<HTML>Derek -
I am an Irishman and I, too, don't feel I have an "American" perspective on things. But I did find the articles you linked too offensive, glib, and not a little morally superior. The second writer expected "the West" to apologize for its history back to the Middle Ages, for God's sake! Where do we end with that line of reasoning?
I found the mindset of the articles all too typical of a brand of moralizing liberalism that believes all crime comes from social causes, that all politics have rational basis, and that actions such as we witnessed <i>must</i> have a reasonable explanation.
If only it were so.
I used to hear it said, in a similar vein, that the North of Ireland was, quite obviously, all about economics. If the Republic were richer than the UK, the problem would evaporate. The religious divide was only a veneer on the social and economic realities. In the 1980s, when I last lived in the Repulic of Ireland, the prospect of a prosperous Eire seemed about as likely the moon being made of cheese (but who knows, eh?). Then, in the 1990s, we get the Celtic Tiger, Ireland's economy growing astronomically, huge prosperity. Certainly more prosperity in the South than the North. Now was there a rush to join the Republic? Absolutely not. Religious divides within the North remain so deep, it would be unthinkable for the Unionists. People of the <i>same</i> social class in the North despise each other on religious grounds (mixed with politics, of course). The supposedly obvious socio-economic explanation proved poppycock.
Sometimes we have to accept that there are no neat answers, such as these smug writers suggest for the WTC catastrophe. Sometimes worlds collide. Bin Laden has his agenda. He is not a reactionary, pushed to the limits by American policy, as the writers suggest. He may use whatever America has done to justify his agenda, but he has one nonetheless, and it stems first and foremost from religious fundamentalism. Would these writers then suggest that Bin Laden's religious fundamentalism was forced on him by American foreign policy?
So I echo Kat in this regard: the idea that America is getting what it deserves is pretty disgusting and offensive. America is certainly not a paradise, nor is it perfect, nor is its past milky white. But whose is, Derek? Does this mean we say that offended Group A's atrocity is somehow understandable because target Nation B's past policies "drove them to it"? Do we blame, for instance, the British Government for the IRA's nail bombs in Harrods? I have always found such logic mystifying. And do we blame the victim while turning a blind eye to the repulsive agenda of the perpetrator?
Best,
Garrett</HTML>
