[lit-ideas] Re: what did Indonesia do to deserve this?
- From: Judy Evans <judithevans001@xxxxxxxxxxxxxx>
- To: lit-ideas@xxxxxxxxxxxxx
- Date: Wed, 5 Oct 2005 14:05:21 +0100
1. The Bali Islamist separatist movement existed before Al Qaeda. 2.
The recent bombings there were directed at local people. 3. (I read
that) those people will never support the bombers.
(This does not constitute an endorsement of Hitchens.)
Wednesday, October 5, 2005, 4:51:58 AM, Andy Amago wrote:
AA> One of the problems is that al Qaeda has now morphed. They're many cells
AA> functioning independently. On 9/11 they were pretty much one movement.
AA> Cells do what they want. Bali is popular with Westerners, and Australia
AA> supported the U.S. in Iraq, as did Spain and England. Ultimately, they're
AA> all pissed that we invaded Afghanistan and of course Iraq, and the
AA> Palestinians are still pretty homeless after having had their homes taken
AA> by Israel. That part of it will never end. Christopher Hitchens isn't
AA> solving anything, or really even saying anything. Just throwing fuel on
AA> the fire.
>> [Original Message]
>> From: Eric Yost <mr.eric.yost@xxxxxxxxx>
>> To: <lit-ideas@xxxxxxxxxxxxx>
>> Date: 10/4/2005 10:00:20 PM
>> Subject: [lit-ideas] what did Indonesia do to deserve this?
>>
>> 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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