Hi-jack fall-out

Nathan Newman nathan at newman.org
Tue Sep 11 19:09:17 PDT 2001


----- Original Message ----- From: "Ken Hanly" <khanly at mb.sympatico.ca>
>You would think that what happened might cause Americans to ask themselves
>why some people hate them so much they are willing to lay down their lives
>and kill innocent people to express that hatred. Of course that wont
happen.
>Outrage, moralising, repression, reprisals and revenge will be the order
of
>the day. Already there seem to be explosions in Kabul.

Most of the time on this list, electoral politics is dismissed because average people have no voice, that the government represents only the corporate interests. Yet suddenly when possibly tens of thousands of the American people are murdered, they should feel no outrage because they are culpable for all the harms that their government may have perpetuated at that individual level.

I do believe that the American people have collective responsibility for the harms perpetuated in their name, but that is a very different thing from recognizing the barbarism involved in the mass slaughter that occurred today. I am not a pacifist or even against all "terrorism" in the sense that proportional targetted response against civilians may be justified on occasion where no other outlets for resistance are possible. But this kind of disproportionate mass murder warrants little response that will lead to any questioning of the US's role. If anything, it will justify those actions retrospectively in many minds.

Gandhi wrote that an eye for eye, a tooth for a tooth, and soon the whole world will be blind and toothless. To imply that there is even a hint of justice in today's actions is morally bankrupt and blind to how politically suicidal such statements are if they emanate from what are seen as left quarters.

-- Nathan Newman



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