The WTC & Pentagon attacks: Irish Times editorial

Nagilum

An editorial by Kevin Myers of the Irish Times. Many of you, especially those who think the US has no right to defend itself, need to read this.
Irish Times Editorial (click here)

One week ago, for the last day for years to come, we woke to a morning in which the world was not at war. That day is now done, and the issue before us is actually quite simple.

Which side are we on? If we show doubt, then we tell the foes of civilisation to keep pushing; the door is not locked. It's not complicated. Terrorists anywhere must now be told that finally Ireland will stand four square against terrorism.

There are no extenuating circumstances for the Manhattan and Pentagon holocausts, any more than there are extenuating circumstances for what happened to Europe's Jews, and others, 60 years ago.

To be sure, there is a history to all events; but to deploy that history as mitigation or justification or contextualisation for mass murder is to fall for the homicidal, self-pitying babble which all misanthropic psychopaths indulge in.

World freedom

Osama Bin Laden is an Islamic fascist who loathes the West, democracy, Christianity, Judaism. His every project is about the taking of human life. Of course he loathes the US. Why wouldn't he? The US is the primary defender of world freedom.

That freedom is one we enjoy. From 1941 onwards in one war, and through the many years of the colder one which followed, we lived within the American imperium; without that protection, we would today be speaking German, and no doubt ruled by Sinn Féin gauleiters, or be an Atlantic Albania, communist and pauperised.

How a visceral hatred of the US has become so chic, so commonplace in Irish bien-pensant circles is a true mystery to me. Perhaps it is political immaturity, but that alone would not explain the frequency with which we give platitudinous lectures to those who guard us and our common values.

Nor does it explain the frequency with which we not merely tolerate lies about the US, but actually revel in them: such risible canards as that the US armed Saddam, that US policies are causing Iraqi children to die of hunger, or that US policy in the Middle East has been totally one-sided.

Saddam's army was Soviet-equipped. Iraqi children die because he is diverting money to his army, which our Government once went to such trouble to provide with beef - remember? Without vast US aid, Egypt would long ago have slid into the Nile and been washed away; similarly, Jordan.

Without US diplomacy, they would still be locked in perpetual war with Israel. Until a year ago, the US was doing its best to broker a deal between the PLO and Israel; and the absolutist forces which rejected the most generous offer that any Israeli government could offer the Palestinians, and still survive the opinions of its electorate, are represented most admirably by the butchers of Manhattan.

"Not a Victim"

Their leader, Osama Bin Laden, is not a "victim". Nor are his deranged followers. The people responsible for the war crimes in the US come from prosperous, well-educated Arab families; they do not come from the West Bank and Gaza. Their decision to kill thousands of people was not based on anything to do with personal experience, but simply on race hatred.

Nor is their decision to kill themselves a measure of a supposedly "Muslim" devotion to a cause, but merely another example of cultic suicide, such as we have repeatedly seen from "Christians" in recent years at Waco, in Guyana, in Switzerland.

To be sure, there are inconsistencies, failures, inadequacies in many US policies; this is because the US government is composed of human beings. But I would far rather have US policy with all its weaknesses than have to endure the sanctimonious posturing of the professional US-bashers of Irish life.

We are in morally the weakest position of any country in Europe to be making such noises: for we have deliberately chosen to have a defence policy of no-defence, and instead of staying gratefully silent beneath the umbrella of cost-free protection, we have repeatedly bawled pious homilies into our protectors' ears about the immorality of umbrellas.

This diseased and querulous neutralism has so contaminated our political life that our political leaders never dared confront it head on. That failure led to the rejection of the the Nice Treaty - to the delight, of course, of the morally lazy and intellectually torpid greens of both varieties - the tree-huggers and the kneecappers.

Essential values

More than human beings perished in last week's attacks; so too did the fence beneath us. Now we should finally accept that Europe and the US stand for the same essential values: the rule of law, of free speech, free trade, free association, free thought.

These are values not just worth defending verbally, but by military alliance as well, with all the compromises such alliances mean.

The road ahead will be hard, but it is not a road of US choosing. No major power anywhere could accept such a slaughter as Manhattan and not reply. The US is the greatest democracy in the world, under whose protection all other democracies have flourished. It is time for us to acknowledge that.

In the coming conflict, no doubt mistakes will be made - though I would trust a regime which includes such heavyweights as Powell, Cheney and Rice to make as few as humanly possible.

All the US wants to know now is that when the going gets tough, as it truly will, it will not be treated to vapid holier-than-thouisms from beyond its shores. It needs to know who its shoulder-to-shoulder friends are.

Well, here's one.

bonkey

Originally posted by Nagilum
An editorial by Kevin Myers of the Irish Times. Many of you, especially those who think the US has no right to defend itself, need to read this.

