Let's review what Chomsky actually wrote:
"The terrorist attacks were major atrocities. In scale they may not reach the level of many others..."
We'll go slowly here, pal. "Major atrocities." Got that?
Now -- "In scale" -- he means the total number of dead people -- "they may not reach the level of many others." Are you contending that no other atrocity killed more people?
He offers an example of an incident the effects of which you continue to discount, and then says that there are "much worse cases, which easily come to mind."
Again, do you dispute that? Or don't examples from the Clinton Administration alone easily come to your mind? Iraq, Lebanon, Palestine, Serbia, Somalia, Timor, Turkey, Palestine, Colombia...?
"But that this was a horrendous crime is not in doubt," says Chomsky. "It is likely to prove to be a crushing blow to Palestinians and other poor and oppressed people."
I can understand why you're uncomfortable, since you want to defend Clinton's cruise missiles and the US/NATO war. How do you feel about the coming Bush War?
Chomsky helps you get your thoughts together by quoting Robert Fisk:
"This is not the war of democracy versus terror that the world will be asked to believe in the coming days. It is also about American missiles smashing into Palestinian homes and US helicopters firing missiles into a Lebanese ambulance in 1996 and American shells crashing into a village called Qana and about a Lebanese militia - paid and uniformed by America's Israeli ally - hacking and raping and murdering their way through refugee camps."
Regards, CGE
PS: What makes you think I'm Caucasian? Doing some of your own racial profiling, are you?
On Sun, 16 Sep 2001 LeoCasey at aol.com wrote:
> This is a classic moving target.
>
> First, Chomsky says that the bombing of the Sudanese factory was worse
> than the bombing of the WTC -- without a piece of supporting evidence.
> Then Estabrook says it was equivalent -- with some wild and
> unsupported speculation that the destruction of a factory that was
> producing anti-malaria medicine and antibiotics led to the deaths of
> thousands. Now we are told that it was all of the deeds of the Clinton
> administration that killed more than the WTC bombing. This is where
> one gets to throw in the war against Milosevic that finally brought
> serial ethnic cleansing in the former Yugoslavia to an end and claim
> it was an imperial war to save all the nonexistent oil in Kosova for
> the US, turning the massacred Moslems of Bosnia and the Albanian
> Kosovars into invisisble men. Get ready for the ride.
>
> You are right about one thing, Estabrook. It pisses me off incredibly
> when people -- especially people of the Caucasian hue -- misuse
> accusations of racism, because every time the accusation is bandied
> about in such illegitimate ways, it makes it all that much harder to
> fight the real racism that exists.
>
> Leo Casey
> United Federation of Teachers
> 260 Park Avenue South
> New York, New York 10010-7272 (212-598-6869)
>
> Power concedes nothing without a demand.
> It never has, and it never will.
> If there is no struggle, there is no progress.
> Those who profess to favor freedom, and yet deprecate agitation are men who
> want crops without plowing the ground. They want rain without thunder and
> lightning. They want the ocean without the awful roar of its waters.
> -- Frederick Douglass --
>