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Posted on 12/03/2003 5:42:18 AM PST by SJackson
What 'serious moral goal' justified the murder of British Consul Roger Short in Turkey?
For two years now, it's been apparent that increasing numbers of us are living in entirely self-created realities.
For example, when I switched on the TV last Thursday, I saw US President George W. Bush being warmly received at Thanksgiving dinner in Baghdad. By contrast, Wayne Madsen, coauthor of America's Nightmare: The Presidency Of George Bush II, saw a phony stunt that took place not at dinnertime but at the crack of dawn.
"Our military men and women," he insisted, "were downing turkey, stuffing, cranberry sauce, pumpkin pie, and non-alcoholic beer at a time when most people would be eating eggs, bacon, grits, home fries and toast."
Warming to his theme, Madsen continued: "The abysmal and sycophantic Washington and New York press corps seems to have completely missed the Thanksgiving breakfast dinner.
"Chalk that up to the fact that most people in the media never saw a military chow line or experienced reveille in their lives. So it would certainly go over their heads that troops would be ordered out of bed to eat turkey and stuffing before the crack of dawn."
Madsen's column, entitled "Wag the turkey," arose, it quickly transpired, from reading too much into a typo in a Washington Post story and an apparent inability to follow complex technicalities like time zones.
But, when Brian O'Connell wrote to Madsen pointing out where he'd gone wrong, the "investigative journalist" stuck to his guns: "It's all a secret of course, so no one will ever know," he concluded, darkly.
For those in advanced stages of anti-Bush derangement, it will remain an article of faith for decades that the president made the troops get out of bed at 6 a.m. so he could shovel pumpkin pie down them.
Now consider Amr Mohammed al-Faisal's take on the same "little skit" (his words) for Saudi Arabia's Arab News: "Instead of a dainty starlet trotting in to entertain the troops," he wrote, "lo and behold, it was George Bush. Now, dear readers, you mustn't laugh at the Americans; remember they are our friends and allies."
Al-Faisal then proceeds to explain that the Saudis need to find the Americans "a face-saving exit out of Iraq," but "before we lift a finger to help" the Americans must meet certain conditions, among them: "The halt to the vicious campaign of hatred and lies propagated in the US against Saudi Arabia. Administration officials starting with President Bush himself must spare no occasion to praise Saudi Arabia and inform the American people how lucky they are to have us as allies." Then he demanded, "the release of all Saudis detained in the US or in Guantanamo Bay into Saudi custody."
REALLY. WHILE you're at it, why not demand every freed Saudi get a couple of "dainty starlets" of his choice for the plane ride home? But once in a while, even those in the most hermetically sealed alternative universes enjoy a day-trip to reality. On September 11, Dr. Rowan Williams, the Archbishop of Canterbury, happened to be in New York, a couple of blocks from the World Trade Center. Made no difference.
To Dr. Williams, the Americans' liberation of Afghanistan was "morally tainted," an "embarrassment," and an example of the moral equivalence between the USAF and the suicide bomber, both of whom "can only see from a distance: the sort of distance from which you can't see a face, meet the eyes of someone, hear who they are, imagine who and what they love.
All violence works with that sort of distance." Last month, the archbishop happened to be in Istanbul and was a guest at the home of the British consul, Roger Short. Within a few hours of his departure, Short was dead, vaporized in the wreckage of an almighty bombing. Dr. Williams sounded momentarily shaken, expressing "shock and grief" at the death of his host, and condemning "these vicious and senseless attacks. These acts of violence achieve nothing."
In fact, "these acts of violence" achieve quite a bit. Why, only a month earlier similar acts of violence had led the Archbishop to make a speech at the Royal Institute for International Affairs at which he'd argued that terrorism can "have serious moral goals."
"It is possible to use unspeakably wicked means to pursue an aim that is intelligible or desirable," he said. By ignoring this, America "loses the power of self-criticism and becomes trapped in a self-referential morality." Perhaps Dr. Williams would like to explain what precisely is the "serious moral goal" of the men who killed his host.
One reason George W. Bush comes on a bit strong about "evildoers" and the like is that the Archbishop of Canterbury and any number of the great and the good have rendered less primal language meaningless in this sphere: when Dr. Williams condemns terrorism as "vicious and senseless," that's just the mood music of the evening news.
When he says "these acts of violence achieve nothing," what he means is that his "shock" stops at the end of the sound bite; whether or not the terrorists "achieve nothing," he intends to do so. We got used to these muzak formulations in Ulster for 30 years: Former Liberal Democrat Party leader Paddy Ashdown and others liked to turn it into a Danny Kaye routine about how we mustn't let the bomb and the bullet win out over the ballot and the bollocks, or whatever it was.
It was just words.
In last week's Northern Ireland elections and the obliteration of moderate nationalism, we saw the logical consequence of enhancing the prestige of terrorists. It's the same in the Palestinian Authority.
Will the archbishop's recent run-ins with reality shake him from his equivalist pap? Islamic terrorism is a beast that has to be killed, not patted and fed. The Palestinians use children as human shields and as human bombs.
Would it be too much to expect the archbishop, instead of bleating about "serious moral goals," to dust off, say, Matthew 18:6 and offer up something about how it would be better if these fellows shoving their kids into the suicide bomber belts hung the old millstone round their necks and drowned in the sea?
Or will we have to wait for such Bushesque "self-referential morality" till His Grace is brushing the plaster from his cassock after his next close shave?
The writer is senior contributing editor for Hollinger Inc.
REALLY. WHILE you're at it, why not demand every freed Saudi get a couple of "dainty starlets" of his choice for the plane ride home?
Let's do better than that. Let's arrange for each of them to meet 72 dainty virgin starlets.
This reminds me of a scene from C.S. Lewis' The Great Divorce in which a man's sin is some kind of creature sitting on his shoulder and talking to him. An angel offers to kill the sin for him. The man says, "No, I'm trying to cut it off slowly." The angel raises his sword and says, "I can kill it right now if you like," but the man again refuses. After a long exchange the man relents and the angel cuts the sin-creature in half. (My quotes are not actual quotes but paraphrases from my weak memory.)
Oh, after the creature is cut in half, it becomes a beautiful guide.
Shalom.
In recognition of our friends and allies, the Saudis, I lift a finger in salute.
L
His Grace would no doubt disagree.
Shalom.
New ping list for Islamic Jihad and terrorism. 3 pings per day, every day. Some from my old ping list are on by default.
On or off let me know by freepmail.
Easy on, easy off, via freepmail.
BTT for a nicely-turned phrase. The refusal to face the monster that is Islamic terrorism is based largely on the fact that its very existence threatens a number of comfortable assumptions on the left, notably the moral equivalency of murderer and victim. Acknowledgment of the difference causes a number of basic premises to need to be re-examined. That can be very difficult for someone who prefers certitude to truth.
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