1. The U.S. has been responsible for terrible atrocities throughout its history, mainly against weak, non-white peoples.
2. The U.s. population is mostly unable or unwilling to acknowledge these atrocities, mainly because it has been rendered incapable of "form[ing] coherent thoughts" by "media indoctrination," and "have been reduced by this point to a level much closer to the kid of immediate self-gratification entailed in Pavlovian stimulus/response patterns than anything accessible by appeals to higher logic."
3. A small group of Americans have noticed the horrors mentioned above, but most of them have only been able to respond by "signing petitions and conducting candle-lit prayer vigils, bearing 'moral witness' as vast legions of brown-skinned five-year-olds sat shivering in the dark, wide-eyed in horror, whimpering as they expired in the most agonizing ways imaginable. A few persons, however, who are "less 'enlightened' -- or perhaps more outraged -- than the self-anointed 'peacekeepers' " have progressed to the stage of "such retaliatory 'violence' as [breaking the windows of] corporations profiting by the carnage."
4. Since this window-breaking did not achieve the end of arousing the people to overthrow the system, a group of courageous Middle-Eastern activists took the burden on themselves of breaking a whole lot of windows all at once, to administer a stronger "dose of medicine." Their targets were legitimate military ones: the Pentagon and the WTC, which had a CIA office in it. Of course, there was "collateral damage," but most of them were "little Eichmanns inhabiting the sterile sanctuary of the twin towers," and in any case, the U.S. government, which doesn't care a bit about the "collateral damage" it causes around the world, can't complain if it suffers some itself.
5. Unless the American people rise up and overthrow their masters, even stronger doses of medicine, or chickens roosting, can be expected in the future.
I would comment on this argument as follows:
1. No question about this.
2. I don't see any difference between how most Americans reacted to 9/11 and the way any other country's population would react to a similar event. If it's "Pavlovian conditioning," it's the same kind of conditioning that happens in every state-governed society. Most people in most countries, most of the time, have a very heart-felt identification with their country and get quite emotional when it is suddenly, unexpectedly, and spectacularly attacked. That's why war has not yet been abolished after several thousand years of its existence.
3. True, prayer vigils and petitions have not accomplished much in dealing with the atrocities mentioned in 1., but breaking windows doesn't seem to it either. This sort of tactic certainly doesn't seem to be a very efficacious way of "appeal[ing] to higher logic." To the contrary, it infuriates the average person even more. The problem of building an effective movement against the evils Prof. Churchill is so rightly incensed at is one that has not yet been solved.
4. A fortiori, breaking a whole lot of windows at once and causing a lot of collateral damage is even less likely to win folks over. If people in other countries are enraged by the "collateral damage" (i.e., family members and fellow citizens indiscriminately slaughtered) visited on them, how should one expect Americans to react differently? Calling them "little Eichmanns," however one rationalizes this epithet, probably doesn't help much either.
Also, I'm not sure about the correctness of Prof. Churchill's reading of the motivations of the 9/11 attackers. I suspect that it will be a number of years before a really accurate account of that event is produced, and we still have to sort through all of the theories which argue that the attackers fingered by the government a) were entirely fictitious, b) were in fact on the payroll of said government, c) were deliberately allowed by said government to proceed with their attack, etc.
5. No more stronger "doses of medicine" have been administered yet, but it's still early innings, I suppose. Still, I don't see how an escalation of the 9/11 sort of tactic would achieve the goal Prof. Churchill desires. I recognize that he is deeply enraged by the treatment of people of color by (mostly white) Americans, and I quite understand why he feels so strongly about these issues, but I think his rage has unfortunately overcome his "higher logic."
Jon Johanning // jjohanning at igc.org __________________________ Misery, mutilation, destruction, terror, starvation and death characterize the process of war and form a principal part of the product. -– Louis Mumford (from "Technics and Civilization")