[lit-ideas] what did Indonesia do to deserve this?
- From: Eric Yost <mr.eric.yost@xxxxxxxxx>
- To: lit-ideas@xxxxxxxxxxxxx
- Date: Tue, 04 Oct 2005 22:00:30 -0400
excerpt from: http://slate.msn.com/id/2127343/fr/rss/
Why Ask Why?
Terrorist attacks aren't caused by any policy except that of the
bombers themselves.
By Christopher Hitchens
The return of murderous nihilism to Bali is highly instructive. It
shows, first, that the fanatics of Islamism don't know how to stop.
And it also shows that they never learn. How can Jemaah Islamiyah,
which almost ruined Indonesia's economy by its filthy attack three
years ago, possibly have tried to repeat the same crime in the same
place? If we look for answers to this question, we shall find
answers that completely discredit the current half-baked apologies
for terrorism.
<snip>
But if JI were rational, it wouldn't have attacked the bars and
clubs and beaches of Kuta and Jimbaran in the first place. Indonesia
is a mainly Muslim society, whose government takes a stern line
against the war in Iraq and even Afghanistan. Its people, who are
astonishingly hospitable to all foreigners, depend in millions of
cases on tourism to make the difference between indigence and the
minimum wage. Its elections feature Muslim political parties, many
of them quite austere in their propaganda. Why on earth, then, would
a fundamentalist group wish to bring discredit upon itself and ruin
upon its neighbors by resorting to random slaughter?
<snip>
And then, of course, Australians must die. Why would that be? Well,
is it not the case that Australia sent troops to help safeguard the
independence of East Timor and the elections that followed it? A
neighboring country that assists the self-determination of an
Indonesian Christian minority must expect to have the lives of its
holidaymakers taken.
Do not forget that on Aug. 19, 2003, a gigantic explosion leveled
the Canal Hotel in Baghdad, which then served as the Iraq
headquarters of the United Nations. The materials used to do this
were of a high military grade not available to any random
"insurgent" and certainly came from the arsenals of the fallen
regime. The main target—and principal victim—was Sergio Vieira de
Mello, the dashing Brazilian who had been sent by Kofi Annan to
reanimate the U.N. presence in Iraq. De Mello had been the most
devoted and humane of the world body's civil servants and had won
himself golden opinions in Cambodia, Lebanon, Sudan, and the
Balkans. But it was his role as U.N. supervisor of the transition in
East Timor that marked him for death. A communiqué from al-Qaida
gloated over the end of "the personal representative of America's
criminal slave, Kofi Annan, the diseased Sergio de Mello, criminal
Bush's friend." It went on to ask, "Why cry over a heretic? Sergio
Vieira de Mello is the one who tried to embellish the image of
America, the crusaders and the Jews in Lebanon and Kosovo, and now
in Iraq. He is America's first man where he was nominated by Bush to
be in charge of the UN after Kofi Annan, the criminal and slave of
America, and he is the crusader that extracted a part of the Islamic
land [East Timor]."
Consider this, look again at the awful carnage in Bali, and shudder
if you ever said, or thought, that the bombs in London in July, or
the bombs in Baghdad every day, or the bombs in Bali last Friday,
are caused by any "policy" but that of the bombers themselves. Note
the following:
1) East Timor was for many years, and quite rightly, a
signature cause of the Noam Chomsky "left." The near-genocide of its
people is an eternal stain on Indonesia and on the Western states
that were complicit or silent. Yet Bin Ladenism wants not less of
this killing and repression but more. Its demand to re-establish the
caliphate is a pro-imperialist demand, not an anti-imperialist one.
2) Random bombings are not a protest against poverty and
unemployment. They are a cause of poverty and unemployment and of
wider economic dislocation.
3) Hinduism is considered by Bin Ladenists to be a worse heresy
even than Christianity or Judaism or Shiism, and its adherents,
whether in Bali or Kashmir, are fit only for the edge of the sword.
So, it is absurd to think of jihadism—which murders the poor and the
brown without compunction—as a movement against the rich and the
"white."
So, what did Indonesia do to deserve this, or bring it on itself?
How will the slaughter in Bali improve the lot of the Palestinians?
Those who look for the connection will be doomed to ask increasingly
stupid questions and to be content with increasingly wicked answers.
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