The
Logic of War 1
A group of Bush Sr's US-armed fundamentalist freedom fighters compared
to our own founding fathers have become Bush Jr's evildoers who need to
be smoked from their caves-- and the National Review philosophers say
postmodern theory has wrecked the
planet with relativism?
2 How come if we stop shopping the
terrorists win? But if we create a million starving refugees through
bombing the
terrorists haven't won?
3 Because the World Trade Center was attacked
any Bush-initiated response is considered beyond reproach. Locked in the
language of war, it's impossible to
find another way out.
4 We are fighting to preserve freedom a
cause so important almost no dissent can
be televised
Where's the discussion in mainstream press whether investigations,
intelligence, freezing assets, police action arrests plus a more democratic
egalitarian foreign policy would
have been more appropriate and
effective in the long term than
war?
5 Although a person's terrorist links may be as-yet unproven
he or she
may be denied a civilian trial given a military tribunal exclusively for terrorists
at the sole discretion of one who stole highest office with
the help of five civilian judges.
6 A 15,000-pound bomb is called
a daisy cutter
7 Every day ticker tape moves across bottom of
CNN's screen updating the latest estimate of WTC missing presumed
dead now
hovering around 3,000. Each day NY Times features an obit page with
individualized moving stories of
victims of 9/11's inexcusable horror. Through tragedy described on personal
level we
are learning the preciousness of
Each Human Life.
Bin Laden on videotape gloats heinously over
high American civilian death counts he
calls blessed terror Every day we are learning which human lives are
precious to whom.
A New Hampshire professor has completed a study estimating
over 3,700 Afghan civilian deaths from
U.S. bombs. Not a single mainstream NY paper or TV station covers
this study or derives their
own tally. Each week I see one or two articles on the web about
starving freezing refugees forced
to flee the bombing 300,000 shivering in Maslakh, 100 dying each night, 230
buried in Dehdadi, mostly kids judging
from small size of burial plots.
The Pentagon says it is pointless to
attempt verify Afghan
civilian deaths Every day we are learning that the value of
human life is relative to
how many steps removed one feels
from the dead one's relatives.
8 On Fox News, Bill O'Reilly says Afghans
are responsible
for crimes of
their government. Does anyone remember Vietnam? Blessed
terror of the Nicaraguan Contras? Angola's
Unita? Latin American death squads?
Thankfully, no other country's military
blamed me
or my friends for those.
Didn't the U.S. Cold War government help create
the cave
tunnel training camps for
which Afghans are being bombed? One of these centuries leaders on all sides
will learn to
leave the gods and people out of it.
9 Our newest ally Pakistan supports
terrorists that have stormed India's parliamentary gates. The U.S. sensibly
urges India to show restraint.
10 Those who remained in cities & survived--celebrate.
In a refugee camp, a mob has beaten Robert Fisk, only major Western journalist
in country writing
against massive bombing because he looked Western & didn't speak their language
& his driver
looked like George Bush.
I protested the war as a risky gamble with millions
of innocent
Afghan lives but am quite happy to watch the fascist Taliban flee, music
being played, & women walking Kabul's streets w/o burkas.
11 What
idiot wouldn't realize terror attacks would be a gift to the American Right
as well as mass murder untold sentient beings?
If the terrorists attacked
mainly because they
don't like our individual freedoms-- then by supporting the president in
all his foreign & domestic policies don't we let the terrorists win?
For
now, we are teaching the terrorists a clear lesson that you don't solve your
gripes with bombs unless you're the world's sole superpower.
Eliot
Katz 10/01-12/01 |