Re: A Great Speech/Comments to Liu

[Bob McKenzie <bobmck@xxxxxxxx>]

Mr. Liu:

Two comments about your post below:


on or about 9/21/01 17:32, the highly esteemed Henry C.K. Liu at
hliu@xxxxxxxxxxxxxx, with alacrity, aplomb and considerable dexterity,
applied fingers to keyboard and wrote:

> "Al Qaeda is to terror what the Mafia is to crime."
> Now, officially, the US government does not recognize the existence of
> the Mafia.  It is regarded by Italian Americans as a derogatory term.
> The PC term is organized crime.

This seems to me a picayune point - the metaphor/simile was strong and
understandable.  I don't know whether the US govt "recognizes" the Mafia or
not but it spends a great deal of time and money chasing it.  Are you
referring to the Hoover dictum?  I think it more pertinent to the speech and
the message the Italian govt does and has been fighting it for decades.

> This is such a broad stroke that Bush is actually delivering allies to
> the suspected terrorists.  There are many governments who may not  be
> opposed to the US per se, but who would resist US demand to override
> national sovereignty issues.  Does this mean that those who do not agree
> with the appropriateness of US responses are considered by the US as
> supportive of terrorism and be regarded by the US as "hostile regimes"?

No question arises as to national sovereignty - harboring, hosting,
supporting, aiding, abetting terrorism networks is abhorrent to the concept
of sovereignty.  Jeane Kirkpatrick wrote eloquently on this subject over two
decades ago.  Just as the flow of support funds is extra-national, so is the
political and social infrastructure without which the networks could not
exist or operate.  The issue really is as simple and manichean as framed by
Bush - 'you're on the bus or off the bus, chose carefully.'  Whether
governments support the form, style or substance of certain responses per se
is rather beside the point.

Bob McKenzie