WSWS on Pearl

[Brad DeLong]

><http://www.wsws.org/articles/2002/feb2002/pear-f23.shtml>
>
>The killing of Daniel Pearl
>
>By David North
>23 February 2002
>
>The efforts of the US government and the media to use the death of 
>Pearl for their own reactionary and militaristic purposes must be 
>resisted and rejected. To recognize that the murder of Pearl has 
>political causes whose roots go far deeper than the immediate 
>motives of those who plotted his kidnapping is to provide neither an 
>excuse nor a justification for terrorism. The terrible truth is that 
>Pearl's tragic end, however unjust and undeserved, is the 
>consequence of the policies of American imperialism. When the Wall 
>Street Journal writes in its eulogy of Pearl that "Danny is no 
>different from the thousands of Americans who died on September 11," 
>it is saying far more than it intends.
>
>Daniel Pearl, like the 3,000 innocent people who died in the 
>terrorist attack on the World Trade Center, is a victim of policies 
>pursued by the United States. Their deaths are the consequence of 
>reckless and reactionary decisions made in Washington, in pursuit of 
>oil and other imperialist geo-strategic interests, over the last 20 
>years...

What's next? Will we learn that the dead of Auschwitz were also the 
victims of reckless and reactionary policies pursued by the United 
States?

It used to be that when Jews were killed for sport, people said that 
they were the victims of their own authorities' and ancestors' 
crimes. Now at least they say that they are the victims of the United 
States's policies.

I suppose that this is progress--of a sort.

Brad DeLong