justification?

I do not feel that anyone on this list has argued that it is justifiable to kill Americans.  It is wrong to kill American office workers.  It is wrong to kill Afgani civilians.  However, we as a nation only have the opportunity to make a choice about the latter decision.

"If Jay had been one of those five thousand, had been one of those people jumping from the top floors as the only alternative to burning alive, how would you have felt?

Horrible.  But no more willing to destroy Afgani citizens as revenge.

"Would you have talked about justified revenge for imperialist wrongs?"

I don't think Jay or anybody made this claim.  Perhaps I missed this, but I have been reading these postings very carefully over the last few days. 

"If it had been Eugene's wife and child on one of the highjacked planes, dying horribly with no hope of rescue, would he have been so quick to talk about Afghani anguish as justifying American bodies? "

I am sure that Eugene has not made this claim, either.  I think, based on my personal discussions with Eugene and my readings of his postings on this list, that he has attempted to understand the event, not justify it.  I also suspect his opinions would not change if he were personally affected. 

"Perhaps it's just a little too easy to rhetoricize when it's not

the blood of people you know."

I think "attempt to understand" is not the same as "rhetoricize" (a word I really don't understand, admittedly, but I think from context here it means something like cold and distant rationalization.)  By the way, why is there ererging on this list a feelnig of duality?  As if we can't have strong emotions, fear, sadness, disgust, anger, and at the same time try to understand what happened so we can understand what our actions, whatever they are, might mean?  I for one am horrified and angry, and I am not sleeping, and having nightmares when I do sleep, and crying randomly.  Do I have to tell you this in order to protect myself from assumptions that I am cold and rationalizing when I try to understand what is happening to my world?

I think we need to try to give each other the benefit of the doubt here, assume that nobody supports or justifies the mass murder of Tuesday.  I see no reason to make these assumptions about people we are trying to engage in open discussion.  I think we need to trust each ther's integrity more than that.

 

Renee