>
>> Taking any action which you know will result in the death of
>> innocent people is immoral.
>
> Fighting Spanish fascists in heavily populated towns? Fighting Nazis
> in Germany and France? Fighting death squads in El Salvador,
> Guatemala and Nicaragua? The Vietnamese kicking Pol Pot out of
> Cambodia? All these actions
> resulted in innocents being killed. All immoral?
I would argue that most of those actions can be done in a manner which does not kill innocent people. Like, shoot the people in the death squads instead of carpet bombing the surrounding villages as the US is doing in afghanistan.
>> I fail to see how the retaliation on 9-11 was any more unethical
>> then the US retaliation in Afghanistan.
>
>
> What was/is al-Qaeda "retaliating" against?
They claim to be retaliating against America's assault on what Bin Laden calls the Muslim Nation - US backing of Israeli Imperialism, the war on Iraq, backing of corrupt regimes in Saudi Arabia, etc.
"They rip us of our wealth and of our resources and of our oil. Our religion is under attack. They kill and murder our brothers. They compromise our honor and our dignity and dare we utter a single word of protest against the injustice, we are called terrorists. ... The truth is that the whole Muslim world is the victim of international terrorism, engineered by America at the United Nations. We are a nation whose sacred symbols have been looted and whose wealth and resources have been plundered. ... After World War II, the Americans grew more unfair and more oppressive towards people in general and Muslims in particular. ... The Americans started it and retaliation and punishment should be carried out following the principle of reciprocity, especially when women and children are involved. Through history, American has not been known to differentiate between the military and the civilians or between men and women or adults and children. Those who threw atomic bombs and used the weapons of mass destruction against Nagasaki and Hiroshima were the Americans. Can the bombs differentiate between military and women and infants and children? America has no religion that can deter her from exterminating whole peoples. Your position against Muslims in Palestine is despicable and disgraceful. America has no shame. ... We believe that the worst thieves in the world today and the worst terrorists are the Americans. Nothing could stop you except perhaps retaliation in kind. ... American politics and their religion do not believe in differentiating between civilians and military, between infants and animals, or among any human groups. Our mothers and daughters and sons are slaughtered every day with the approval of America and its support. And, while America blocks the entry of weapons into Islamic countries, it provides the Israelis with a continuous supply of arms allowing them thus to kill and massacre more Muslims. Your religion does not forbid you from committing such acts, so you have no right to object to any response or retaliation that reciprocates your own actions. But, and in spite of this, our retaliation is directed primarily against the soldiers only and against those standing by them. ... their government is busy occupying our land and building new settlements and helping Israel build new settlements in the point of departure for our Prophet's midnight journey to the seven heavens." - Bin Laden, 1998
"what America is facing today is something very little of what we have tasted for decades. Our nation, since nearly 80 years is tasting this humility. Sons are killed, and nobody answers the call. ... when those people have defended and retaliated to what their brothers and sisters have suffered in Palestine and Lebanon, the whole world has been shouting. And there are civilians, innocent children being killed every day in Iraq without any guilt, and we never hear anybody. We never hear any fatwah from the clergymen of the government. And every day we see the Israeli tanks going to Jenin, Ramallah, Beit Jalla and other lands of Islam. And, no, we never hear anybody objecting to that. So when the swords came after eight years to America, then the whole world has been crying for those criminals who attacked. ... People -- event of the world -- in Japan, hundreds of thousands of people got killed. This is not a war crime. Or in Iraq, what our -- who are being killed in Iraq. This is not a crime. And those, when they were attacked in my Nairobi, and Dar es Salaam, Afghanistan, and Sudan were attacked. ... And now with the winds of change has blown up now, has come to the Arabian Peninsula. And to America, I say to it and to its people this: I swear by God the Great, America will never dream nor those who live in America will never taste security and safety unless we feel security and safety in our land and in Palestine." - Bin Laden, October 2001
" They did this [9-11] as a matter of self-defense, in defense of our brothers and sons in Palestine, and to liberate our sacred religious sites/things. ... The events of Tuesday, September the 11th, in New York and Washington are great on all levels. Their repercussions are not over. Although the collapse of the twin towers is huge, but the events that followed, and I'm not just talking about the economic repercussions, those are continuing, the events that followed are dangerous and more enormous than the collapse of the towers.
The values of this Western civilization under the leadership of America have been destroyed. Those awesome symbolic towers that speak of liberty, human rights, and humanity have been destroyed. They have gone up in smoke.
