Thursday, August 21, 2003
Letters to the Editor: What You Send Them is Not Always What They Print
A word to the wise, do not send letters to the editor. They just might print “your” letter. I responded to the following article a number of months back.
“If Saddam Hussein had governed Iraq to the end of his natural life, it would hardly have been within his power to endanger and make miserable the lives of the great majority of the people of Iraq as much as the U.S. government did in the past 12 years, and especially in the past two months. Yet we are supposed to look upon the agents of that disruption and destruction as heroes, whose victimization of a nation and maiming of innocent children is supposed to be all to the good because in another 10 years those children will not be tortured by Hussein's secret police--they will be tortured by the secret police of the regime the U.S. is putting in place.
The Shiite majority in Iraq wants an Islamic republic, but the U.S. government will, instead, ensure that essential control devolves into the hands of the more secular-oriented Sunnis, who worked so well with the Americans when Hussein was a U.S. ally. The Kurds have to be compensated for not getting a Kurdistan, and disarming them is a problem the U.S. would rather not deal with, so the northern district of the U.S. occupation will become an area of rule by the gun, with the Kurds getting some of their own back on Sunnis and Shiites together. The U.S. does not want Iraq to achieve self-determination as a nation lest its peoples decide to govern themselves in a way that does not match U.S. interests.
Thus in the next year or so, when most aid to Iraq will have to be paid for in oil, there will be some aid that won't appear on the books. That will be the equipment, instructors, and funding for a U.S. style police agency with the responsibility of making sure democracy does not interfere with commercial exploitation of Iraq's resources. Meanwhile, the returning expatriates whom the U.S. has decreed will control the government will be out for their own payback. This combination of U.S. fear of Islamic democracy plus government by revenge ensures repression will be necessary. That repression will be noticed from Morocco to Indonesia, if not in the world outside the Islamic community. And that repression will involve the worst kind of terrorism: state terrorism.
Last week we noted that in 1987 the United Nations passed a resolution requiring member nations to fight terrorism in all its forms, and all nations voted for it except Honduras, which abstained, and Israel and the U.S., who voted against. The problem for Honduras at the time was that it was being used as a staging area for U.S. backed terrorist attacks on Nicaragua, a nation that had made the mistake of opting for a popular democracy rather than conforming to policies favouring international corporations. During those days when the U.S. was publicly less concerned with terrorism, the International Court of Justice at the Hague passed a rare judgment, declaring that the U.S. committed international terrorism when it mined the harbour in Managua and ships from several countries were damaged or sunk.
U.S. Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld, during Gulf War III, said he does not count civilian casualties. This is an attitude known only to terrorists. Rumsfeld is at least being consistent with U.S. government attitudes over the past 40 years. While the name of every U.S. citizen who died in Vietnam is carved in stone in that nation's capital, no one in the U.S. can estimate within a million deaths the number of Vietnamese who should have their names carved in stone. Three million? Five million? The U.S. does not count civilian casualties.
The Vietnam war shares with Gulf War I and Italy's mid- to late-1930s Abyssinian (Ethiopian) conflict the distinction of being the only wars since the First World War in which chemical weapons of mass destruction were employed. In Vietnam, the U.S. sprayed chemical agents that defoliated forests, destroyed the soil, and have caused birth defects to this day; in Ethiopia, Benito Mussolini's forces dropped mustard gas from the air, in one instance killing thousands in an attack on a single village; and in the First Gulf War, Iran and Iraq spewed gases at each other, with the Iraqis getting the edge because the U.S. had supplied them with the latest and best WMDs. Ever since Winston Churchill gritted his teeth during the Second World War and said Britain would not use chemical WMDs unless the home islands were invaded, the U.S. has been unique among so-called Great Powers in its willingness to develop and deploy chemical agents, the only other example being the Germans' use of gas in concentration camps during the war Churchill was fighting.
