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<DIV><FONT face=Arial size=2>[From the Observer (UK):]</FONT></DIV>
<DIV><FONT face=Arial size=2></FONT> </DIV>
<DIV><FONT face=Arial size=2>"Ex-Ministers and ex-diplomats are the bane of the
screen at times like this, clogging the airwaves with conventional unwisdom.
Dust flies from the Roladex as networks search out the has-beens with which to
fight the last war. Still, I could not repress a twinge of sympathy for the
former United States ambassador to Britain, Philip Lader, when I read about
BBC's Question Time and the way he cracked under pressure. </FONT>
<P><FONT face=Arial size=2>"One needs to be unambivalent here. I have
written-more criticisms of American foreign policy than most people. I have no
time for the way in which the Sharons and Pinochets of the world profit from
their Washington connection. (It was only four months ago - and please feel free
to pass this on - that the Bush administration handed the Taliban a $43 million
subsidy for its kind and fundamentalist help in the war on drugs.) </FONT>
<P><FONT face=Arial size=2>"When Clinton rocketed a pharmaceutical factory in
Sudan, to give himself a bounce in the opinion polls, I wrote in this newspaper
that it was a war crime, and I found the applause as sickening as last week's
footage of destitute refugees making a fiesta out of the news from New York.
</FONT>
<P><FONT face=Arial size=2>"But the mass murder of last Tuesday is in no sense a
reprisal or a revenge for past crimes such as that. The people who destroyed the
World Trade Center, and used civilians as accessories, are not fighting to free
Gaza. They are fighting for the right to throw acid in the faces of unveiled
women in Kabul and Karachi. They didn't just destroy the temple of modernity,
they used heavy artillery to shatter ancient Buddha statues in Bamiyan earlier
this year, and in Egypt have plotted to demolish the Pyramids and the Sphinx
because they are un-Islamic and profane. </FONT>
<P><FONT face=Arial size=2>"Look at what they do to their own societies, from
Algeria to Afghanistan, and then wonder what they might have in mind for ours.
</FONT>
<P><FONT face=Arial size=2>"Liberal masochism is of no use to us at a time like
this, and Muslim self-pity even less so. Self-preservation and self-respect make
it necessary to recognise and name a lethal enemy when one sees one. </FONT>
<P><FONT face=Arial size=2>"<IMG height=16
src="http://images.thisislondon.com/img/blob_black.gif" width=12 align=bottom
border=0>And that's just me emoting. Whereas, without even trying (so to speak),
I know of a husband who lost his wife, a mother who lost a stepdaughter and a
colleague who lost her child's favourite godfather. The degrees of separation in
a society this size should be far wider, but the fact is that everyone I know
seems to know someone who knew someone. And the ghastly truth of the matter is
this: the haunting will go on and on, for material as well as emotional reasons.
</FONT>
<P><FONT face=Arial size=2>"No more survivors will be found: most of them were
burned so there may be no need to spray the rubble with disinfectant. But the
most optimistic corner of America will most probably have to be converted into
some sort of mass grave. Not only is this a terrible scar, but it's one that is
right on the face, which can't be covered up and which will look raw and livid
for as long as can be foreseen. </FONT>
<P><FONT face=Arial size=2>"To build again on the site would be somehow obscene;
to refrain from rebuilding is to admit defeat. Nice alternatives."</FONT></P>
<P><FONT face=Arial size=2><A
href="http://www.thisislondon.co.uk/dynamic/news/top_story.html?in_review_id=458292">http://www.thisislondon.co.uk/dynamic/news/top_story.html?in_review_id=458292</A></FONT></P>
<P><FONT face=Arial size=2>What "liberal masochism" is Hitch talking about? I've
seen precious little of it in the corp press; and those (like the fine sturdy
folk of LBO-Talk) who have made the obvious link between US policy and the
bloody reaction to it are not blind to the pre-modern nature of the perps,
nor have they excused the terrorist attack or tried to play it down. </FONT></P>
<P><FONT face=Arial size=2>I think Hitch is having a political (personal?)
identity crisis. He's not sure how to approach this, and I wager that he doesn't
want to be caught on the "wrong side" of history again, as I'm sure he felt he
was when he first opposed NATO's bombing of Belgrade, then, after conferring
with Gens. Sontag and Reiff, came out fully for it. Will he do the same if the
US starts pounding the Muslim world? Will he frame it in faux-radical terms (the
Cockburn, "if ever a country deserved rape, it's Afghanistan," stance)? Or will
he just toss it all aside and become our Peregrine Worsthorne? </FONT></P>
<P><FONT face=Arial size=2>Tick, tock. Tick, tock . . . . </FONT></P>
<P><FONT face=Arial size=2>DP</FONT></P></DIV></BODY></HTML>