<snip>

Now, before I even start into this, I would question who has implied that the US has no right to defend itself. I cant find anyone who has once implied that.

OK...I've read it, and to be honest, it agrees mostly with my point of view, which I still stand by.

I feel Mr. Myers misunderstands the reasoning for Osama Bin Laden's hatred of the west, or at best, grossly oversimplifies it. Furthermore, he completely dismisses the religious belief of these fanatics as "cultism", which is so blinkered a view it defies belief.

Furthermore, in correcting certain misconceptions (Saddam armed by the Americans) he does not give the full truth in response. For example...no-one has ever said that all American influence in the Middle East was bad. Myers, however, slants it in a light to make it seem that all US influence has been good, which is equally untrue.

Now, getting back to the original argument in hand, no-one that I have seen has denied America the right to justice, the right to fight terrorism, nor the right to strike back. What has been questioned is the approach you put forward as the best solution - the invasion of Afghanistan. Myers does not once discuss how the US should react.... he simply defends their right to react.

I defend the US' right to react. I also would condemn any inappropriate reaction which plunged the US and the Middle East into a senseless war purely inthe name of revenge. I would condemn any ill-conceived strategy where the US plunged the entire midddle-east into turmoil and unrest, which would have echoes around the world.

In short - I would condemn the reaction you feel is appropriate. This does not mean I feel the US can or should do nothing - a point I feel you have singularly failed to grasp throughout these discussions

Myers goes on to say that he has faith that with heavyweights like Powell, they will hopefully keep their mistakes to a minimum - which is again implying he has faith in the US not to do anything too stupid.

This, funnily enough, is also my hope...but not yet my belief. I lack Myers' conviction in the intelligence of the US administration when slapped in the face. It is not a position the US are used to being in, and I still fear that hotheaded reactions (much like your own proposition) will win out over logical thought and careful planning.

jc

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beaver

The irony is that he's Irish-bashing. Oooh, how chic! US-bashing must have been last month...

Not a very good editorial IMO.

-Ross

bonkey

I've done a quick bit of checking into Mr. Myers' claims about the "fallacies" we all apparently gleefully believe when it comes to US-bashing.

1) the US armed Saddam,

Between 1985 and 1990, the US Department of Commerce approved 1.5 billion dollars of sales to Iraq of materials which had dual military and civilian applications, including precision lasers, optical equipment, machine tools etc.

The typical use of this equipment was in repair and/or construction of military equipment.

This was despite a warning from the Pentagon to the Dept of Commerce in 1986 that Iraq was believed to be developing missiles and possibly nuclear devices.

So, while it may be true that the machinery used in the field against hte US was largely from the Russians, it is also true that the US did help to arm Saddam, and contributed significantly to his "home grown" weapons research, which is believed to have been mostly chemical and/or nuclear in nature.

In the interests of completeness, I should point out that only $500 million of these sales were delivered before hostilities broke out.

2) that US policies are causing Iraqi children to die of hunger

Yes and no. While Myers correctly points out that Hussein is neglecting the common people to fund his army, it is also true that the trade and aid embargos which have been used against Iraq ultimately only causes suffering amongst the common people.

I know of no situation where such actions have actually led to an improvement in conditions.

This was further compounded by the previous Bush administration encouraging the Iraqi people to rise up against Saddam, promising to be there with them. The people tried, in places. The US were with them...in spirit. The aid the Iraqi people believed was motoring up behind them never crossed the border as that would have constituted an invasion - something the Bush administration were not willing to countenance.

I'm interested how the US and co can maintain an "no-fly" zone in Iraq without invading the Iraqi airspace, though, if they were so stringently opposed to invading the nation at the end of the Gulf War.

3) that US policy in the Middle East has been totally one-sided

I dont know of anyone who says this, except for the Islamic fundamentalists / extremists who say that the US is carrying out an anti-Islamic agenda, which I dont think anyone really believes, except said extremists.

The US has done much good. I'm not sure I agree that they have saved Egypt and Jordan from being swallowed by the Nile, but I'll allow Mr. Myers some slight exaggeration.

However, its interference in the Middle East, either to stabilise its own oil supply and/or to destabilise the Soviet nation in earlier years has not been altruistic nor beneficial.

Whether the US has or has not not been one-sided is immaterial. It is a question of whether or not they had added to the instability, suffering and conflict in the region. Very few critics who are in possession of the facts will honestly say that US involvement in the ME has been all to the good.

jc

Hobbes

Originally posted by bonkey


Now, before I even start into this, I would question who has implied that the US has no right to defend itself. I cant find anyone who has once implied that.

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I was wondering that too, unless he means to defend is to bomb innocent people with the hope that you get some of the guilty people.