File spoon-archives/postcolonial.archive/postcolonial_2001/postcolonial.0110, message 68


Date: Wed, 03 Oct 2001 14:13:03 -0400
Subject: Re: Salman Rushdie on terrorism, middle east, blaming America, and
From: "bob brown" <vacirca-AT-charm.net>




what a middle class, reactionary polemic in support of the West, salman has
become  an american nationalist patriot.  he has become indistinguishable
from all the other western liberal patriotic intellectuals and politicians
who are buying  into Bush's " war on terrorism".
i particularly liked his attacks on the US Left for anti-americanism because
in a time of racist war hysteria it dares to point out the real roots of
terrorism in the world today: US imperialism and its genocidal policies.
 his abandonment of the oppressed masses of th islamic world is papered over
with feeble appeals to the US not to bomb any more pill factories, and
praise for their wise decision not to bomb innocent civilians in
afghanistan!!!??? but even then he makes the sudan bombing sound comical!
salman, ensconced in his comfortable digs in Manhattan finds it easy to
forget that the prvileged western world wages economic war on the 3rd world
evry day, and then when it meets resistance it periodically commits
terrorist bombings of its own. what were iraq  and vietnam if not an attempt
to terrorize these nations into submission to the US? Salman defines the
struggle today as being between the visible and the invisible; indeed the
image is revealing, because for the West , particularly ordinary white
americans the 3rd world has been invisible, and Rushdie 's piece has just
made it invisible again. what rubbish he writes about american "freedom", he
sounds like the US chamber of Commerce. the taliban and all the other
fundi's west and east are a profoundly reactionary phenomena , but no more
so than US imperialism, this  is what salman ignores   bob brown
--
"solidarity means sharing the same risks" - Che
( la solidarita significa correre gli stessi rischi)

----------
>From: Salil Tripathi <salil61-AT-hotmail.com>
>To: postcolonial-AT-lists.village.virginia.edu
>Subject: Salman Rushdie on terrorism, middle east, blaming America, and much
else....
>Date: Wed, Oct 3, 2001, 9:24 AM
>

