>----- 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.
Disproportionate mass murder is exactly what the U.S. government specializes in, both through its own actions (e.g., economic sanctions of Iraq) and its proxies (consult, for instance, William Blum on this topic).
Whether the hijackers turn out to be members of the American Right, Osama bin Laden & Co., or some other group, most likely they were once directly or indirectly funded or trained by the U.S. government. Remember that both Timothy McVeigh & Osama bin Laden received training in warfare from the U.S. government. Over many decades, the U.S. government has funded, trained, and/or equipped *untold numbers* of soldiers, mercenaries, and/or paramilitary death squads in the USA, Asia, Africa, Latin America, & the Middle East. The only surprise is that blowbacks don't happen more often, given the number of potential terrorists "made in America."
Yoshie