Greetings one and all.
We need to be clear amongst ourselves about what is being criticised or defended. To seek to explain the actions taken by the terrorists is in no way to seek to justify those actions. They are unjustifiable. When people are accused of being sympathetic to the terrorists, in this arena of MOQ debate, we should at least pay each other the courtesy of saying whether the disagreement is over questions of factual detail or logic (intellectual level) or over fundamental moral principles (moral in the conventional, non-MOQ sense, ie social level). It seems to me that the objections raised so far tend to the latter rather than the former.
I *do* think that the West bears a responsibility for what has happened. This seems to me to be a matter of factual detail and logic. The responsibility is very general, not specific. The hatred against the US/West has been building up for a long time - in fact, for as long as modernity has been rolling (and the US has only existed in the modern world, so does not - indeed cannot have any sense of quite how radically threatening to other cultures it is). That hatred needs to be addressed. Rumsfeld has just been talking about the need to 'drain the swamp' that supports terrorism - the water in the swamp is hatred. As the US/West has literally been careless about the hatred being fostered, it is to my understanding culpable for the events that have taken place. Not specifically culpable for this particular event, but culpable in that it has consistently acted (albeit often unknowingly) in such a way that makes these events more likely to take place. There are many examples of this - and just to be evenhanded, let me point to two. The UK has sponsored industries which have supplied planes to the previous Indonesian government, knowing that they were going to be used to repress the population, and in particular to attack the nation of East Timor and prevent it recovering its independence. That is an example of the West failing to act according to its own highest values and sowing the seeds of hatred. A second example - the US government has for many years sponsored and financed an organisation called NORAID, which has been the prime supplier of material and moral support for the IRA, a terrorist organisation that has killed hundreds of UK citizens. Again, that is an example of the US failing to live up to its own high standards. I do not see that these considerations are irrelevant to what has happened.
More than that, if our overriding priority is to ensure that such events do not recur, surely we must examine every conceivable aspect that might bear upon the overall situation? I say again, if the MOQ means anything, it means a dedication to the truth. In so far as comments like the ones above actually are true (and not just bollocks) then we need to take account of them. Otherwise we are just bombing factories.
Only love overcomes hatred.
Sam
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