Re: (NBC) Ending Terrorism

On Tue, 02 Dec 2003 18:42:42 -0600, Henry Porter
<[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote:

>[EMAIL PROTECTED] (JoeSchwind) wrote in
>news:[EMAIL PROTECTED]: 
>
>> The only thought this piece provokes is how could somebody this stupid
>> get a job on a major US newspaper? Oh wait, if you're anti-American
>> enough *any* left wing media outlet will hire you, no matter how brain
>> dead your reasoning. 
>
>The guy who wrote the piece doesn't have a job at any newspaper.  


Nope he's not a writer for a real paper.  He's just a "staffperson at
the Syracuse Peace Council, a nonviolence trainer and freelance
writer."

A real writer would say something like this:

Terrorism is a beast to be killed, not fed
By Mark Steyn
(Filed: 02/12/2003) 


For two years now, it's been apparent that increasing numbers of us
are living in entirely self-created realities. For example, when I
switched on the TV last Thursday, I saw President Bush being warmly
received at Thanksgiving Dinner in Baghdad. By contrast, Wayne Madsen,
co-author of America's Nightmare: The Presidency Of George Bush II,
saw a phoney stunt that took place not at dinner time but at the crack
of dawn.

"Our military men and women," he insisted, "were downing turkey,
stuffing, cranberry sauce, pumpkin pie, and non-alcoholic beer at a
time when most people would be eating eggs, bacon, grits, home fries
and toast." Warming to his theme, Mr Madsen continued: 

"The abysmal and sycophantic Washington and New York press corps seems
to have completely missed the Thanksgiving breakfast dinner". Chalk
that up to the fact that most people in the media never saw a military
chow line or experienced reveille in their lives. So it would
certainly go over their heads that troops would be ordered out of bed
to eat turkey and stuffing before the crack of dawn."

Mr Madsen's column, entitled "Wag the turkey", arose, it quickly
transpired, from reading too much into a typo in a Washington Post
story and an apparent inability to follow complex technicalities like
time zones.

But, when Brian O'Connell wrote to Mr Madsen pointing out where he'd
gone wrong, the "investigative journalist" stuck to his guns: "It's
all a secret of course, so no one will ever know," he concluded,
darkly. 

For those in advanced stages of anti-Bush derangement, it will remain
an article of faith for decades that the President made the troops get
out of bed at 6am so he could shovel pumpkin pie down them.

Now consider Amr Mohammed al-Faisal's take on the same "little skit"
(his words) for Saudi Arabia's Arab News: "Instead of a dainty starlet
trotting in to entertain the troops," he wrote, "lo and behold, it was
George Bush. 

Now, dear readers, you mustn't laugh at the Americans; remember they
are our friends and allies." Mr al-Faisal then proceeds to explain
that the Saudis need to find the Americans "a face-saving exit out of
Iraq", but "before we lift a finger to help" the Americans must meet
certain conditions, among them: 

"The halt to the vicious campaign of hatred and lies propagated in the
US against Saudi Arabia. Administration officials starting with
President Bush himself must spare no occasion to praise Saudi Arabia
and inform the American people how lucky they are to have us as
allies.

"The release of all Saudis detained in the US or in Guantanamo Bay
into Saudi custody."

Really. While you're at it, why not demand every freed Saudi gets a
couple of "dainty starlets" of his choice for the plane ride home?

But once in a while, even those in the most hermetically sealed
alternative universes enjoy a day-trip to reality. On September 11, Dr
Rowan Williams, the Archbishop of Canterbury, happened to be in New
York, a couple of blocks from the World Trade Centre. Made no
difference.

To Dr Williams, the Americans' liberation of Afghanistan was "morally
tainted", an "embarrassment", and an example of the moral equivalence
between the USAF and the suicide bomber, both of whom "can only see
from a distance: the sort of distance from which you can't see a face,
meet the eyes of someone, hear who they are, imagine who and what they
love. All violence works with that sort of distance.

" Last month, the archbishop happened to be in Istanbul and was a
guest at the home of the British Consul, Roger Short. Within a few
hours of his departure, Mr Short was dead, vaporised in the wreckage
of an almighty bombing. Dr Williams sounded momentarily shaken,
expressing "shock and grief" at the death of his host, and condemning
"these vicious and senseless attacks. These acts of violence achieve
nothing."

In fact, "these acts of violence" achieve quite a bit. Why, only a
month earlier similar acts of violence had led the Archbishop to make
a speech at the Royal Institute for International Affairs at which
he'd argued that terrorism can "have serious moral goals".

"It is possible to use unspeakably wicked means to pursue an aim that
is intelligible or desirable," he said. By ignoring this, America
"loses the power of self-criticism and becomes trapped in a
selfreferential morality." Perhaps Dr Williams would like to explain
what precisely is the "serious moral goal" of the men who killed his
host.

One reason why George W Bush comes on a bit strong about "evildoers"
and the like is that the Archbishop of Canterbury and any number of
the great and the good have rendered less primal language meaningless
in this sphere: when Dr Williams condemns terrorism as "vicious and
senseless", that's just the mood music of the evening news. When he
says "these acts of violence achieve nothing", what he means is that
his "shock" stops at the end of the soundbite; whether or not the
terrorists "achieve nothing", he intends to do so. 

We got used to these muzak formulations in Ulster for 30 years: Paddy
Ashdown and others liked to turn it into a Danny Kaye routine about
how we mustn't let the bomb and the bullet win out over the ballot and
the bollocks, or whatever it was. It was just words. In last week's
Northern Ireland elections and the obliteration of moderate
nationalism, we saw the logical consequence of enhancing the prestige
of terrorists. It's the same in the Palestinian Authority.

Will the archbishop's recent run-ins with reality shake him from his
equivalist pap? Islamic terrorism is a beast that has to be killed,
not patted and fed. The Palestinians use children as human shields and
as human bombs. Would it be too much to expect the archbishop, instead
of bleating about "serious moral goals", to dust off, say,

Matthew 18:6 and offer up something about how it would be better if
these fellows shoving their kids into the suicide bomber belts hung
the old millstone round their necks and drowned in the sea? Or will we
have to wait for such Bushesque "self-referential morality" till His
Grace is brushing the plaster from his cassock after his next close
shave?