> Taking on
> the likes of al-Qaeda will not be an easy nor simple, straightforward
task,
> and one must resist all manner of propaganda and rhetoric on all sides.
But it seems that its pretty much all propaganda and rhetoric. Kelly asked a good question about the link b/w Al Q and the Taliban. Another question might be about Al Q. Prior to Sept. 11, we only heard about Osama. A couple weeks after the attacks, Osama morphed into a global network of Islamic fundamentalist engaged in terrorism. Why nothing about Al Q prior to...? Al Q probably exists, probably contains individuals and groups seeking terror but we'll learn down the road that it wasn't a monolithic organization, its goals or objectives were actually fuzzy, and it wasn't capable of delivering on its promised threats. Maybe not, but the so-called fog of war makes it difficult to distinguish Al Q fabrications from US fabrications.
> As I've said before, instead of simply chanting "No War," the "left"
should
> have seen that al-Qaeda and the Taliban are not the Vietnamese or the
> Sandinistas, considered them a mortal enemy, not only to progressive
Western
> values but to millions in the region, supported hitting them back, but in
> concert with pressuring the US to alter its relations with the Arab world
> and especially with Israel.
You're doing the Hitchens thing here, characterizing those who oppose war because they endorse terrorists. There's a difference, tho sometimes a slim one, between those who argue that the chickens came home to roost and those who exclaim it gleefully. Anti-war sentiments stem from a firm conviction that the U.S. has a piss-poor track record when it comes to using its military, that military intervention always proceeds because of collateral interests, and that in the context of the being the world's superpower or even empire, that a unilateral US response will ultimately violate progressive Western values as it violates the human rights and bodies of the people in the region. Hitchens is occuping a place little different from those you accuse on the left of doing the enemy of my enemy is my friend.
> Again, would you be so glib if we were talking about the Nazis?
But these people are not the Nazis. Those people are in Iowa, not Afghanistan.
As I wrote earlier, a position perhaps articulated by Chomsky or others isn't wrong. Its just not satisfying. But the problem doesn't lie with Chomsky and friends - I think their priniciples will survive this intact. The problem (dear Brutus) lies with those of us who are motivated by bloodlust and destruction
Dennis (B.)