Never said almost any of the following. I specifically said, in sociological terms re: Durkheim, that misery and grievances create the breeding grounds where extreme irrational actions are encouraged and create the broader resentments that support and make more effective the individual irrational actions. Further, I noted that many individual terrorist acts, when done in proportionate levels of violence (means ends in alignment) are not irrational and are very much the result of specific conflicts.
I've also specifically said that changing US foreign policy could very much have an effect on future safety of our citizens.
All I've argued is a somewhat semantic (but important political point) that trying to connect foreign policy actions in a causal chain to a SPECIFIC act of extreme irrational mass murder like Sept 11 is useless intellectually and politically.
Ah well...wasted bandwidth since pretty clear statements I make are continually ignored in favor of painting them as saying something else.
But the whole debate has clarified for me why certain left folks feel comfortable making these causal statements in regard to 9-11, while being blind to why they horrify and outrage most other folks. Since they see such a disconnect between US policy and the American public, they see no tension between denouncing US policy and sympathy for the population, while for those who see a connection and identification between the population and their government (note the waving flags), they don't separate those so cleanly.
-- Nathan Newman
Nathan Newman nathan at newman.org http://www.nathannewman.org ----- Original Message ----- From: "Chris Kromm" <ckromm at mindspring.com> To: <lbo-talk at lists.panix.com> Sent: Thursday, September 27, 2001 12:06 AM Subject: Thinking like Nathan
Not easy, but I'm going to try:
ATTEMPT #1 -- Terrorism is not caused (or even really encouraged) by broader social forces and policies, therefore -- It must be the result of utterly random, spontaneous and isolated acts of personal "evil" (although the attacks take 5 years to plan and *happen* -- only coincidentally, mind you -- to originate in countries that suffer the tragedy of American diplomacy), therefore, -- There's nothing we can do about terrorism except 1) kill the terrorists, 2) huddle and wait for the next attack, or 3) subject the terrorists to exorcism -- Corollary: That stuff would solve the problem, why would we want to worry about changing U.S. foreign policy?
ATTEMPT #2 -- U.S. foreign policy doesn't breed terrorism, therefore, -- U.S. foreign policy, while sorta bad and causing a few deaths here and there, must not really piss people off -- they just kind of shrug and go on with their lives and never THINK of responding, therefore -- Wait a second, maybe U.S. foreign policy really isn't that bad...
Ok, I'm sorry, I just can't do it.
Nathan -- I know you've painted yourself into a corner, but you're welcome to come back to reality, any time buddy...
CK