, I am not an expert. We got ObL out of Sudan. What about the story
>> that Sudan offered to give him up. Also, if the terrorists (70,000) are
>> scattered around the world, bombing seems like an ineffective means of
>> stopping them.
>>
>> I don't pretend to have the answers. My only certainty is that we are
>> given very shabby information.
>
> We're back where we were a couple of months ago: an answer like this is
> a political dead-end. To an American nonleftist audience, you can't say
> "no bombing" and then fall silent when the hard questions start. Not
> that answers come trippingly off my tongue, but this is a serious problem.
>
i am once again puzzled by this line of reasoning, since i do not see "fall silent" as the next act to what michael writes (or what other people, broadly referred to as "pacifists" write). all of these people including michael have been and are doing various things to bring about the kind of changes they think will make a better world. perhaps 9/11 will be another data point they will consider as what is wrong with the world. but unless it can be clearly shown that 9/11 is a singularity or a break in the continuity of the ails of the world, why should they abandon the path of action they have chosen just to craft a particular or new response to 9/11? i agree with kelley (and you if that is what you are saying) that we have to 1) appeal to a larger audience and 2) in order to do so, we have to take into consideration their emotions and use means of communication that will be meaningful to them. but that was true even before 9/11. i assume that in deciding to run mailing lists, write books, organize protests, support systems of law and justice or oppose them, etc., folks on the left have chosen actions that kept the above considerations in mind.
is there even agreement on the nature of 9/11? is this where the differences arise? what class of events does it fit into? has that class of problem been ignored in all discussion and action thus far in the history of the "left"? i read michael perelman's response not as a dead end but as the beginning to a fruitful discussion with nonleftist americans. he admits that he (like everyone else) is not in possession of all of the information, he implies that terrorism requires to be addressed and prevented, he suggests that bombing might not be the best way to do it. all of this seems like a good way to interact with an emotional but [hopefully] rational audience.
--ravi
-------------------------------------------------------------------------------- man is said to be a rational animal. i do not know why he has not been defined as an affective or feeling animal. more often i have seen a cat reason than laugh or weep. perhaps it weeps or laughs inwardly - but then perhaps, also inwardly, the crab resolves equations of the 2nd degree. -- alasdair macintyre.