Sometimes There Is No Pleasing...

[Annie]

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Recycled Arguments
A rather inspiring story appeared in the Times of London the other day:

In a city still emerging from the floods of Hurricane Katrina, a ship has begun to rise from the ashes of the September 11 terrorist attacks.

Bringing together America's two great calamities of the 21st century, the USS New York is being built in New Orleans with 24 tonnes of steel taken from the collapsed World Trade Centre.

There is no shortage of scrap metal in New Orleans these days, but the girders taken from Ground Zero have been treated with a reverence usually accorded to religious relics. After a brief ceremony in 2003, about seven tonnes of steel were melted down and poured into a cast to make the bow section of the ship's hull.

Some shipworkers say the hairs stood up on the backs of their necks the first time they touched it. Others have postponed their retirement so they can be part of the project.

But not everyone finds this inspiring. One Martin Samuel, commenting in the Times, is appalled:

In this way, the 2,800 souls that perished as an indirect result of an interventionist foreign policy that achieved the exact opposite of its stated aims can be honoured by a vessel built to ensure that this flawed cycle of violence continues. The USS New York will carry 360 soldiers and 700 combat-ready Marines. It puts to sea with the motto: "Never forget." Except they do. They always do. . . .

In essence what is being commemorated here is failure; the failure of American foreign policy to protect fully the interests of its citizens or make their world a safer place. America came under attack because the actions of successive governments have made it the enemy to large swaths of humanity. Anti-Americanism is growing alarmingly because, since September 11, the world's most powerful nation has continued to alienate and divide even its allies. While not excusing wicked acts committed by terrorists, it would be foolish to view the behaviour of terrorists as motiveless.

What "actions" of the U.S. government does Samuel think caused (even if they didn't exactly justify) the 9/11 attacks? Here are the only ones he cites:

The respected columnist Roger Cohen, writing in The New York Times, identified just 14 years since 1945 when America had not been at war, in some form or other, either metaphorical (the Cold War, the War on Terror) or literal (Korea, Vietnam, Iraq). Some might think the two states do not compare. Then again, some of us have never tried to form a left-wing government in Chile, appeared before the Senate Permanent Investigations Sub-Committee led by Senator Joe McCarthy or been instructed to form a naked pyramid by a gap-toothed cracker with a semi-automatic weapon and a weird girlfriend.

That's right. Samuel is suggesting that the 9/11 attacks was part of a "cycle of violence" to which America's contributions were (1) a coup in Chile in 1973, (2) Sen. McCarthy's mistreatment of American communists in the early 1950s, and (3) the abuses at Abu Ghraib, which had not yet happened. Imagine what he might say if he were willing to make excuses for our enemies.