>
> Fighting the Forces of Invisibility
> By Salman Rushdie
>
> Tuesday, October 2, 2001; Page A25
>
> NEW YORK -- In January 2000 I wrote in a newspaper
> column that "the defining struggle of the new age
> would be between Terrorism and Security," and fretted
> that to live by the security experts' worst-case
> scenarios might be to surrender too many of our
> liberties to the invisible shadow-warriors of the
> secret world. Democracy requires visibility, I argued,
> and in the struggle between security and freedom we
> must always err on the side of freedom. On Tuesday,
> Sept. 11, however, the worst-case scenario came true.
>
> They broke our city. I'm among the newest of New
> Yorkers, but even people who have never set foot in
> Manhattan have felt its wounds deeply, because New
> York is the beating heart of the visible world,
> tough-talking, spirit-dazzling, Walt Whitman's "city
> of orgies, walks and joys," his "proud and passionate
> city -- mettlesome, mad, extravagant city!" To this
> bright capital of the visible, the forces of
> invisibility have dealt a dreadful blow. No need to
> say how dreadful; we all saw it, are all changed by
> it. Now we must ensure that the wound is not mortal,
> that the world of what is seen triumphs over what is
> cloaked, what is perceptible only through the effects
> of its awful deeds.
>
> In making free societies safe -- safer -- from
> terrorism, our civil liberties will inevitably be
> compromised. But in return for freedom's partial
> erosion, we have a right to expect that our cities,
> water, planes and children really will be better
> protected than they have been. The West's response to
> the Sept. 11 attacks will be judged in large measure
> by whether people begin to feel safe once again in
> their homes, their workplaces, their daily lives. This
> is the confidence we have lost, and must regain.
>
> Next: the question of the counterattack. Yes, we must
> send our shadow-warriors against theirs, and hope that
> ours prevail. But this secret war alone cannot bring
> victory. We will also need a public, political and
> diplomatic offensive whose aim must be the early
> resolution of some of the world's thorniest problems:
> above all the battle between Israel and the
> Palestinian people for space, dignity, recognition and
> survival. Better judgment will be required on all
> sides in future. No more Sudanese aspirin factories to
> be bombed, please. And now that wise American heads
> appear to have understood that it would be wrong to
> bomb the impoverished, oppressed Afghan people in
> retaliation for their tyrannous masters' misdeeds,
> they might apply that wisdom, retrospectively, to what
> was done to the impoverished, oppressed people of
> Iraq. It's time to stop making enemies and start
> making friends.
>
> To say this is in no way to join in the savaging of
> America by sections of the left that has been among
> the most unpleasant consequences of the terrorists'
> attacks on the United States. "The problem with
> Americans is . . . " -- "What America needs to
> understand . . . " There has been a lot of
> sanctimonious moral relativism around lately, usually
> prefaced by such phrases as these. A country which has
> just suffered the most devastating terrorist attack in
> history, a country in a state of deep mourning and
> horrible grief, is being told, heartlessly, that it is
> to blame for its own citizens' deaths. ("Did we
> deserve this, sir?" a bewildered worker at "ground
> zero" asked a visiting British journalist recently. I
> find the grave courtesy of that "sir" quite
> astonishing.)
>
> Let's be clear about why this bien-pensant
> anti-American onslaught is such appalling rubbish.
> Terrorism is the murder of the innocent; this time, it
> was mass murder. To excuse such an atrocity by blaming
> U.S. government policies is to deny the basic idea of
> all morality: that individuals are responsible for
> their actions. Furthermore, terrorism is not the
> pursuit of legitimate complaints by illegitimate
> means. The terrorist wraps himself in the world's
> grievances to cloak his true motives. Whatever the
> killers were trying to achieve, it seems improbable
> that building a better world was part of it.
>
> The fundamentalist seeks to bring down a great deal
> more than buildings. Such people are against, to offer
> just a brief list, freedom of speech, a multi-party
> political system, universal adult suffrage,
> accountable government, Jews, homosexuals, women's
> rights, pluralism, secularism, short skirts, dancing,
> beardlessness, evolution theory, sex. These are
> tyrants, not Muslims. (Islam is tough on suicides, who
> are doomed to repeat their deaths through all
> eternity. However, there needs to be a thorough
> examination, by Muslims everywhere, of why it is that
> the faith they love breeds so many violent mutant
> strains. If the West needs to understand its
> Unabombers and McVeighs, Islam needs to face up to its
> bin Ladens.) United Nations Secretary General Kofi
> Annan has said that we should now define ourselves not
> only by what we are for but by what we are against. I
> would reverse that proposition, because in the present
> instance what we are against is a no-brainer.
>
> Suicidist assassins ram wide-bodied aircraft into the
> World Trade Center and Pentagon and kill thousands of
> people: um, I'm against that. But what are we for?
> What will we risk our lives to defend? Can we
> unanimously concur that all the items in the above
> list -- yes, even the short skirts and dancing -- are
> worth dying for?
>
> The fundamentalist believes that we believe in
> nothing. In his world-view, he has his absolute
> certainties, while we are sunk in sybaritic
> indulgences. To prove him wrong, we must first know
> that he is wrong. We must agree on what matters:
> kissing in public places, bacon sandwiches,
> disagreement, cutting-edge fashion, literature,
> generosity, water, a more equitable distribution of
> the world's resources, movies, music, freedom of
> thought, beauty, love. These will be our weapons. Not
> by making war but by the unafraid way we choose to
> live shall we defeat them.
>
> How to defeat terrorism? Don't be terrorized. Don't
> let fear rule your life. Even if you are scared.
>
> Salman Rushdie is a British novelist and essayist.
> Distributed by NYT Special Features
>
>
>
>
>
>
> _________________________________________________________________
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