File spoon-archives/postcolonial.archive/postcolonial_2001/postcolonial.0110, message 75


Date: Wed, 03 Oct 2001 19:00:22 -0400
From: Malini Schueller <mschuell-AT-english.ufl.edu>
Subject: Intellectuals' responses to Sept 11


I have appreciated being able to get to websites to read the responses of
intellectuals--Chomsky, Roy etc--to Sept 11. Please continue to provide
these. Does anyone know what the responses of prominent African-American
intellectuals--bell hooks, Henry Louis Gates, Cornel West etc--have been?
If anyone has articles etc, could they please share it? Thanks,
Malini





At 02:13 PM 10/3/01 -0400, you wrote:
>
>
>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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>>
>>
>>
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