What about Israel, the other country that in 1987 refused to agree with more than 100 nations that terrorism should be stopped? No matter what the initial intention or policy, Israel has become a militarist state continually carrying out terrorist attacks, largely at the behest of, and heavily subsidized by, the U.S. The question is whether or not there is a real difference, other than one of degree, between crashing aircraft into office buildings in New York or blasting high-explosive tank shells (made in the U.S.) into houses full of women and children in the Gaza Strip, or perhaps running a bulldozer over an innocent protestor or callously gunning down a few others.
Obviously, terrorism is not the real target. The real goal is to brush aside the United Nations, make the U.S. government the ruler of the world, a dominance it can confirm if no one objects to its attitude that problems can be solved by intimidation, repression, and slaughter. Outside of Britain and Spain, most of the world seems to agree that if the U.S. government is going to run the planet, it had better show a lot more tolerance, maturity, and ability to get along with other people than it is displaying now. Academic Noam Chomsky said after the attack on the World Trade Center that if the U.S. wanted less terrorism, the U.S. should stop supporting and subsidizing it. But that does not seem to be on the agenda.
As George W. Bush said after September 11, 2001, you are either with him or you're against him. We fervently hope the 21st century will not begin with a Third World War of the genuinely democratic people of the world against a U.S. government bent on establishing a corporate tyranny.”
This is what I wrote.
“While reading McDonald and Majeed’s piece I was overcome with the same feeling that I get whenever I read such pieces, viz., that I am lost in wonderland. It is not that everything the New Left says about the US simply dead wrong. The US has indeed propped up a number of bad regimes over the past 5 decades and they have even supported some groups that by anyone’s definition are terrorist organizations. The problem is that in their zeal to denounce the US people like McDonald and Majeed see no harm in taking all kinds of liberties with the truth and with language. We are told, for example, that given the dynamics of the situation in Iraq today, some kind of repressive state will emerge and that this state will be equally brutal to Saddam’s. This is not only wild speculation, it also trivializes and downplays just how brutal Saddam’s regime truly was. Be rest assured, there are a whole host of governments that torture their citizens and there are no guarantee that Iraq will not be one of them in the future, but only a very few kill up to 2,000 prisoners on any given Wednesday in the country’s largest prison.
We are also told that Israel regularly carries out “terrorist attacks” and that these attacks differ only in scale from the attacks Al Qaeda carried out on 911. Its comments like this that leave me wondering: Do McDonald and Majeed work for Mossad? Anyway, I am not sure if they are saying that Israel intentionally targets non-combatants, or that they are showing wanton disregard for them. The former is false. The odd Israeli soldier, or soldiers might take pot shots at people, but there has never been any evidence to suggest that non-combatants are being systematically targeted. The latter is debatable and even if true does not mean that what Al Qaeda did is, in any way, on the level with what Israel has done during the Second Intifada. For one, the Sharon crack down has cut down on the suicide bombers in recent months. Nothing Al Qaeda did on 911 lessened the toll on anyone group of people nor was it intended to.
In addition to everything else, Majeed and McDonald succeed in confusing people by, as Wittgenstein puts it, taking language on a holiday. Consider their use of the word “terrorist”. For whatever reason, “terrorist” only refers non-state actors only. Thus, while Stalin and Hitler did bang up job of terrorizing huge numbers of people, it is just plain odd to say they are the most prominent terrorists of the 20th century. As for the mining the Managua harbor, the ICJ found that the US was guilty of “force against another state,” and not terrorism.
McDonald and Majeed do not stop there though. They claim that Agent Orange is a WMD. This is good humor. Something is a weapon by virtue of how it is employed, or how it was designed to be used. Agent Orange was designed as a defoliant and it was employed as defoliant and not as a weapon. The fact that it caused a great deal of harm no more makes it a WMD then the fact that alcohol causes a great deal of heartache makes it a weapon.
Finally, Majeed and McDonald are guilty of lying by omission. They rightly point out that the US and Israel voted against a 1987 UN initiative aimed at ending terrorism, but they fail to mention the reason why they did so was because there was a clause in the resolution that recognized all actions of the PLO and other such groups as legit.”
This is what they printed.
