Re: Which side is Doug on?

[Carrol Cox <cbcox@xxxxxxxxx>]

Steve Diamond wrote:
>
> It seems clear enough to me that although Mark's reaction was emotional it
> was also accurate:

No, it was inaccurate because it said nothing at all -- it was purely
disruptive, creating a context in which it is very difficult to make
what I agree is essential point:

 Doug says "we" were attacked and that "some U.S. response
> was inevitable and even justified."

_We_ were not attacked. And I include in the "we" here those who were
killed in New York. They were collateral damage, not the focus of an
attack. And I hope Doug was writing badly when he made the flatly wrong
to use the word "justified" in respect to _any_ U.S. response at all
(other than normal criminal investigation).

As to the response being "inevitable" -- of course. But I am utterly
baffled as to why anyone would utter this banal truism. Since the writer
could not possibly be saying meaning what he says -- water is wet, most
states do not have more than one capital building, lead has greater mass
than oxygen -- he must be intending some esoteric metaphorical meaning,
but I am unable to construe the metaphor.

  If Doug means that the U.S. should have
> come to the United Nations and in front of the entire world community made
> its case for appropriate legal collective action by that world community
> that is on thing - but carpet bombing by B-52's in alliance with warlords
> while also attempting to reshape global politics by re-starting the Cold War
> behind a fig leaf argument about "self defense"?

Doug of course did not support that carpet bombing, and he will be quite
correct to pounce on this to deflect attention from the substance which
needs to be debated here.

What some of us have been trying to establish since nearly the beginning
over two months ago is that _any_ defense of _any_ U.S. response,
whatever the write claims (or whatever the writer believes him/herself
to be defending) is a de facto defense of carpet bombing, support of
"anti-terrorist terrorists" (e.g., the N.A.), etc.

The only legitimate policy options for the U.S. government (as someone
on LBO suggested, are those options which would ALSO be available to
Luxemburg. Any option that depended on superior U.S. military might was
a crime -- a far more serious crime than 911.

But I am still too ticked off at Mark for aborting real critique of
Doug's article to go for the present.

Carrol