From: "LibertyWire" <Distribution@AmericanLibertyFoundation.org>
Organization: American Liberty Foundation
Date: Wed, 17 Oct 2001 16:18:46 -0700
To: "Subscriber" <LibertyWire@mjx.AmericanLibertyFoundation.org>
Subject: The algebra of infinite justice
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L i b e r t y W i r e
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Dear LibertyWire Subscriber,
A Chinese curse reads, "May you live in interesting times." E-mail feedback
that we've received regarding Harry Browne's articles on the terrorist
attacks of 9-11 convince me that we are indeed living in interesting times.
For example, it is interesting, but not unusual, that the messages Mr.
Browne receives often leap to conclusions; either about his alleged lack of
patriotism or his supposed lack of historical knowledge. But it is precisely
because of his patriotism for the American ideal and his knowledge of
history that he has spoken early and often in contravention of the
conventional wisdom.
But I have a confession to make. Until last Friday, I wondered if our
Director of Public Policy wasn't at least a little off the mark. Given my
past experience, I figured that Harry Browne's instinct was right. However,
I was having a hard time connecting the dots. Then on Friday, I read this
article by Arundhati Roy in the UK Guardian.
Over the weekend, I found myself recommending it to people -- something I
rarely do because no one ever follows that kind of advice anyway. But this
article is a tour-de-force.
Let me warn you, it is long at nearly 3700 words. If this file took a long
time to download -- I apologize. I won't make a habit of sending files this
size to you.
I hope you will agree with me that this article is well worth the time. This
article had to be long because it left few, if any, stones unturned. If you
only read a limited number of foreign policy articles relating to current
events, this one should be at the top of the list. Once you've read it (and
I recommend a re-read) you will know more about the geo-politics of, not to
mention the American foreign policy blunders in, the Middle East --
Afghanistan in particular. Perhaps, it may even do for you what it did for
me -- connect the dots.
Finally, Ms. Roy is a wonderful writer with a vast vocabulary. There are a
few words in this article that required me to go to a dictionary. As a
time-saving courtesy, I've taken the liberty of listing those, along with
one other, below with their dictionary definitions:
stygian -- Gloomy, dark; Infernal, hellish.
augury -- A sign or omen; Indication.
garrote -- A method of execution by strangulation or by
breaking the neck with an iron collar screwed tight.
doppelganger -- A ghostly double of a living person,
especially one that haunts its own fleshly counterpart.
And it should go without saying that there are a couple of very minor things
in this article that I don't agree with, but none of them subtract from the
power or overall accuracy of it.
-- Jim Babka, President
American Liberty Foundation
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The algebra of infinite justice
As the US prepares to wage a new kind of war, author
Arundhati Roy challenges the instinct for vengeance
The Guardian/September 29, 2001
http://www.guardian.co.uk/Archive/Article/0,4273,4266289,00.html
In the aftermath of the unconscionable September 11 suicide attacks on the
Pentagon and the World Trade Center, an American newscaster said: "Good and
evil rarely manifest themselves as clearly as they did last Tuesday. People
who we don't know massacred people who we do. And they did so with
contemptuous glee." Then he broke down and wept.
Here's the rub: America is at war against people it doesn't know, because
they don't appear much on TV. Before it has properly identified or even
begun to comprehend the nature of its enemy, the US government has, in a
rush of publicity and embarrassing rhetoric, cobbled together an
"international coalition against terror", mobilized its army, its air force,
its navy and its media, and committed them to battle.
The trouble is that once America goes off to war, it can't very well return
without having fought one. If it doesn't find its enemy, for the sake of the
enraged folks back home, it will have to manufacture one. Once war begins,
it will develop a momentum, a logic and a justification of its own, and
we'll lose sight of why it's being fought in the first place.
What we're witnessing here is the spectacle of the world's most powerful
country reaching reflexively, angrily, for an old instinct to fight a new
kind of war. Suddenly, when it comes to defending itself, America's
streamlined warships, cruise missiles and F-16 jets look like obsolete,
lumbering things. As deterrence, its arsenal of nuclear bombs is no longer
worth its weight in scrap. Box-cutters, penknives, and cold anger are the
weapons with which the wars of the new century will be waged. Anger is the
lock pick. It slips through customs unnoticed. Doesn't show up in baggage
checks.
Who is America fighting? On September 20, the FBI said that it had doubts
about the identities of some of the hijackers. On the same day President
George Bush said, "We know exactly who these people are and which
governments are supporting them." It sounds as though the president knows
something that the FBI and the American public don't.
In his September 20 address to the US Congress, President Bush called the
enemies of America "enemies of freedom". "Americans are asking, 'Why do they
hate us?' " he said. "They hate our freedoms -- our freedom of religion, our
freedom of speech, our freedom to vote and assemble and disagree with each
other." People are being asked to make two leaps of faith here. First, to
assume that The Enemy is who the US government says it is, even though it
has no substantial evidence to support that claim. And second, to assume
that The Enemy's motives are what the US government says they are, and
there's nothing to support that either.
For strategic, military and economic reasons, it is vital for the US
government to persuade its public that their commitment to freedom and
democracy and the American Way of Life is under attack. In the current
atmosphere of grief, outrage and anger, it's an easy notion to peddle.
However, if that were true, it's reasonable to wonder why the symbols of
America's economic and military dominance -- the World Trade Center and the
Pentagon -- were chosen as the targets of the attacks. Why not the Statue of
Liberty?
Could it be that the stygian anger that led to the attacks has its taproot
not in American freedom and democracy, but in the US government's record of
commitment and support to exactly the opposite things -- to military and
economic terrorism, insurgency, military dictatorship, religious bigotry and
unimaginable genocide (outside America)? It must be hard for ordinary
Americans, so recently bereaved, to look up at the world with their eyes
full of tears and encounter what might appear to them to be indifference. It
isn't indifference. It's just augury. An absence of surprise. The tired
wisdom of knowing that what goes around eventually comes around. American
people ought to know that it is not them but their government's policies
that are so hated. They can't possibly doubt that they themselves, their
extraordinary musicians, their writers, their actors, their spectacular
sportsmen and their cinema, are universally welcomed. All of us have been
moved by the courage and grace shown by firefighters, rescue workers and
ordinary office staff in the days since the attacks.
America's grief at what happened has been immense and immensely public. It
would be grotesque to expect it to calibrate or modulate its anguish.
However, it will be a pity if, instead of using this as an opportunity to
try to understand why September 11 happened, Americans use it as an
opportunity to usurp the whole world's sorrow to mourn and avenge only their
own. Because then it falls to the rest of us to ask the hard questions and
say the harsh things. And for our pains, for our bad timing, we will be
disliked, ignored and perhaps eventually silenced.
The world will probably never know what motivated those particular hijackers
who flew planes into those particular American buildings. They were not
glory boys. They left no suicide notes, no political messages; no
organization has claimed credit for the attacks. All we know is that their
belief in what they were doing outstripped the natural human instinct for
survival, or any desire to be remembered. It's almost as though they could
not scale down the enormity of their rage to anything smaller than their
deeds. And what they did has blown a hole in the world as we knew it. In the
absence of information, politicians, political commentators and writers
(like myself) will invest the act with their own politics, with their own
interpretations. This speculation, this analysis of the political climate in
which the attacks took place, can only be a good thing.