“In their zeal to denounce the U.S., people like Verne McDonald and Usman Majeed take all kinds of liberties with truth and language. We are told, for example, that some kind of repressive state will emerge that will be equally brutal to Saddam Hussein's. This is not only wild speculation, it also trivializes just how brutal Hussein's regime was. A host of governments torture their citizens, and there are no guarantees that Iraq will not be one of them, but only a few kill up to 2,000 prisoners on any given Wednesday in the country's largest prison.
We are also told that Israel regularly carries out "terrorist attacks" and that these attacks differ only in scale from the attacks al-Qaeda carried out on 9/11. I am not sure if they are saying that Israel intentionally targets noncombatants or is showing wanton disregard for them. The former is false. The odd Israeli soldier might take potshots at people, but there has never been any evidence to suggest that noncombatants are being systematically targeted. The latter is debatable and even if true does not mean that what al-Qaeda did is on the level with what Israel has done during the Second Intifada. For one, the Ariel Sharon crackdown has cut down on suicide bombers in recent months. Nothing al-Qaeda did on 9/11 lessened the toll on any one group of people, nor was it intended to.
In addition, Majeed and McDonald confuse people by taking language on a holiday. Consider their use of the word terrorist. Terrorist only refers to non-state actors. As for the mining Managua harbour, the International Court of Justice found that the U.S. was guilty of "force against another state" and not terrorism.
McDonald and Majeed also claim that Agent Orange is a WMD. Something is a weapon by virtue of how it is employed or how it was designed to be used. Agent Orange was designed as a defoliant and was employed as a defoliant and not as a weapon.
Finally, Majeed and McDonald are guilty of lying by omission. They rightly point out that the U.S. and Israel voted against a 1987 UN initiative aimed at ending terrorism, but they fail to mention they did so because there was a clause in the resolution that recognized all actions of the PLO and other such groups as legit.”
Now I have no problem with them editing out a few sentences here and there and shortening a few others. For example they were right to shorten the beginning. However, even there they should have left in the following. “The US has indeed propped up a number of bad regimes over the past 5 decades and they have even supported some groups that by anyone’s definition are terrorist organizations.” By removing this qualification and entitling my letter truth takes a holiday, they pigeon holed me politically, making me seem entirely like a right wing partisan writing in a left wing newspaper. If that were not bad enough, though, by leaving out “Its comments like this that leave me wondering: Do McDonald and Majeed work for Mossad?”, “This is good humor” and “Thus, while Stalin and Hitler did bang up job of terrorizing huge numbers of people, it is just plain odd to say they are the most prominent terrorists of the 20th century” they essentially undercut the entire point of my piece, viz., that in their zeal, McDonald and Majeed and others of their ilk, unintentionally say some pretty stupid things. As it was, I was regretting not have tempered my comments about Israel.
Indeed, the simple fact of the matter is that I am not all that bothered by political viewpoint of the authors. It was the teacher in me coming and saying “Christ you can come up with something better than this. Some things you say are just plain wrong, others are confused and by and large the language that you use only appeals to the converted. I mean Gulf war 3! Come on.”
Leaving out “Thus, while Stalin and Hitler did bang up job of terrorizing huge numbers of people, it is just plain odd to say they are the most prominent terrorists of the 20th century” and having the un-tempered “Terrorist only refers to non-state actors” flowed by “As for mining the Managua harbour, the International Court of Justice found that the U.S. was guilty of "force against another state" and not terrorism” particularly annoyed me as well. Saying that terrorist only refers to non-state actors is a controversial comment. Chomsky, for example, regularly calls state actors terrorists. That is why it was necessary to point out that even though Stalin and Hitler would seem to fit the bill, no one refers to them as terrorists.
In the subsequent edition of the paper “my” letter garnered all sorts of attention and letters condemning my supposed jingoism strangely dominated the letter to the editor’s page. In one of those letters someone blathered on about how while the word “terrorist” might have once referred to only state actors, it now most assuredly refers to both, state actors and non-state actors. This made me all the angrier. The meaning of the word has changed only not in the way he suggested. The origin of the word dates back to the Jacobin terror and originally referred to state actors only.
