Stardate 20011209.1834 (On Screen): Robert Fisk was beaten by a crowd in Pakistan, but he's gone public with his account of it (which
Brian mailed to me) and uses it to make a political point. I still regret that he was beaten, but I need not let his politics pass just because he shed blood, and I won't.
Andrew Sullivan points out that Fisk removes all moral culpability for the attack from those who attacked him; this is the height of chauvinism. They are morally blameless because they are not capable of making decisions; they were merely automatically responding to the stimulus of American bombing.
But there's something more interesting here: Fisk fought back, which almost certainly saved his life. Had he passively accepted the beating he probably would have ended up dead; but because he fought back he is now healthy enough already to be able to write a column about it; clearly he will be alright -- because when he was attacked he fought back. His pious words not withstanding, when the money was on the table he had no use for moral equivalence; it was his life on the line and he fought back.
And that is exactly what he condemns the United States for doing: it, too, was attacked, and it, too, is fighting back so as to prevent more attacks which could injure or kill more thousands of its citizens, and because it is fighting back those citizens also will not die. It is not concerning itself with moral equivalence because the lives of its citizens are on the line. (discuss)
