Posted on 09/10/2006 9:17:05 PM PDT by RWR8189
Never mind where I was standing or what I was doing this time five years ago. (Because really, what could be less pertinent?) Except that I do remember wondering, with apparent irrelevance, how soon I would be hearing one familiar cliché. And that I do remember hearing, with annoyance, one other observation that I believe started the whole post-9/11 epoch on the wrong foot.
The cliché, from which we have been generally but not completely spared, was the one about American "loss of innocence." Nobody, or nobody serious, thought that this store-bought phrase would quite rise to the occasion of the incineration of downtown Manhattan and 3,000 of its workers. It might have done for the Kennedy assassination or Watergate, but partly for that very reason it was redundant or pathetic by mid-day on September 11, 2001. Indeed, I believe that the expression, with its concomitant naïve self-regard, may have become superseded for all time. If so, good. The beginning of wisdom is to recognize that the United States was assaulted for what it really is, and what it understands as the center of modernity, and not for its unworldliness.
But here I am, writing that it was "the United States" that was assaulted. And there was the president, and most of the media, speaking about "an attack on America." True as this was and is, it is not quite the truth. I deliberately declined, for example, an invitation to attend a memorial for the many hundreds of my fellow-Englishmen who had perished in the inferno. I could have done the same if I was Armenian or Zanzibari--more than 80 nationalities could count their dead on that day. It would have been far better if President Bush had characterized the atrocity as an attack on civilization itself, and it would
(Excerpt) Read more at opinionjournal.com ...
I don't fault the President's words on that day. He was leader of THIS country, and the ramifications for all of the civilized world were easily dealt with later on. But this was something that happened to US. But Hitchens is one of the few commentators of any political stripe who actually seems to give some original thought to these questions, so reading him is always time well spent.
Also, the Muslim countries had the right to boycott Danish products. As long as they were peaceful (which they weren't), boycotting is a legitimate way to get their point across.
These are obviously critiques on specific parts of the article, rather than the article in totality.
Good article by Hitch.
Excellent read. Hitch never fails to find a slightly different, yet important perspective.
This the crux of the matter. And it becomes clearer when put in another context. Given their cycle of violence position, the neutrals would have to say that the Columbian government, by trying to kill or capture notorious drug lord Pablo Escobar, caused him to become more violent. The problem is that the neutrals think that ALL violence is wrong. They don't see that the purpose of fighting criminals is to put a STOP to the violence. They close their eyes to the logical fallacy of their position which is that is that the policeman and the criminal are on the same moral plain. They see us as on the same moral plane as the terrorists and themselves as on a higher plane than everyone else. Yet if they were robbed they would call the police. They are essentially elitist hypocrites.
Excellent point.
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