A word to the wise, do not send letters to the editor. They just might print “your” letter. I responded to the following article a number of months back.
“If Saddam Hussein had governed Iraq to the end of his natural life, it would hardly have been within his power to endanger and make miserable the lives of the great majority of the people of Iraq as much as the U.S. government did in the past 12 years, and especially in the past two months. Yet we are supposed to look upon the agents of that disruption and destruction as heroes, whose victimization of a nation and maiming of innocent children is supposed to be all to the good because in another 10 years those children will not be tortured by Hussein's secret police--they will be tortured by the secret police of the regime the U.S. is putting in place.
The Shiite majority in Iraq wants an Islamic republic, but the U.S. government will, instead, ensure that essential control devolves into the hands of the more secular-oriented Sunnis, who worked so well with the Americans when Hussein was a U.S. ally. The Kurds have to be compensated for not getting a Kurdistan, and disarming them is a problem the U.S. would rather not deal with, so the northern district of the U.S. occupation will become an area of rule by the gun, with the Kurds getting some of their own back on Sunnis and Shiites together. The U.S. does not want Iraq to achieve self-determination as a nation lest its peoples decide to govern themselves in a way that does not match U.S. interests.
Thus in the next year or so, when most aid to Iraq will have to be paid for in oil, there will be some aid that won't appear on the books. That will be the equipment, instructors, and funding for a U.S. style police agency with the responsibility of making sure democracy does not interfere with commercial exploitation of Iraq's resources. Meanwhile, the returning expatriates whom the U.S. has decreed will control the government will be out for their own payback. This combination of U.S. fear of Islamic democracy plus government by revenge ensures repression will be necessary. That repression will be noticed from Morocco to Indonesia, if not in the world outside the Islamic community. And that repression will involve the worst kind of terrorism: state terrorism.
Last week we noted that in 1987 the United Nations passed a resolution requiring member nations to fight terrorism in all its forms, and all nations voted for it except Honduras, which abstained, and Israel and the U.S., who voted against. The problem for Honduras at the time was that it was being used as a staging area for U.S. backed terrorist attacks on Nicaragua, a nation that had made the mistake of opting for a popular democracy rather than conforming to policies favouring international corporations. During those days when the U.S. was publicly less concerned with terrorism, the International Court of Justice at the Hague passed a rare judgment, declaring that the U.S. committed international terrorism when it mined the harbour in Managua and ships from several countries were damaged or sunk.
U.S. Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld, during Gulf War III, said he does not count civilian casualties. This is an attitude known only to terrorists. Rumsfeld is at least being consistent with U.S. government attitudes over the past 40 years. While the name of every U.S. citizen who died in Vietnam is carved in stone in that nation's capital, no one in the U.S. can estimate within a million deaths the number of Vietnamese who should have their names carved in stone. Three million? Five million? The U.S. does not count civilian casualties.
The Vietnam war shares with Gulf War I and Italy's mid- to late-1930s Abyssinian (Ethiopian) conflict the distinction of being the only wars since the First World War in which chemical weapons of mass destruction were employed. In Vietnam, the U.S. sprayed chemical agents that defoliated forests, destroyed the soil, and have caused birth defects to this day; in Ethiopia, Benito Mussolini's forces dropped mustard gas from the air, in one instance killing thousands in an attack on a single village; and in the First Gulf War, Iran and Iraq spewed gases at each other, with the Iraqis getting the edge because the U.S. had supplied them with the latest and best WMDs. Ever since Winston Churchill gritted his teeth during the Second World War and said Britain would not use chemical WMDs unless the home islands were invaded, the U.S. has been unique among so-called Great Powers in its willingness to develop and deploy chemical agents, the only other example being the Germans' use of gas in concentration camps during the war Churchill was fighting.
