USS Clueless              Voyages of a restless mind

Main: normal long no graphics Contact Log archives Best log entries Other articles Site Search

Stardate 20011021.1050 (On Screen): Arundhati Roy laments the horrors of war and wrings her hands about how ill-advised everything is that the US is doing. But as seems to be the pattern with such articles, she offers no alternative. The closes she comes is the following:

There is no easy way out of the spiraling morass of terror and brutality that confronts the world today. It is time now for the human race to hold still, to delve into its wells of collective wisdom, both ancient and modern. What happened on Sept. 11th changed the world forever. Freedom, progress, wealth, technology, war — these words have taken on new meaning. Governments have to acknowledge this transformation, and approach their new tasks with a modicum of honesty and humility. Unfortunately, up to now, there has been no sign of any introspection from the leaders of the International Coalition. Or the Taliban.

In other words, "wouldn't it be so much nicer if everyone just got along?" Well, I can agree with that. Problem is, al Qaeda won't, and if we simply collapse into self-contemplation, they'll attack us again and kill more thousands of our people.

Her arguments against our current policy don't ring true, in any case; they're loaded with pious aphorisms and terribly short on specificity.

After conferring, they announced that it didn’t matter whether or not the “evidence” would stand up in a court of law. Thus, in an instant, were centuries of jurisprudence carelessly trashed. This is both false and irrelevant; the nations that saw the evidence (such as Pakistan) announced that it was sufficient to indict, and in any case this is war, not law enforcement. A war is not fought to punish an enemy for something they've already done, it's fought to prevent them from doing something in future. We are not attacking the Taliban and al Qaeda to revenge the thousands of dead in New York, we're attacking them to make sure they don't attack again, and kill more thousands in Miami or Philadelpha or London or Paris. It isn't necessary to prove complicity in the previous attack to justify this, what is necessary is the conviction that they are both willing and able to launch such an attack -- and that is undeniable. "Centuries of jurisprudence" have nothing to do with this.

She deliberately distorts history: Between the Soviet Union and America, over 20 years, about $45 billion worth of arms and ammunition was poured into Afghanistan. This is true, but she is using that to condemn the US. Almost all of that money was spent by the USSR; the US was responsible for about 2% of it -- and our 2% was welcomed by the Afghan people.

She lies about current policy: As a gesture of humanitarian support, the US government air-dropped 37,000 packets of emergency rations into Afghanistan. It says it plans to drop a total of 500,000 packets. Actually, we have dropped 643,000 packages so far, and intend to continue dropping them indefinitely as long as there is a need. We began the process with two million of the food packages stockpiled, and I have no doubt that the factory in Texas which produced them is gearing up to produce even more.

She begs the question:

This is not to suggest that the terrorists who perpetrated the outrage on Sept. 11th should not be hunted down and brought to book. They must be. But is war the best way to track them down? Will burning the haystack find you the needle? Or will it escalate the anger and make the world a living hell for all of us?

But what alternative is there? bin Laden was indicted years ago for his involvement in previous attacks; for several years the US and other nations have tried to use diplomatic and non-violent means to stop this. Afghanistan has been under economic sanctions imposed by the UN. It hasn't done any good. al Qaeda made a previous attack on the World Trade Center, was responsible for the embassy bombing in Kenya, and was responsible for attacking USS Cole. Then they brought down both WTC towers, killing thousands in the most destructive peace-time attack in history. All this happened during an interval in which the US attempted to use non-violent diplomatic means to prevent it. War now appears to be the only way to destroy al Qaeda's ability to launch attacks; everything else has already been tried and has failed. Unless Roy can suggest a convincing alternative, her article is nothing more than empty rhetoric. (discuss)