Don't agree with every
>word of Hitch but the basic point is sound -- to the extent that any action
>issued from the Taliban-based world of oppression, the discussions of US
>crimes "causing" the mass murder of Sept 11 is ridiculous. Hitch clearly
>notes the tragedy of blowback from the US's own crimes in supportin the
>Taliban in the first place, but to give any moral status or even link of
>mass murder as connected to legitimate struggles against injustice is an
>obscenity.
The two sentences are not connected, unless you confuse a purported causal explanation with an attempt to justify the unjustifiable. Surely, Nathan, you (a sociologist!) are not taking the position that to attempt to explain these terrible crimes is wrong because that would amount to a whitewash of them? Suppose what we do not know, that OBL or someone like him planned and executed the massacres of September 11 at least in part because he was mad at some of the things US dissidents don't like about US foreign policy. That is not an unlikely supposition.
It should go without saying that merely because we and OBL happen to have an overlap in our criticisms, e.g., perhaps because we want an end to US military support of Israel as long as the occuptation continues, or want to end the economic sanctions on Iraq, that we think it was justified to crash planes into buildings or anything of that sort. Neither does it mean that we agree with OBL on much else. After all, the people now calling for his head agreed with him 10 or 15 years ago that the Russians should be thrown out of Afghanistan. Legitimate criticisms may be a partial basis to motivate some people to do very bad things. In any case, surely it is not unhealthy to have some reflection and public debate on the topic "Why does everyone hate us?"
>
>The Germans suffered serious injustice following World War I; so should be
>just "explain" the Holocaust as a misguided overreaction to justified
>grievances?
>
I guess it was Leo and not you who bridled at comparing Clinton's attack on the Somalian pharmaceutical factory to Sept. 11, but surely compraing Sept 11 to the Holocaust is at least if not more disproportionate. And even with the Holocaust, I think attempts at explanation are in order.
jks
_________________________________________________________________ Get your FREE download of MSN Explorer at http://explorer.msn.com/intl.asp