What about Israel, the other country that in 1987 refused to agree with more than 100 nations that terrorism should be stopped? No matter what the initial intention or policy, Israel has become a militarist state continually carrying out terrorist attacks, largely at the behest of, and heavily subsidized by, the U.S. The question is whether or not there is a real difference, other than one of degree, between crashing aircraft into office buildings in New York or blasting high-explosive tank shells (made in the U.S.) into houses full of women and children in the Gaza Strip, or perhaps running a bulldozer over an innocent protestor or callously gunning down a few others.
Obviously, terrorism is not the real target. The real goal is to brush aside the United Nations, make the U.S. government the ruler of the world, a dominance it can confirm if no one objects to its attitude that problems can be solved by intimidation, repression, and slaughter. Outside of Britain and Spain, most of the world seems to agree that if the U.S. government is going to run the planet, it had better show a lot more tolerance, maturity, and ability to get along with other people than it is displaying now. Academic Noam Chomsky said after the attack on the World Trade Center that if the U.S. wanted less terrorism, the U.S. should stop supporting and subsidizing it. But that does not seem to be on the agenda.
As George W. Bush said after September 11, 2001, you are either with him or you're against him. We fervently hope the 21st century will not begin with a Third World War of the genuinely democratic people of the world against a U.S. government bent on establishing a corporate tyranny.”
This is what I wrote.
“While reading McDonald and Majeed’s piece I was overcome with the same feeling that I get whenever I read such pieces, viz., that I am lost in wonderland. It is not that everything the New Left says about the US simply dead wrong. The US has indeed propped up a number of bad regimes over the past 5 decades and they have even supported some groups that by anyone’s definition are terrorist organizations. The problem is that in their zeal to denounce the US people like McDonald and Majeed see no harm in taking all kinds of liberties with the truth and with language. We are told, for example, that given the dynamics of the situation in Iraq today, some kind of repressive state will emerge and that this state will be equally brutal to Saddam’s. This is not only wild speculation, it also trivializes and downplays just how brutal Saddam’s regime truly was. Be rest assured, there are a whole host of governments that torture their citizens and there are no guarantee that Iraq will not be one of them in the future, but only a very few kill up to 2,000 prisoners on any given Wednesday in the country’s largest prison.
We are also told that Israel regularly carries out “terrorist attacks” and that these attacks differ only in scale from the attacks Al Qaeda carried out on 911. Its comments like this that leave me wondering: Do McDonald and Majeed work for Mossad? Anyway, I am not sure if they are saying that Israel intentionally targets non-combatants, or that they are showing wanton disregard for them. The former is false. The odd Israeli soldier, or soldiers might take pot shots at people, but there has never been any evidence to suggest that non-combatants are being systematically targeted. The latter is debatable and even if true does not mean that what Al Qaeda did is, in any way, on the level with what Israel has done during the Second Intifada. For one, the Sharon crack down has cut down on the suicide bombers in recent months. Nothing Al Qaeda did on 911 lessened the toll on anyone group of people nor was it intended to.
In addition to everything else, Majeed and McDonald succeed in confusing people by, as Wittgenstein puts it, taking language on a holiday. Consider their use of the word “terrorist”. For whatever reason, “terrorist” only refers non-state actors only. Thus, while Stalin and Hitler did bang up job of terrorizing huge numbers of people, it is just plain odd to say they are the most prominent terrorists of the 20th century. As for the mining the Managua harbor, the ICJ found that the US was guilty of “force against another state,” and not terrorism.
McDonald and Majeed do not stop there though. They claim that Agent Orange is a WMD. This is good humor. Something is a weapon by virtue of how it is employed, or how it was designed to be used. Agent Orange was designed as a defoliant and it was employed as defoliant and not as a weapon. The fact that it caused a great deal of harm no more makes it a WMD then the fact that alcohol causes a great deal of heartache makes it a weapon.
Finally, Majeed and McDonald are guilty of lying by omission. They rightly point out that the US and Israel voted against a 1987 UN initiative aimed at ending terrorism, but they fail to mention the reason why they did so was because there was a clause in the resolution that recognized all actions of the PLO and other such groups as legit.”
This is what they printed.
