ItoBlog

Chickens coming home to roost

Here's a quote from Cindy Sheehan's most recent interview, where she spells out the reasons for 9/11:

"I think that US foreign policy is totally responsible for 9/11, as well as the recent bombings in London. Our policies of killing innocent Iraqis; Afghanis; supporting the occupation of Palestine; our permanent bases in Saudi Arabia; our presence in Lebanon; our support of the Shah; supporting Saddam and giving him the WMDs used on his own people. I think this sort of behavior drives hatred toward the US. This is just all my opinion, of course. I am not a politician or a military strategist. I am just a citizen voicing my opinions..."

If only this view was shared solely by fringe space-cadet anti-war groups (eg the Raging Grannies), then you could let these statements slide. The problem is that the genuine belief that 9/11 is of the US' own making is shared by much of the anti-war left. As Marc Cooper notes, these groups "not only abdicate all moral responsibility, they also effectively take a progressive policy alternative off the table [...] and kick the door wide open and unobstructed for the current disastrous policies of the Bush administration."

Here's an excellent essay by leftist writer and journalist Sasha Abramsky where he ably dismantles the loony and dangerous "chickens coming home to roost" argument. A must-read!!

Let's stop kidding ourselves

More human bombs have ripped through Bali, killing scores of innocent civilians and arguably, delivering the final blow to the island's recovering tourist industry. What has Indonesia done to deserve this? What did all those blown to shreds do to bring this carnage on to themselves?

It'll be interesting to read, in the coming days, all the half-baked apologies of terrorism in lefist publications like The Independent, Le Monde Diplomatique, The Nation, The New Statesman etc.... And I can already hear George Galloway preparing his next inflammatory speech explaining that three murderers last night "emerged out of a swamp of hatred created by us".

Let's stop kidding ourselves. Christoher Hitchens wrote an excellent piece today debunking all those who try to make sense of this insanity:

Consider this, look again at the awful carnage in Bali, and shudder if you ever said, or thought, that the bombs in London in July, or the bombs in Baghdad every day, or the bombs in Bali last Friday, are caused by any "policy" but that of the bombers themselves. Note the following:

1) East Timor was for many years, and quite rightly, a signature cause of the Noam Chomsky "left." The near-genocide of its people is an eternal stain on Indonesia and on the Western states that were complicit or silent. Yet Bin Ladenism wants not less of this killing and repression but more. Its demand to re-establish the caliphate is a pro-imperialist demand, not an anti-imperialist one.

2) Random bombings are not a protest against poverty and unemployment. They are a cause of poverty and unemployment and of wider economic dislocation.

3) Hinduism is considered by Bin Ladenists to be a worse heresy even than Christianity or Judaism or Shiism, and its adherents, whether in Bali or Kashmir, are fit only for the edge of the sword. So, it is absurd to think of jihadism—which murders the poor and the brown without compunction—as a movement against the rich and the "white."

So, what did Indonesia do to deserve this, or bring it on itself? How will the slaughter in Bali improve the lot of the Palestinians? Those who look for the connection will be doomed to ask increasingly stupid questions and to be content with increasingly wicked answers.

It's that simple...

If you choose a peaceful outlook and opt for respect and dialog and do not join in the attack of foreign regimes led by psychopathic tyrants, your nationals won't get kidnapped, your metros won't get bombed, your spies won't come to  harm, and generally your country won't be attacked…

That's how to avoid becoming enemy nº 1…

via No Pasaran