> Nathan Newman wrote:
>
> >It was an interesting rhetorical slight of hand to move from my comparison
> >of the Taliban, who have oppressed their own people far more than anyone
> >else, and the architects of the Holocaust to make my comments a blood libel
> >against the Germans. No one is arguing for the evil of the Afghanis in
> >general - tough son-of-a-bitches though they are - but of the Taliban
> >leadership that was foisted on them partly with US support.
> >
> >But to "analyze" the actions of the architects of evil acts, to implicitly
> >search for the sins of the victims of evil, is to defame the dead and
> >cheapen the struggles of those who fight oppression without caving into
> >their worst impulses of hatred and inhumanity.
>
> It was not a rhetorical sleight of hand; I'm trying to figure out
> your position. You offer an analysis of the Holocaust, but then slide
> away from analyzing the September 11 attacks - becuase that would be
> to "defame the dead." That, if anything, is a rhetorical sleight of
> hand, because you equate analysis with a "search for the sins of the
> victims." No one is doing that. The people who died in the WTC had
> little to do with the state policies of the U.S. or Israel, and to
> say that those policies had something to do with the rage behind the
> acts is hardly to excuse them. But if you refuse to analyze, you're
> left with unhelpful concepts like "evil," which doesn't offer us a
> clue about how to prevent such things in the future, or even what we
> should do now. Evil is more the realm of gods and devils than humans.
> You can be - I am - entirely for investigating the crime and
> punishing its planners while wanting to understand what made human
> beings do those things.
>
> Doug
I should note that the argument that asking for explanations is now no longer relevant. Parents, relatives, and friends of the dead have also now made their opposition to more war and called for a critical examination (or explanations as it were) of the conditions that increased the likelihood of WTC's occuring and will increase their likelihood of occurring again. Now, either these relatives are insensitive to their own pain, which would be a remarkably weak and arrogant argument to make, or the link between explanation and insensitivty that some have made (with ulterior motives that I don't believe Nathan has) is no longer existent or interesting.
steve
>