[lbo-talk] The linguistic bubble!

Miles Jackson cqmv at pdx.edu
Mon Jul 11 22:41:38 PDT 2005


On Mon, 11 Jul 2005, Luke Weiger wrote:


> Of course the bombers had reasons for what they did (planting bombs is an
> action; not a reflex). We can probably even come up with a comprehensive
> list of candidate reasons without much difficulty. But as Heartfield
> suggested, full explication requires a bit more than that.
>
> -- Luke

I really don't see the mystery here. We have a group that is trying to achieve political goals by killing innocent people. There is a long and sad history of this sort of "ends justifies the means" logic (see pretty much every war, including the current one: the slaughter of innocent people is justified by some Higher Good).

Unfortunately, people are endlessly creative when it comes to justifying harm to others; in that respect, there's nothing special or odd about these terrorists. They just have different political and religious goals than we do, so their justifications don't ring true for us.

Miles



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