----- Original Message ----- From: "Wojtek Sokolowski" <sokol at jhu.edu> To: <lbo-talk at lists.panix.com> Sent: Monday, September 17, 2001 4:12 PM Subject: Re: These guys we can trust w/our civil liberties?
> At 12:58 PM 9/17/01 -1000, you wrote:
> >Lemme get this straight, these are the guys who are to make sure
that
> >only terrorists are subjected to prosecution and retaliation?
> >
> >http://boston.com/news/daily/17/profiling.htm
> >
> Lemme quote the detained person's words from that piece:
>
> "I am traumatized," he said. "But my grief for the American people,
my own
> people, is so much that my own traumatization is far less."
>
> Many on that list could learn from that advice.
>
> wojtek
=================
But he also said this:
"We must show the terrorists that our nation has unconquerable resolve and harmony, not internal destruction," he said. "Let us not delineate from the national task and destroy our own nation by attacking our own people."
I can't learn a thing from that because there are lot's of cultures inside the geographic boundaries that simply are *not* in any kind of harmony that he seeks, nor should they strive to be. Plus, the imperialists who use nationalism as a foil or even precisely because they do believe in it do need to be confronted with the long history of *their* behaviors that were partly responsible for the acts that took place, now more than ever, so that things don't become even more problematic for the world's peoples. We must not *be led* to believe those who took down the Towers and crashed into the Pentagon were insane in any way, for that would be to display irrationality on "our" own part.
The paradox is that for "us" to have "unconquerable resolve" others across the planet must play the role of the conquered; since it is precisely that pathological binary "we" seek to end, enormous care must be taken with the issue of the essentially contestable concepts being used in the current conversation regarding the tragedy that affects us all.
It is very difficult to understand the limits of the use of terms like morality and justification given what has happened.
Ian