MetaFilter posts tagged with foreignpolicy and 9-11

It's Tuesday

chuckdarwin — Tue, 11 Sep 2007 05:15:38 -0800

Martin Amis on 9/11 and the cult of death:

"Let us briefly trundle through the argument for moral equivalence, and let us begin with a trio of ascertainable truths. First, the years 1947 and 1948 saw two imperialistic decisions that guaranteed an increase in hostility between Muslim and nonMuslim: the partition of India along religious lines, and the establishment of the state of Israel. (These decisions also led to, but did not invent, murderous hostility between Muslim and Muslim – in East Pakistan, in Gaza). Second, throughout the 1970s the Arab regimes sponsored by the US started to head off political dissent by guiding the opposition towards Islamic fundamentalism. And, third, in the 1980s the US backed the Mujahidin against the Soviet Union in Afghanistan, and also helped to fund the Pakistani madrassas, whose graduates (all of them unemployable zealots) increased from 30,000 in 1987 to well over half a million by 2001. Thereafter, or so the equivalence argument goes, the Islamist vanguard, having wearied of seeing the battles fought exclusively on its own soil, visited a taste of this destruction on the West. Which turns out to suit the neocons and Christian Zionists, who can now place the US under military rule while they prepare their push for Islamic oil and for Israeli hegemony in the Middle East. The goals of the so-called “terrorists” (who are merely responding in kind to state terrorism from the US and its clients) are not delusive or messianic but solemnly political. So it has always been: the oppressed struggle against the oppressor; the wrongs of the past rise up to avenge themselves on the present."

talos — Mon, 08 Oct 2001 02:57:25 -0800

Chomsky on MSNBC talks about recent events! That would be news all by itself. I know that a lot of people on the right disagree with him, but who can argue with what he says here? Also from left field an incisive Q&A about Afghanistan history and the current situation by Tariq Ali.

Steven Den Beste — Sun, 23 Sep 2001 11:02:08 -0800

"What has America done wrong? In the days since September 11, its president and people have done nothing but demonstrate dignity and restraint. Bush will lash out, the chatterers said. But he hasn't yet. Bush is a bumbling hick, they sneered. But he isn't."

i_am_joe's_spleen — Thu, 13 Sep 2001 19:16:07 -0800

Take a deep breath, angry patriots ... and read another piece in vein of Seamus Milne's Guardian article. Think, breathe, think. (This one's from your fellow English-speakers in New Zealand).

christina — Thu, 13 Sep 2001 16:00:24 -0800

why they hate us Attack on freedom? On liberty? How about retaliation against the biggest bully on the planet? It's our turn to learn how the other half lives. excuse this if it is a double post; I didn't find it in search and it's an important article thanks meg

Summer — Thu, 13 Sep 2001 03:51:53 -0800

Well-written, well-informed article from the Indepent on the political background to all this.

andrew cooke — Wed, 12 Sep 2001 08:42:42 -0800

Sorry that this will be offensive to many (seriously; if I didn't think this was important, I wouldn't post). It's an article linking American foreign policy to the terrible events yesterday.