Selvbedrag koster liv
For en lille uges tid siden havde Nick Cohen et fænomenalt indlæg i The Guardian. Bylinen er sigende:
Liberals will blame anybody else for atrocities rather than accuse murderous Islamic terrorists
Men der er meget mere i resten af artiklen:
Pamela Nowicka of Tourism Concern, which campaigns for eco-friendly holidays, had doubts of her own. She decided that what mattered was that the dead tourists were tourists rather than Australians. 'Many in the global south regard tourism as a new form of colonialism and cultural imperialism,' she wrote in the Guardian. 'While that may be hard for the suntanned holidaymaker to take on board, for the millions of ordinary people servicing their needs - the waiting staff, room cleaners, receptionists, shop workers, guides, massage ladies and taxi drivers - the linkage is clearer.'
Except that the bombers weren't disgruntled room cleaners and taxi drivers. They were members of a totalitarian movement which is against every principle Ms Nowicka professes to support. The first economic consequence of their killings will be to put cleaners and taxi drivers out of work.
I could go on - Mark Curtis, a historian from the Noam Chomsky school, wrote a piece which blamed the bombs on British support for General Suharto's coup a mere 40 years ago - but what needs saying is that no mainstream commentator mentioned that we have the grievance of Indonesian Islamists on the record. It has nothing to do with the foreign policy of the first Wilson administration or stingy tipping in Bali's restaurants. After the 2002 explosions in Bali killed 200, Osama bin Laden declared: 'Australia is the one that we have warned before not to participate in Afghanistan, not to mention its continued awful chapter in East Timor. They ignored our warning and they woke up to the sound of explosions in Bali.'
My guess is that people don't want to look at al-Qaeda's condemnations of Australia's role in saving (largely Catholic) East Timor from destruction by the militias of (largely Muslim) Indonesia. It's too frightening to contemplate; it takes you into the darkness to confront Islamism's impossible and therefore unappeasable demand for a caliphate and reminds you of its imperial urge to dominate Muslims and subjugate all others.
Avoidance of what al-Qaeda stands for began in 9/11 and has become endemic since. My favourite piece of victim blaming was after the Madrid bombings. For a few hours, there was a rumour that they were the work of ETA and Eddie Mair, the presenter of Radio 4's PM news show, duly had a go at a representative of the Spanish government, alleging that Madrid's refusal to talk to Basque nationalists was the root cause of the atrocity.
By the next day, it was clear that Islamists, not Basques, had attacked Madrid. Without pausing for breath, Mair duly wanted to know if the presence of Spanish troops in Iraq was the root cause of the atrocity. The identity of the bombers was irrelevant. The Spanish had to be the cause of their own suffering.
Perhaps it is too easy to mock. When confronted with an ideology which mandates indiscriminate killing on an industrial scale, it is natural to seek rational explanations of the irrational; to pretend that Islamism is merely a reasonable, if bloody, response to legitimate concerns which could be remedied if we elected wiser leaders.
Yet the masochism - 'Kill us, we deserve it!' - the subliminal dislike of democracy and the willingness to turn al-Qaeda into the armed wing of every fashionable campaign from sustainable tourism to the anti-war movement will in the end disgrace the liberals by making them ridiculous.
Man kan håbe.
Henrik
Liberals will blame anybody else for atrocities rather than accuse murderous Islamic terrorists
Men der er meget mere i resten af artiklen:
Pamela Nowicka of Tourism Concern, which campaigns for eco-friendly holidays, had doubts of her own. She decided that what mattered was that the dead tourists were tourists rather than Australians. 'Many in the global south regard tourism as a new form of colonialism and cultural imperialism,' she wrote in the Guardian. 'While that may be hard for the suntanned holidaymaker to take on board, for the millions of ordinary people servicing their needs - the waiting staff, room cleaners, receptionists, shop workers, guides, massage ladies and taxi drivers - the linkage is clearer.'
Except that the bombers weren't disgruntled room cleaners and taxi drivers. They were members of a totalitarian movement which is against every principle Ms Nowicka professes to support. The first economic consequence of their killings will be to put cleaners and taxi drivers out of work.
I could go on - Mark Curtis, a historian from the Noam Chomsky school, wrote a piece which blamed the bombs on British support for General Suharto's coup a mere 40 years ago - but what needs saying is that no mainstream commentator mentioned that we have the grievance of Indonesian Islamists on the record. It has nothing to do with the foreign policy of the first Wilson administration or stingy tipping in Bali's restaurants. After the 2002 explosions in Bali killed 200, Osama bin Laden declared: 'Australia is the one that we have warned before not to participate in Afghanistan, not to mention its continued awful chapter in East Timor. They ignored our warning and they woke up to the sound of explosions in Bali.'
My guess is that people don't want to look at al-Qaeda's condemnations of Australia's role in saving (largely Catholic) East Timor from destruction by the militias of (largely Muslim) Indonesia. It's too frightening to contemplate; it takes you into the darkness to confront Islamism's impossible and therefore unappeasable demand for a caliphate and reminds you of its imperial urge to dominate Muslims and subjugate all others.
Avoidance of what al-Qaeda stands for began in 9/11 and has become endemic since. My favourite piece of victim blaming was after the Madrid bombings. For a few hours, there was a rumour that they were the work of ETA and Eddie Mair, the presenter of Radio 4's PM news show, duly had a go at a representative of the Spanish government, alleging that Madrid's refusal to talk to Basque nationalists was the root cause of the atrocity.
By the next day, it was clear that Islamists, not Basques, had attacked Madrid. Without pausing for breath, Mair duly wanted to know if the presence of Spanish troops in Iraq was the root cause of the atrocity. The identity of the bombers was irrelevant. The Spanish had to be the cause of their own suffering.
Perhaps it is too easy to mock. When confronted with an ideology which mandates indiscriminate killing on an industrial scale, it is natural to seek rational explanations of the irrational; to pretend that Islamism is merely a reasonable, if bloody, response to legitimate concerns which could be remedied if we elected wiser leaders.
Yet the masochism - 'Kill us, we deserve it!' - the subliminal dislike of democracy and the willingness to turn al-Qaeda into the armed wing of every fashionable campaign from sustainable tourism to the anti-war movement will in the end disgrace the liberals by making them ridiculous.
Man kan håbe.
Henrik
posted by Henrik | 6:42 PM
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