"If the American Population Had the Slightest Idea of What Is Being Done [to Afghan Civilians] in Th

[queerbychoice]

Thanks to Frank Aqueno for this great link:

Noam Chomsky on terrorism - interview conducted September 19, 2001

"The US has already demanded that Pakistan terminate the food and other supplies that are keeping at least some of the starving and suffering people of Afghanistan alive. If that demand is implemented, unknown numbers of people who have not the remotest connection to terrorism will die, possibly millions. Let me repeat: the US has demanded that Pakistan kill possibly millions of people who are themselves victims of the Taliban. This has nothing to do even with revenge. It is at a far lower moral level even than that. The significance is heightened by the fact that this is mentioned in passing, with no comment, and probably will hardly be noticed. We can learn a great deal about the moral level of the reigning intellectual culture of the West by observing the reaction to this demand. I think we can be reasonably confident that if the American population had the slightest idea of what is being done in their name, they would be utterly appalled."
- Noam Chomsky

Please Note: The above comments are already outdated: Pakistan has now indeed obediently withdrawn all such aid. The World Food Program run by the United Nations estimates that 5.5 million people in Afghanistan (which is one quarter of Afghanistan's entire population) will starve to death by the end of this winter unless that humanitarian aid is restored to them.

"Killing Civilians: Behind the Reassuring Words" by Norman Solomon

Comments

Re: what do you think?

[queerbychoice.livejournal.com]

*cough, choke*

Look here, don't scare me like that. I have enough lunatics on the planet to deal with already without having to add you to the list. Grab hold of your sanity and hold on tight and don't let go.

"It's as if you know that a psychopath down the block from you, who killed someone last week is going to the knife store tomorrow. Why not go to the gun store tonight and come home and take him out?"

If you know he killed someone last week, then there are crime laws already in place that will allow us to lock him up where he won't kill anybody else. That's perfectly standard criminal procedure.

"I'm not sure that our intelligence capability will be closer to the heart of any of these groups five years from know than they are now. Because of this, should we wait around spying on them or collecting evidence or should we kill them?"

Uh, that would be committing mass-murder of innocent people ourselves, and would make us no better than the terrorists who killed innocent Americans. If you start disregarding the need for evidence and just go around killing any old person who you get it into your head that because they belong to some particular group like "Afghan citizens" might be wanting to kill you, then next thing you know the U.S. government will get it into their heads that all queers are likely terrorists too and they'll start killing us without any evidence too.

"Attacking any states that sponsor, harbor, tolerate terrorists makes some sense to me."

There is no country I know of anywhere that doesn't sponsor, harbor, or tolerate terrorists. It's been well known for ages that many members of the Irish Republican Army who are wanted in the U.K. for terrorism have found refuge in New York City and continue to fund the IRA from across the Atlantic. As a British acquaintance of mine put it, if Tony Blair really took Bush's rhetoric about squashing any states that sponsor, harbor, or tolerate terrorists seriously, then he should finish off the job that the terrorists did on New York City, and flatten the entire state of New York to make sure all the IRA fugitives are dead.

"All the rainbow coalition of bomb'em now Americans of whom you speak are much more ethnically diverse and tolerant than you could ever find in Afghanistan."

Uh, excuse me, but the fact that a population is ethnically diverse within itself does not make them incapable of being racist against a separate population. Of course, the hatred I'm talking about is really based on geographic location rather than strictly on race, so the most accurate word would be "nationalism," but people seem to be a bit slow to grasp how horrific nationalistic prejudice is, so I use the word racism to drive home how similar it is. To place a lesser value on the lives of the innocent people living in Afghanistan, en masse, than on the lives of Americans is IN NO WAY ONE SINGLE JOT LESS DISGUSTING, HORRIFIC, AND TOTALLY UNACCEPTABLE than placing a lesser value on the lives of Black people than on the lives of White people. The country where a person lives is in no way any fairer basis for judging a person's "value" than the color of their skin.