The proof came when the U.S. government pressured the media not to run our statements that are not longer than very few minutes. They felt that the truth started to reach the American people, the truth that we are not terrorists as they understand it but because we are being attacked in Palestine, Iraq, Lebanon, Sudan, Somalia, Kashmir, the Philippines and everywhere else. ... Clinton has said, "Israel has the right to defend itself," after the massacres of Qana. He didn't even reprimand Israel. ... Americans take our money and give it to Israel to kill our children in Palestine. ... The killing of innocent civilians, as America and some intellectuals claim, is really very strange talk. Who said that our children and civilians are not innocent and that shedding their blood is justified? That it is lesser in degree? When we kill them, the entire world from east to west screams at us, and America rallies its allies, agents, and the sons of its agents. Who said that our blood is not blood, but theirs is? Who made this pronouncement? Who has been getting killed in our countries for decades? More than 1 million children, more than 1 million children died in Iraq and others are still dying. Why do we not hear someone screaming or condemning, or even someone's words of consolation or condolence?
How come millions of Muslims are being killed? Where are the experts, the writers, the scholars and the freedom fighters, where are the ones who have an ounce a faith in them? They react only if we kill American civilians, and every day we are being killed, children are being killed in Palestine. ... There is a saying, "If the infidels killed women and children on purpose, we shouldn't shy way from treating them in the same way to stop them from doing it again." The men that God helped [attack, on September 11] did not intend to kill babies; they intended to destroy the strongest military power in the world, to attack the Pentagon that houses more than 64,000 employees, a military center that houses the strength and the military intelligence. ... The towers are an economic power and not a children's school. Those that were there are men that supported the biggest economic power in the world. They have to review their books. We will do as they do. If they kill our women and our innocent people, we will kill [them] until they stop.
We swore that America wouldn't live in security until we live it truly in Palestine. This showed the reality of America, which puts Israel's interest above its own people's interest. America won't get out of this crisis until it gets out of the Arabian Peninsula, and until it stops its support of Israel. This equation can be understood by any American child, but Bush, because he's an Israeli agent, cannot understand this equation unless the swords threatened him above him head." -- Bin Laden, February 2002
Notice how similar Osama's rhetoric about "self defense" and "retaliation" is to your own (and even more so Bush's).
> Or better, what are they fighting for? The poor and dispossessed of
> the region? Like the ones they were grinding up in Afghanistan?
Al-Qaeda has about as much concern for the poor & dispossed as the Empire does - none. This war is gang warfare between rival exploiters - they're both despicable. Each side uses the other side's atrocities to justify it's own atrocities. Instead of supporting one side's atrocities it seems more sensible to me to condemn both sides. Unfortunetly the people who die in this war aren't the capitalist scum who start it but ordinary people. No war but the class war!
> Dismantling the empire is desirable and worthwhile in the long run,
> for that's how long it will take. One can be opposed to it and the
> endless wars it seeks and still recognize the singular threat of
> al-Qaeda, which is very real.
You can't be opposed to it's endless wars while simultanious supporting those wars on a case by case basis. You don't need to back Bush's war to recognize that Al-Qaeda is a threat (though probably not as great a threat as Bush & co).
There's no evidence that invading Afghanistan has done anything to stop Al-Qaeda. As even the CIA says, tt may have made things worse by dispersing their forces.
> And millions were kept from starving.
Millions who were only endangered in the first place because of the war.
> And more medicines made it to those who needed them. And maps to land
> mines have been distributed. And more international relief has
> poured in.
Things which could have been done without cluster bombing villagers.
> What Joe is suggesting, cynically it seems, is that nothing should
> have been done in the wake of 9/11; that al-Q should have remained
> ensconced in Afghanistan, operating freely, planning further attacks
> without fear of reprisal.
Al-Qaeda supporters say the samething about people who condemn their attacks. Al-Qaeda's demands - removal of US troops from the Persian Gulf, an end to US backing of Israel & middle eastern dictatorships - are not unreasonable. I see no reason why peace negotiations couldn't be conducted. The US shouldn't even be backing dictatorships in the first place.
-- Joe R. Golowka JoeG at ieee.org Anarchist FAQ -- http://www.anarchyfaq.org
"According to the libertarian litany, if an industry or an institution is making a profit, it is satisfying "wants" whose origins and content are deliberately disregarded. But what we want, what we are capable of wanting is relative to the forms of social organization. People "want" fast food because they have to hurry back to work, because processed supermarket food doesn't taste much better anyway, because the nuclear family (for the dwindling minority who have even that to go home to) is too small and too stressed to sustain much festivity in cooking and eating -- and so forth. It is only people who can't get what they want who resign themselves to want more of what they can get. Since we cannot be friends and lovers, we wail for more candy." - Bob Black