Sunday, January 22, 2006

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As usual, your take on this issue is quite reasonable. I can also understand why you and others might be critical of Blum's thesis.

I wonder, though, whether you and others are open to the possibility that this thesis could be an accurate analysis of US foreign policy, not only going back to the days of Messadagh and Allende but also to US policy in the Middle East.

When Blum says, ""The thesis in my books and my writing is that anti-American terrorism arises from the behavior of U.S. foreign policy. "It is what the U.S. government does which angers people all over the world", he is stating a position that is shared by many leading thinkers around the world, including Noam Chomsky. Blum's thesis coincides closely with that of Stephen Zunes' in Tinderbox.

For the record, I think Chomsky's being voted the leading intellectual of the modern world over Richard Dawkins is a travesty, but I also think that such voices are deserving of attention.

The war against terorism is not quite as simple as it seems to simplistic individuals like Bush.

Matrixx8 (ip:80.61.62.195) 22 January 2006 - 21:01 uur

Sometimes I wonder what the US could do that wouldn't make people in some parts of the world angry. Even getting a couple of airplanes slammed into skyscrapers has been cited as evidence that we are pawns of the Zionist conspiracy. The milder form of this paranoid thinking is that we got what we deserved. You're welcome to your theories. So is the poor dirty fellow mumbling and raving that the CIA and the Freemasons are reading his thoughts.

May I call your attention to the recent excitement in Denmark over the daring publication of satirical cartoons of Mohammed? It was done as a gesture of defiance and elicited death threats. Could you please remind me of the last time an anti-American cartoon or article provoked a similar reaction? Have we issued a fatwa against Noam Chomsky? Did we butcher Oliver Stone? Have we crashed airplanes into the Kaaba?

It was fashionable at one point to make a moral equivalence between the US and the USSR. It still is in some places, but not in Eastern Europe. They know better. They have had contact with reality and found it instructive. I pray you will get your lessons more cheaply than the price they paid.

Mitch (ip:68.160.28.200) 22 January 2006 - 1:14 uur

You’re right, Mitch, about the different attitudes towards free speech between democracies and theocracies. The fatwa against Solman Rushdie was particularly heinous since it came from a sovereign head of state. However, as you know, when it comes to religious fanatics not sanctioned by political power, the West also has its share. In America we had Jerry Falwell attributing 9/11 to homosexuals, abortionists and liberals. More recently, we’ve had Pat Robertson calling for the assassination of a head of state and condemning Sharon by calling his affliction “the wrath of God”.

The situation in Denmark is no different than the controversy that surrounded Piss Christ in America or the more recent public censorship of Ostojic’s “Origin of Europe” in Austria. Moral indignation can take many forms, including death threats, as American abortion doctors whose names and addresses were placed on the Internet know all too well.

While I believe people should be free to say and publish whatever they want, I think that intentionally insulting another person’s deepest beliefs is neither civilized nor wise. There is a world of difference between holding up religion as such to ridicule and coming down hard on a “specific” religion.

As for U.S. foreign policy, I’m not sure which of my theories I’m welcome to, since I didn’t mention any that I can remember. I did suggest, however, that those who consider the history of US foreign policy a factor in anti-American terrorism make some strong arguments. Whether they’re right remains to be seen.

Some things never change. As Mark Twain wrote more than a century ago in Innocents Abroad, [Wherever we traveled abroad,] “the people stared at us everywhere, and we stared at them. We bore down on them with America's greatness until we crushed them."

Matrixx8 (ip:80.61.62.195) 22 January 2006 - 12:03 uur

"As for U.S. foreign policy, I’m not sure which of my theories I’m welcome to, since I didn’t mention any that I can remember." Since you recommended the analyses of Blum and Chomsky, I feel safe in assuming there is considerable overlap.

In re "Piss Christ": this is a museum-quality example of moral equivalence. Writing angry letters to the newspaper & trying (unsuccessfully) to remove public funding from this exhibit is a long way from making death threats. Or is Hirsi Ali worrying needlessly? "Moral indignation can take many forms, including death threats..." Are you utterly mad? Pat Robertson is free to make a fool of himself, and Ray Nagin is free to copy his act, but we put anti-abortion shooters in jail (and execute some).

My friend Jonathan linked to an interview with Kanan Makiya, the Iraqi author of "Cruelty and Silence." He has a lot to say about the betrayal of the Iraqi people by the European left. Go read it. There was a time that the destruction of a fascist dictatorship would have been a welcome thing.

Mitch (ip:68.160.28.200) 22 January 2006 - 1:57 uur

“Since you recommended the analyses of Blum and Chomsky, I feel safe in assuming there is considerable overlap.”

Surprisingly, perhaps, I believe that arguments and evidence should not be ignored for the sake of ideology. I said that their ideas deserve attention. You did not provide any reason to contradict that statement.

As for death threats to Hirsi Ali or anyone else, they are as common in the USA as they are in Europe, if not more so. If you are not familiar with the problem, just Google “death threats in the USA” or “abortion death threats”, which are the most common at present. Here are some examples:

Opponents of Rabbi Michael Lerner, another critic of Israel's policies, were not content with name-calling. In the July/August 2001 issue of Lerner's publication Tikkun, he wrote:
".an Israeli website called "self-hate" has identified me as one of the five enemies of the Jewish people, and printed my home address and driving instructions on how to get to my home. We reported this to the police, the Israeli Consulate, and to the Anti Defamation League. The ADL said this was not a 'hate crime'."
http://www.commondreams.org/views04/0608-10.htm

http://www.adl.org/learn/ext_us/TPM.asp?LEARN_Cat=Extremism&LEARN_SubCat=Extremism_in_America&xpicked=4&item=21
http://www.religioustolerance.org/abo_viol.htm

Since 1977, there have been more than 1,700 attacks against abortion providers, according to the National Abortion Federation. Following are recent shooting victims.
http://judicial-inc.biz/Horsley.htm

Then check out how some people feel about Michael Moore. http://www.usatoday.com/life/movies/news/2004-06-20-moore_x.htm

I can appreciate Makiya’s point of view – and he is right to oppose dictatorship. But the American administration is accountable to the American people. Going around the globe to rid the world of heinous dictatorships is neither a practicable nor a justifiable goal in terms of the US foreign policy.

I think you will find that the reason that most Europeans and virtually the whole world objected to the American invasion of Iraq (including the libertarian think tank, CATO), was because of America’s refusal to adhere to the international rule of law (you will recall that, at the last minute in 2003, the US drafted a SC resolution authorizing the use of military force in Iraq, and then withdrew it because there was not sufficient support). The US then decided to invade Iraq unilaterally, ignoring the views of the UN and the rest of the world. In doing so, it refused to abide by its commitment to the UN Charter and the “self defense” principle – particularly in view of the fact that the Bush administration has admitted that the reasons it gave for invading Iraq were based on faulty intelligence.

Perhaps you are confusing the current US administration, which has little support throughout the world, with the US as a nation, which is still seen as a model of human rights and democratic values. And perhaps you are attributing superhuman powers to a group of medieval cave dwellers whose ideas are no more efficacious than the members of the Flat Earth Society.

That is a difference in worldviews, not madness.

Matrixx8 (ip:80.61.62.195) 22 January 2006 - 21:36 uur

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