As I promised, here's a response to what's been going on in the comments thread of the London bombing post.
When I first heard the news out of London, I posted
my gut reaction. To summarize: the murder of innocents is not the act of the vindicators of the oppressed, it is a means of oppression; the murderers seek the annihilation of liberal culture and society; that that is their intent has exactly nothing to do with the invasion of Iraq or the maltreatment of the Palestinians; their ideology is irreducibly evil; cowardice before such atrocity gains nothing, accomodation with it is impossible. I stand firmly by those sentiments, and though I made no policy prescription, some of the responses to what I wrote seem to assume that I did. And one
accuses me of a betrayal of liberalism:
By the way, I thought you were at least marginally wise, Finn...when you kill people in Afghanistan and Iraq, do you think their sons, brothers, etc. are going to suddenly be endeared to the United States? Noooooo....killin breeds killin, hate breeds hate. When are you uncivilized palefaces gonna understand that shit??? (...by the way, the United States started the fight in Afghanistan by funding and training Islamic militants 25 years ago. Don't pick and choose history to fit your own alarmist mindset, lest you come to deserve the f-word yourself...)
It's terribly disappointing to me that you are just another fool beating the war drums. I thought you knew better. Galloway, however "marginal" his voice, is right: the root causes of Islamic fundementalism/terrorism will never be attacked with bombs and bloodshed--they will only be strengthened by such violence. Your rhetoric betrays your own fear and misunderstanding of the situation, and I hope that one day you wake up and realize you're digging your own grave.
You are no liberal.
How do I begin to explain how strongly and how many different ways I disagree with this? Let's take it sentence by sentence:
[W]hen you kill people in Afghanistan and Iraq, do you think their sons, brothers, etc. are going to suddenly be endeared to the United States?
Obviously no one this side of Richard Perle would believe such a thing. I'll assume, I think fairly, that the point here is a backhanded comment about the justice of the wars. (Afghanistan is the relevant precedent here, not Iraq, so unless there's any objection I'll table the issue of Iraq for the remainder of the post.) But the question of a war's justice is three separate questions: jus ad bellum, jus in bello, and, as Michael Walzer reminds us, jus post-bellum. Only the last might depend upon the reconciliation of a vanquished combatant population to the victors. Unless the actual Rod's purpose is to deny that there can be just wars at all---a position that is, for not very complicated reasons, an immoral one---(legitimate) concerns about the conduct, execution, and settlement of a war do not necessarily or even likely undermine the justice of the cause itself. Not only are there just wars, but there are necessary wars as well, of which a war of self-defense is the paradigm.
Noooooo....killin breeds killin, hate breeds hate.
It fits on a bumper sticker, but it is void of content. This is not a response to questions of how a society is to respond when it it attacked; it is a way of dodging such questions.
When are you uncivilized palefaces gonna understand that shit???
Good point.
[B]y the way, the United States started the fight in Afghanistan by funding and training Islamic militants 25 years ago.
Again, I'm familiar with this history. Does the fact that the United States trained and armed the mujahedeen legitimize their cause? Clearly not. Does it give the successors to the mujahedeen carte-blanche to immiserate and enslave their subject populations while launching murderous assaults on those societies outside their control? Clearly not. Do the crimes and errors of past American governments prevent future governments from correcting those errors? Clearly not.
Don't pick and choose history to fit your own alarmist mindset, lest you come to deserve the f-word yourself.
Indeed.
It's terribly disappointing to me that you are just another fool beating the war drums.
I'm beating no drums. As I believe Nick Cohen wrote recently in the Guardian, it doesn't take all that much effort to pin the blame for this on Bush and Blair, but that's an analysis as unsupportable as it is facile. Even if the fascists had never attacked a western country---if they had merely confined their efforts to imposing totalitarian theocracy on their co-religionists in majority Muslim countries---liberal society would still be obliged to respond. Individual autonomy and rights are the fundamental units here, not the rights of theocratic juntas to claim to speak for the people whose liberty they have rescinded and upon whom they force a miserable future-less poverty. Liberty is not only for the likes of us palefaces. But what's more, the fascists
did attack us. Self-defense is not war-mongering.
