Re: WTC Bombing

["Justin Schwartz" <jkschw@xxxxxxxxxxx>]

> As I spend way too much of my time reading the posts on the list (and
> occasionally LBO), I am compelled to comment.
>
> The majority of the comments are what I expected.  Utter moral confusion.
> Futile attempts to fit the events into your preexisting world views.  As
> Marxists or Marxist influenced, you divide the world into classes and then
> analyze events through that prism.

Hey, David, _we_ didn't divide the wold into classes. AS Che once said,
"It's not _my_ fault reality is Marxist."


The events of Tuesday cannot be viewed
> through a class prism.  You must step back and understand the more
> generalized implications.

Maybe the attack cannot be understood solely througha  class prism--it's
only one perspective, I agree, although a fundamental and necessary one. But
it cannot be understood without a class perspective, even if that does not
exhaust what can and should be said.

> Conflict can exist, but there are lines.  For instance, Americans
> understand
> the Beirut bombing in 1983, or the Cole bombing, and even embassy bombings.
> It seems strange to say, but those were within the lines, because they were
> military targets outside of the United States -- in other words, they were
> symbols of American imperialism and unwanted involvement in foreign
> affairs.
> Fair game, in some strange way.

This is OK, as far as it goes, but why "outside the US"? What makes that
boundary sacrosant? Why isn;t the Pentagon a military target? And if it
isn't one, what is? I'm not defending the attack, just questioning your
characterizations.
> On Tuesday, the terrorists made no demands.  They gave no warning.  They
> simply destroyed and committed suicide in doing so.  This means that they
> cannot be deterred.  And not only they cannot be deterred, but they
> recognize no lines.  Therefore, as soon as they can obtain biological or
> nuclear weapons, they will use them.  They will attempt to kill millions of
> people.

No doubt.
> In responding, it is not an issue of deterrence.  This very small
> percentage
> of the billions on earth cannot be deterred from destroying life for the
> remainder.  It is not a matter of vengeance.  Anger does not express my
> emotion.  The issue is that there are people who we now know will use
> biological and nuclear weapons to kill millions of people.

Course, they would say that about us. We do know that the US government will
blow up whole cities full of women, children, and old folks with nuclear
weapons--it's done so twice.

The United
> States, and every other country, now must do everything possible to
> eliminate every capacity of these people to access biological and nuclear
> weapons.

And perhaps we should do the same to deny the US access to nuclear, etc.
weapons. I'm not being flip here. I spent ten years of my life trying to do
this.

 I stress everything.  This means toppling governments that support
> these people.  This means destroying their training camps.  This means
> killing these people before they act.

ANd they will say the same about us, thus leading to the sort of terror we
saw on Tuesday.
> And I stress we.  The Left faces a dilemma.  The Left worldview, which
> attempts to fit everything into an economic class issue, simply cannot
> process what we are facing.  When you act and speak as if mere economic
> equality is evil, you run out of words when you see what evil really looks
> like.

I see. So consigning hundreds of millions to lives of slow starvation and
grinding misery while the labor for the benefit of the rich and privileged
isn't evil. It's just the natural result of the operation of the free
market. And you wonder why people blow up buildings. You thinking bombing
and killing people with nothing to lose will stop them, given that you have
left them with nothing to lose?

> Therefore, you have to decide -- whose side are you on?

Seems to me that was our question:

"They sat in Harlan County, There are no neutrals there
You'll either be a union man, or a thug for JH Blair
Which side are you, boy, which side are you on?"

I agree that the terrorists are not on any side I care to be on. But neither
are you, David, pleasant as it is to talk with you mich of the time.

> I have always wondered what it truly must have felt like for a Roman in the
> 5th Century to see Rome ransacked for the first time in over 700 years.  Or
> what it must have felt like to live during WWI, when 100 years of
> generalized European peace and prosperity came to a horrific end.  Unless
> we
> act with complete success in the coming years, I think we may soon find
> out.

I fear you are right: there will be a lot more of this sort of thing. Much
as I condemn the crime and mourn the destruction and loss of life, however,
I cannot share in your sense of outrage at the violation of our
invulnerability. The act was outrageous. But we cannot reasonably expect to
remain invulnerable while subjecting others to misery and horror. The 19th
century Europeans exported their hearts of darkness of the Congo, where the
prototypes of Kurtz collected heads and hands, to the Madras, where colonial
governors set soldiers to guard grain for export while millions starved, to
China, where the self-satisfied scions of the British upper class, ie, the
narcotrafficantes, imposed the opium trade on China at the point the the
bayonet. The Chinese, Indians, and Africans could do little in response to
disturn the fabled peace and prospersity in Europe. "We have got/The Maxim
gum/And they have not." (Hillaire Belloc). But in a globalized world, that
is no longer true. Sorry for the class analysis.

--jks

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