You don't read very well, do you?
Neither Chomsky nor I say that terrorist attack on New York is "a small matter next to a missile raid by the US on a factory that killed one Sudanese." We both contend that more people probably died as a result of the US terrorist attack on Sudan than died in New York. I see two horrendous crimes with political causes: you see one.
Ah, but perhaps your ignorance of what Chomsky and I wrote is wilful, because you then offer a justification of the terrorist attack on Sudan ("the attack on the factory in Sudan was in response to the bombings of embassies in Kenya and Tanzania"), whereas Chomsky and I think that neither terrorist attack was justified.
(In regard to the Sudan, I agree with Nat Hentoff -- and I presume yourself -- who has pointed out in the midst of a vast silence from liberals that the government is promoting slavery and oppressing the people of the south.)
And you once again choose to miss the point about the attack on the pharmaceutical plant, this time with a pompous pleonasm ("things ... can be replaced, and human lives can not be replaced") -- that the result was thousands of deaths, which you apparently consider "a small matter."
BTW, are you having trouble with your eyes? It occurs to me that your repetition of "...sick, myopic..." as terms of abuse is not just risible, it may indicate something you're worried about ("blinded," too, I notice). Maybe that explains why you couldn't read what I (or Chomsky) wrote...
Regards, CGE
On Thu, 13 Sep 2001 LeoCasey at aol.com wrote:
> This morning I sat in a small school in Brooklyn the staff of which
> had suffered five times the entire casualties of the bombing of that
> factory, casualties from New Yorkers who have the origins from all
> over the world, from the Caribbean to Africa to Europe. One small
> school in one small part of Brooklyn. Multiply that by thousands, and
> you begin to have some idea of the scope of what has been visited upon
> the people of this city.
>
> But Chomsky and his apologist here, Estabrook, find this to be a small
> matter next to a missile raid by the US on a factory that killed one
> Sudanese. Not even that, but, Estabrook tells us, it is racist to
> challenge his extraordinary moral calculations where the death of
> thousands upon thousands is less than the death of one.
>
> You have not a clue what racism is, Estabrook. Your sick, myopic
> system of moral calculation manages to evade the fact that the attack
> on the factory in Sudan was in response to the bombings of embassies
> in Kenya and Tanzania, which killed hundreds of innocent Africans as
> well as Americans. I lived in Tanzania, and I knew some among the
> dead. But they get chalked in the column of deaths in opposition to
> American imperialism, so they don't count. Your sick, myopic system of
> moral calculation manages to evade the fact that the government of
> Sudan which supported bin Laden in these attacks has waged a genocidal
> war against the African peoples in its south for decades, and operates
> a system for their enslavement in the year 2001. But they get chalked
> up in the column of deaths in opposition to American imperialism, so
> they don't count. Your sick, myopic system of moral calculation
> manages to evade the fact that even if you made the worst possible
> case against the American missile attack in Sudan -- and it was simply
> a pharmaceutical and fertilizer factory that, contrary to the beliefs
> of American intelligence, had nothing to do with the production of
> chemical and biological weapons of terror -- supplies are material
> things that can be replaced, and human lives can not be replaced.
>
> The system of moral calculation that Chomsky and you propose here --
> one in which one Sudanese night watchman at a factory [and the fact
> that only one night watchmen died demonstrates clearly that the attack
> was carried out at a time and in a way to minimize the loss of human
> life] holds more weight than thousands upon thousands of New Yorkers
> from every corner of this globe -- is obscene beyond belief. That you
> could propose it seriously, and think that rhetorical sleights of hand
> that we do not know how many Sudanese are dead somehow makes it
> plausible, is a sign of moral corruption of the rankest sort. You have
> been so blinded by your ideological dogma, by your willingness to
> embrace every action taken in the name of opposition to American
> imperialism, no matter what the cost in innocent human life, and your
> willingness to oppose every action taken by the American government,
> no matter how justified, that you do not even know how obscene and
> evil your words appear.