These terrorists are clerical fascists, they want a theocratic Islamic patriarchy running the world. They don't JUST want the US out of the Middle East, they want an even more theocratic and fundamentalist Saudi Arabia that already practices one of the most repressive and reactionary forms of Islam. It's not pure enough for these terrorists.
Unless you are supporting a fundamentalist clerical fascist patriarchy, the fact that by organizing for peace and against religious and racial bigotry might happen to be congruent with 1/1000 of their agenda is in fact IRONY.
Terrorism is what happened on Sept. 11. If others misuse the word we should criticize them. But we need to call the attacks terrorism. Otherwise we lack moral integrity.
You are still trapped in the logical fallacy. Just because the right thing to do happens to intersect with a tiny fraction of the terrorists agenda (which actually I dispute) you are imobilized by the idea that this advances their goals.
Hitler was a vegetarian. During WWII were US vegetarians collaborators or advancing the goals of Nazism?
The US government has a smallpox eradication program. If we support the eradication of smallpox does that make us complicit with US imperialism?
-Chip
----- Original Message ----- From: "kelley" <kwalker2 at gte.net> To: <lbo-talk at lists.panix.com>; <lbo-talk at lists.panix.com> Sent: Sunday, September 30, 2001 10:49 AM Subject: Re: Sociology and Explanations (Re: Hitchens responds to critics
> i didn't say that. i said, we are responding to their act by insisting on a
> peaceful solution and, in many cases, using the event to struggle for
> exactly what they want -- if this is Osama or a groupe who wants the US out
> of the ME. IOW, if we are successful in attaining _any_ of our goals at all
> beyond a peaceful resolution (trial -- save for some who want none of
> that), then we have given the terrorists exactly what we they want. they
> want the US populace to mobilize on behalf of their goals and we are
> helping them.
>
> that doesn't make the US left terrorists since terrorism is a _method_
> anyway and we're not using terrorism to mobilize others to struggle for
> peace and changed US policies in the ME.
>
> and, again, i didn't say the US left have used terrorist methods.
>
> i think we should take a cue from CNN, btw, and ban the use of terrorist.
>
>
> kelley
>