“In their zeal to denounce the U.S., people like Verne McDonald and Usman Majeed take all kinds of liberties with truth and language. We are told, for example, that some kind of repressive state will emerge that will be equally brutal to Saddam Hussein's. This is not only wild speculation, it also trivializes just how brutal Hussein's regime was. A host of governments torture their citizens, and there are no guarantees that Iraq will not be one of them, but only a few kill up to 2,000 prisoners on any given Wednesday in the country's largest prison.
We are also told that Israel regularly carries out "terrorist attacks" and that these attacks differ only in scale from the attacks al-Qaeda carried out on 9/11. I am not sure if they are saying that Israel intentionally targets noncombatants or is showing wanton disregard for them. The former is false. The odd Israeli soldier might take potshots at people, but there has never been any evidence to suggest that noncombatants are being systematically targeted. The latter is debatable and even if true does not mean that what al-Qaeda did is on the level with what Israel has done during the Second Intifada. For one, the Ariel Sharon crackdown has cut down on suicide bombers in recent months. Nothing al-Qaeda did on 9/11 lessened the toll on any one group of people, nor was it intended to.
In addition, Majeed and McDonald confuse people by taking language on a holiday. Consider their use of the word terrorist. Terrorist only refers to non-state actors. As for the mining Managua harbour, the International Court of Justice found that the U.S. was guilty of "force against another state" and not terrorism.
McDonald and Majeed also claim that Agent Orange is a WMD. Something is a weapon by virtue of how it is employed or how it was designed to be used. Agent Orange was designed as a defoliant and was employed as a defoliant and not as a weapon.
Finally, Majeed and McDonald are guilty of lying by omission. They rightly point out that the U.S. and Israel voted against a 1987 UN initiative aimed at ending terrorism, but they fail to mention they did so because there was a clause in the resolution that recognized all actions of the PLO and other such groups as legit.”
Now I have no problem with them editing out a few sentences here and there and shortening a few others. For example they were right to shorten the beginning. However, even there they should have left in the following. “The US has indeed propped up a number of bad regimes over the past 5 decades and they have even supported some groups that by anyone’s definition are terrorist organizations.” By removing this qualification and entitling my letter truth takes a holiday, they pigeon holed me politically, making me seem entirely like a right wing partisan writing in a left wing newspaper. If that were not bad enough, though, by leaving out “Its comments like this that leave me wondering: Do McDonald and Majeed work for Mossad?”, “This is good humor” and “Thus, while Stalin and Hitler did bang up job of terrorizing huge numbers of people, it is just plain odd to say they are the most prominent terrorists of the 20th century” they essentially undercut the entire point of my piece, viz., that in their zeal, McDonald and Majeed and others of their ilk, unintentionally say some pretty stupid things. As it was, I was regretting not have tempered my comments about Israel.
Indeed, the simple fact of the matter is that I am not all that bothered by political viewpoint of the authors. It was the teacher in me coming and saying “Christ you can come up with something better than this. Some things you say are just plain wrong, others are confused and by and large the language that you use only appeals to the converted. I mean Gulf war 3! Come on.”
Leaving out “Thus, while Stalin and Hitler did bang up job of terrorizing huge numbers of people, it is just plain odd to say they are the most prominent terrorists of the 20th century” and having the un-tempered “Terrorist only refers to non-state actors” flowed by “As for mining the Managua harbour, the International Court of Justice found that the U.S. was guilty of "force against another state" and not terrorism” particularly annoyed me as well. Saying that terrorist only refers to non-state actors is a controversial comment. Chomsky, for example, regularly calls state actors terrorists. That is why it was necessary to point out that even though Stalin and Hitler would seem to fit the bill, no one refers to them as terrorists.
In the subsequent edition of the paper “my” letter garnered all sorts of attention and letters condemning my supposed jingoism strangely dominated the letter to the editor’s page. In one of those letters someone blathered on about how while the word “terrorist” might have once referred to only state actors, it now most assuredly refers to both, state actors and non-state actors. This made me all the angrier. The meaning of the word has changed only not in the way he suggested. The origin of the word dates back to the Jacobin terror and originally referred to state actors only.
Comments:
Post a Comment
