http://www.monthlyreview.org/0902achcar.htm
Every attempt to explain the descent into terrorism that culminated in the suicide attacks of September 11, 2001, as a consequence of the deplorable state of the world we live in has run up against a barrage of vicious polemical artillery. In a climate of intellectual intimidation bearing a certain resemblance to the dark hours of the Cold War, the intimidation relied on two deliberate amalgams.
Anti-Americanism and ‘Values’
First, according to the censors, any systematic critique of the U.S. government’s actions is evidence of an ignominious “anti-Americanism.” The recrudescence of the use of this term, particularly since the Kosovo War, in order to discredit criticism of Washington’s policies inevitably evokes the memory of the House Committee on Un-American Activities, which became notorious not that many years ago in the run-up to McCarthyism. This “paranoid” logic always ends up devouring its own children, as it did in the past when Republican Senator Joe McCarthy went so far as to take on Republican President Dwight D. Eisenhower.1 In keeping with this same logic, accusations of anti-Americanism have already been leveled against Washington’s most loyal allies as soon as they dared express the slightest reservation about the Bush Administration’s actions.
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The second amalgam that the censors have used to intimidate the U.S. government’s critics amounts to dismissing any explanation of September 11 that mentions the existence of injustice in the world as equivalent to a justification of mass murder—as if it were inconceivable for one form of barbarism to engender another, equally reprehensible form of barbarism.
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JC